Dialogue Without Action - Could This Work?

A common piece of advice I've heard is not to have dialogue read like two disembodied heads talking in a void. And to in order to avoid this problem is to break the dialogue up with paragraphs of what the characters are doing during the conversation and/or descriptions of the surroundings, where relevant.

I've noticed in my writings that I often fail to do this. As I write from a first person perspective, I instead tend more to insert my POV character's thoughts, remarks, observations and interpretations of what the other characters say and/or the motives behind them, rather than direct actions taking place.

My question is... does this work? Or will it still run into the problem of "two disembodied heads in a void"? And is this necessarily a bad thing?

If you mean pure dialogue, thoughts, and observations for one scene at a time I say yes, that could work. I usually prefer not to be stuck too much in someone's head, but there are stories out there like that. It sounds to me like you are breaking up the dialogue with thoughts, etc.

Pretty much. The issue is whether showing the character's thought processes provides sufficient sense of "activity" that would otherwise be absent if there was only line after line of pure dialogue.

As someone who uses this technique myself, I think it does work in a first person perspective on the basis that the POV character probably doesn't notice, think about or care about the setting or things going on in the background unless there's something extremely abnormal about either that's drawing his/her attention. It likely wouldn't work as well in a third person story because the reader probably would have more of an expectation that the narrator establish as much about the scene as they can.

Other than that, any break in dialogue is a break in dialogue regardless of what it is you're breaking for, so I wouldn't worry too much about how much of an "activity" the break is since it's going to serve that purpose regardless.

edited 9th Sep '13 12:56:11 PM by DeviousRecital

I have a similar problem when it comes to walls of dialogue.

What I generally do is get the dialogue down and then go back and break it up with relevant actions.

What this means is that you are better suited to be a playwright than a novelist. Or so I've heard from reputable sources.

I think dialogue without action can work, but the circumstances matter. A good example is Ender's Game - there are several scenes consisting of dialogue with little to no action, but it's for a specific reason. You're not meant to know much about the people speaking, and what they say is the important thing. The lack of action isn't accidental or random, it's left out to make the scenes feel a certain way.

I find practice has helped me to avoid the featureless plane of disembodied dialogue. Get to know your characters and try to picture their body language and what they would do during a conversation.