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In real life, conversations ramble, so it's unsurprising if your dialogues ramble as well. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In realistic literary novels, it would be unsurprising, or even expec...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T02:27:59Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6108 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
JSBձոգչ
·
2019-12-08T02:27:59Z (about 5 years ago)
In real life, conversations ramble, so it's unsurprising if your dialogues ramble as well. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In realistic literary novels, it would be unsurprising, or even expected, for your dialogues to include long tangents and unrelated content. This is part of that genre's attempt to present situations naturalistically. In other genres readers expect a tighter degree of focus, and so will be less tolerant of long conversations that don't appear to relate to the story. However, just because a dialogue doesn't _directly_ relate to the theme or plot doesn't mean that it actually accomplishes nothing. Dialogues can be used to set mood, to demonstrate character, or to illustrate the setting. So consider: does your characters' conversation actually contribute _nothing_ to the story, or is it adding something a little more subtle?
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2012-07-24T12:46:40Z (over 12 years ago)
Original score: 14