Good Tip On Dialogue

Sunday Writing Tip: Remove Unnecessary Dialogue from Your Scenes
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy
[this is an excerpt - full link: http://blog.janicehardy.com/2019/10/sun … html#more]
boldface is mine...

There’s often a lot of empty dialogue in scenes, especially the beginnings of them. Characters greet each other and make small talk before they get to the meat of their conversations. Most of the time, that small talk weakens the scene and hurts the pacing.

It’s also common to find characters saying too much in a scene and giving away all the mystery and/or tension. They’re too open about their feelings, or too self-aware about how they feel. They might also answer questions just because the plot needs them to, when being true to themselves and staying quiet makes for a stronger story.

As they say, less is more, and that’s particularly true with dialogue.
[end of article]

A few observations:

Too often, we writers feel as if we must track every movement of a scene, filling our writing with needless “turning” and “facing” and “looking” and other useless stage directions.  Just as the eye will “see” a star even if two sides are missing, the viewer of a movie or the reader of a story can fill in a surprising amount of missing information (read up on the concept of the “jump cut” in film editing.) This is also true in dialogue.  The best way to completely ruin dialogue is to mimic real life, with all its filler and nonsensical syntax.  Unanswered questions, indirect answers, and missing information help create the mystery and the subtext that is so often critical to making dialogue enjoyable.  Writers who don’t leave anything to the imagination of their readers (in dialogue, narrative, or action) do a disservice to them. 

Janice also makes a point about creating dialogue to provide plot information.  While this can be accomplished if done with aplomb, most of the time it comes off contrived and unrealistic.  Be wary of having characters go on monologues to pass on plot information or creating exchanges that come off contrived.

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