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Q&A

Is it possible to write a novel completely devoid of dialogue?

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I am in the process of writing a novel, and I'm just trying to get some ideas and thought on this. I am not sure yet if I want to completely remove all dialogue, but at this point I feel that dialogue would wreck the characters and the image I am trying to convey. But I am just curious to see others' thoughts on a novel with multiple characters but no dialogue at all.

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3 answers

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Short answer: yes.

The question is complicated, though, by what counts as 'dialogue'. If you read - for example - Birgit Vanderbeke's The Mussel Feast (Peirene Press, 2013, trans. Jamie Bullock) you won't find any direct speech - i.e., dialogue in quotation marks. But there's plenty of reported speech in there. It's a more difficult technique than direct speech, but the reward is that the entire texture of the prose is conditioned by the narrative voice. There's a greater cohesion, something a little more like storytelling and less like conventional prose fiction. I bring this up just an example, to show that the question has more nuance than just dialogue vs. no dialogue. It's a question primarily of form, and secondarily of content. You haven't gone into much detail about the aesthetic considerations in play, so I can't offer any advice specific to your piece.

And as for writing a novel that most people would like (mentioned in another answer this this question). Screw that. Write a novel you think is the best novel you can write, and would be enjoyed by a reader with precisely your taste. If your taste coincides with the zeitgeist, so much the better. But if you're not writing for yourself, you will be able to smell your novel's inauthenticity from the other end of the block. (The other, complementary piece of advice is to read both broadly and deep, so your taste is as informed as it can be .... but that's a given.)

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The following English language novels have no dialogue:

The following German novels have no dialogue:

The following French novels have no dialogue:

I'm sure there are more.

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E.L. Doctorow's 1975 novel Ragtime had no dialogue in it, although it did have descriptions of conversations. The book did not contain any dialogue in "quotes." It's a widely acclaimed novel, and has even been turned into a film (released in 1981, directed by Milos "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Forman) and a Broadway musical. So it is possible. But Doctorow is a damn good storyteller, which helps.

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