style - Striking the balance between dialogue and narrative

I am participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. I have never in my life written so much of a single story. Although I am supposed to tell my inner editor to shut up this month, she is constantly nagging at me about my structure.

I seem to vary wildly between description/narrative and dialogues. In fact, my entire novel thus far is composed of many scenes of long dialogues which involve a little description of what the characters are doing while they reveal the plot, interspersed with a handful of scenes that are primarily descriptive or perhaps narrative.

It seems to me like I have too much dialogue. Way too much. But I don't know how to find a balance here and help the characters grow and the plot unfold without having people talking all the time.

How to I shift my dialogue into narrative or descriptive text and still maintain the character development, relationship development, and plot movement that I get from writing dialogue? How do I determine whether there is enough dialogue, or too much?

Answer

First, for the purposes of NaNoWriMo I strongly suggest that you shoot your inner editor in the head. Write the most awful dreck that you can imagine, and then go back and fix it.

But as for answering your actual question, you should alternate between description and dialogue in the same scene. That is, instead of doing the following:

[Several long paragraphs of description.]

[Several pages of dialogue.]

[Several long paragraphs of description.]

Try something like this instead:

[A few lines of dialogue.]

[A snippet of description, preferably one which relates to the dialogue on some level.]

[A few more lines of dialogue.]

This may be easier said than done, so here are a few more ideas for how to know how and when to insert your descriptive snippets:

• Use description to control the pacing of the dialogue. Wherever you need a "beat" (a moment of silence or brief lull in the conversation), insert some description.



• Use description to create atmosphere or theme. If your story is dark and foreboding, break the dialog for a moment to have the character notice a crow picking at some roadkill. Use other descriptive techniques as appropriate to the tone of your story.


• Use description when you need to turn the dialog in a particular direction. Have one of the characters be distracted momentarily by something in the environment, but have this distraction serve as the excuse for a change in topic.