Writing outside of dialogue gives your storytelling a lift.
You might like dialogue. A lot. Don’t believe in narration, since you think showing is always better than telling. But even a scene can be in narrative, instead of just dialogue. If you don’t ever use narrative, a reader can only get so far into the character’s emotions. You’ll need to bring me closer to them than I can get just by following a lot of dialogue. It takes so much energy from the reader to track emotions through dialogue over long passages.
Dialogue is like taking stairs two at a time. It gets readers to the end of the plot event faster. But they tire.
Editor and coach C.S. Laskin has an example of a “narrative scene” at her website.
“With most contemporary novels, a reader sees the character voice prevailing in the narrative. And this helps readers get deep into point of view to emotionally impact them.”
Her webpage looks at Lisa Gardner’s opening to Right Behind You. The narrative begins, “Had a family once. Father. Mother. Sister. Lived in our very own double-wide.” You really can feel the poverty and sadness from that. Gardner spends the first pages of her opening narrative scene setting up the family situation.
Try this. Use sentences shorter than 10 words to do it.
