Forum: Author Hangout

Dialogue as a percentage of novels

JoeBobMack 🚫

I ran across this article and thought some here might be interested to comment. (The authors primary research focus is detecting Alzheimer's or other form of dementia through writing. I have NOT done a deep dive into their work or looked for updates on their research. I don't think that's relevant to the subject of the linked article or this post.)

They note that Agatha Christie's novels range from 49.17% dialogue in The Mysterious Affair at Styles published in 1920 to 65%, 79%, and 76% for three novels published in the 1970s. It's a fairly steady climb over seven novels (though I note they skip any published between 1930 and 1971).

Then there are these four paragraphs.

A relatively high proportion of dialogue is a common characteristic of genre novels — thus Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has 46.95% characters within quoted strings; Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula has 47.46%; G.K. Chesterton's 1908 The Man Who Was Thursday has 60.08%;, and Josephine Tey's 1946 Miss Pym Disposes weighs in at 42.54%.

Not all novels are like this: Thus Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse has just 3.27% characters within quoted strings; her Jacob's Room has 10.17%; Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea has 15.03%; his The Sun Also Rises has 29.40%; Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle has 14.01%; Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 has 23.99%.

Some non-genre novels have higher proportions: The Great Gatsby has 51.32%; Martin Eden has 50.58%.

And some genre novels are more narrative-heavy: The Da Vinci Code has 29.59%.

They then note that Elmore Leonard's novels also show more dialogue over time, from 33.73% in 1954 to 60.70% in 2012.

They conclude with this:

There are a lot more data points to consider — Christie wrote more than 70 novels, and Leonard has written 60 or so. But this small sample suggests that a trend towards more dialogue over the course of an author's career is not implausible.

So, sport checking my work with ProWritingAid, I'm seeing chapters running from zero dialogue (only one I found in sampling - and it is very unusual) to just over 50%. Don't know what that means, but, just putting it out here since I'm bringing up the topic! I also notice that some, but not all, of the works I enjoy reading on SOL seem to be dialogue heavy, though I haven't analyzed any chapters.

So, thoughts?

Replies: awnlee jawking GreyWolf helmut_meukel richardshagrin

awnlee jawking 🚫

@JoeBobMack

I think the genre/non-genre distinction is really a marketing classification, not how a novel is written, so is unlikely to produce any meaningful results.

As authors get older, they probably find it harder to keep so much eg gun porn in their heads, so perhaps it's a natural trend for them to cut the detail in favour of timeless dialogue.

Alzheimer's is being better diagnosed these days so there should be a better pool of subject data. Did Terry Pratchett include a greater percentage of dialogue in his latter novels? Is that any different from the possible trend due to an author getting older?

AJ

AJ

Replies: Dominions Son Vincent Berg JoeBobMack

Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I think the genre/non-genre distinction is really a marketing classification, not how a novel is written, so is unlikely to produce any meaningful results.

There is more than marketing classification to genre. Certain genres tend to involve a lot more in the way of world building.

The article isn't really analyzing books across all genres, or even a good sample for each genre it looks at. The genre fiction it does talk about are in areas that are light to non-existent for world building.

For novels with more world building you would expect more narrative and comparatively less dialog.

Vincent Berg 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Did Terry Pratchett include a greater percentage of dialogue in his latter novels? Is that any different from the possible trend due to an author getting older?

As you age, you frequently encounter things like severe losses more often, which typically take a decidedly different approach. Typically in those cases, that's not all just revelations and confessions, but witty banter signally someone transition from despair to a glimmer of hope, so not only would the dialogue increase, it would also typically become more complex, switching from humor to pathos, teasing to honesty.

Looking at things simply in terms of age, genre or subject matter frequently disguises what makes one author great, and another just another genre writer.

@Dominions Son:

For novels with more world building you would expect more narrative and comparatively less dialog.

Badly written stories, possibly, but for better written ones, the heavy backstory is typically spread throughout the story via dialogue, revealing the characters background rather than boring the readers out of their minds initially.

I'd also prefer to see a basic analysis vis dialogue vs. first and third-person stories, as that seems more significant than genre or backstory does.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Vincent Berg

Badly written stories, possibly, but for better written ones, the heavy backstory is typically spread throughout the story via dialogue

I disagree, even in the best written world building stories there will be lots of scenery and props that show up in the narrative, not dialog.

You are correct that in the better written stories it will be spaced out throughout the story, not an up front info-dump, but it won't all be dialog.

JoeBobMack 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I think the genre/non-genre distinction is really a marketing classification, not how a novel is written, so is unlikely to produce any meaningful results.

AJ, I don't know. Haven't studied genres that much. But, I note this interesting fact. ProWritingAid changes its recommendations for some analytics based on genre. For example:

Romance:
** Sentence length: 8-16
** Readability: Grade 8 or Lower

For Science Fiction:
** Sentence length: 10-18
** Readability: Grade 9 or Lower

For Mystery:
** Sentence length: 11-18
** Readability: Grade 10 or Lower

As I understand it, these are based on the ranges in some sample of published and successful works in those genres.

So, maybe a bit more than marketing? Maybe the writing differs, because writers write to their markets?

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@JoeBobMack

Maybe the writing differs, because writers write to their markets?

That does happen, with writers adopting different pen names for different markets.

What are ProWritingAid's recommendations for non-genre novels?

AJ

Replies: Switch Blayde JoeBobMack

Switch Blayde 🚫

@awnlee jawking

for non-genre novels?

Is there such a thing? Maybe literary fiction. Although that might be a genre.

The publishing industry categorizes books into genres. The bookstores use it to know what section to place the book. The publishers know what market to target it. Etc.

Replies: Dominions Son awnlee jawking

Dominions Son 🚫

@Switch Blayde

he publishing industry categorizes books into genres. The bookstores use it to know what section to place the book. The publishers know what market to target it. Etc.

And many traditionally published authors write to specific genres, so there is a lot more to it than marketing.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Is there such a thing?

It's mentioned in the original post.

My cursory examination found a sort of snootiness by writers of non-genre fiction towards genre fiction, yet at the same time the decision whether to market the novel as genre or non-genre often appears to be a marketing one.

AJ

JoeBobMack 🚫

@awnlee jawking

PWA has a "General Fiction" setting. It's the same as for "Mystery."
**Sentence Lengths 11-18
**Readability Grade 10 or Lower

Young Adult
**Sentence Lengths 8-15
**Readability Grade 7 or Lower

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@JoeBobMack

Thanks. I guess as the catch-all, 'General Fiction' is probably the closest to non-genre fiction.

My pride is grievously wounded that a slightly higher target reading age is recommended for 'General Fiction' than 'Science Fiction' :-(

AJ

Replies: JoeBobMack richardshagrin

JoeBobMack 🚫
Updated:

@awnlee jawking

I wouldn't feel too bad. Just ran a check on a random chapter from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and it clocked in at Grade 5 and 49.5% dialogue, sentence length 10.3. Almost exactly in line with my efforts. Am I the storyteller that Heinlein was? Of course not. Nor am I the polymath he was. But if my stories fall short, it's not due to the sentence structure or vocabulary.

I laugh at the idea that literary fiction gives "insight into the human condition." Really? Nope. Just like "critical studies" journals get punked by professors submitting totally bogus "postmodern" articles. It's turtles all the way down. Potemkin villages. Just bullshit.

Of course, with no fear of contradicting myself ("foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds"), I'll go back to Heinlein for a universal truth, this time from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It's good to throw big rocks really fast at those who try to abuse you.

richardshagrin 🚫

@awnlee jawking

'General Fiction'

Wouldn't that be stories about Generals in the Army, Air Force or Marine Corps?

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@richardshagrin

General Specific
Colonel Corn
Major Miner
Captain Captain
Lieutenant Louie
Sargent Knight
Private Parts.

Replies: GreyWolf

GreyWolf 🚫

@Dominions Son

Colonel Panic (for software geeks, anyway ;))
Captain Obvious
Marshall Law
Major Malfunction

GreyWolf 🚫
Updated:

@JoeBobMack

Just checked my own writing (Book 2, specifically) and I'm just below 60% per ProWritingAid. That feels about right - I'm writing a very dialogue-driven story. It'll be interesting to see if it goes down in the next book. My gut feel is that it may drop to the lower 50s, but we'll see.

On a related subject: ProWritingAid is a little crazy about dialogue tags. I'm not a firm believer in "everything should be 'said'" - by any means - but it's calling "laughed" in:

I laughed for a moment. "Wow, that's harsh!"

a dialogue tag. No, that's an action, followed by a piece of dialogue.

It occurs to me that one could argue that a first-person narrative is 100% dialogue. It's either quoted conversations or it's dialogue from the narrator to the reader (with occasional reactions to questions the narrator places in the mouth of the reader). Not perhaps the most useful way of analyzing a story, but, arguable.

Anyone surprised that my MC is a debater?

Replies: awnlee jawking JoeBobMack Dominions Son Vincent Berg JoeBobMack JoeBobMack

awnlee jawking 🚫

@GreyWolf

No, that's an action, followed by a piece of dialogue.

Agreed.

Unfortunately I see far too many examples in SOL stories where the "Wow, that's harsh!" was almost certainly said by someone other than the person who laughed :-(

AJ

Replies: GreyWolf GreyWolf

GreyWolf 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I've almost certainly been guilty of that myself. With the help of several editors, I've weeded almost all of it out, but older chapters need updates.

But, for ProWritingAid users, the dialogue tag warning is nigh useless because of how it interprets things. That's ok - I wasn't going to use it anyway. The only reason I know that it's wacky is having used it to count percentage dialogue. I get the help I want from other reports (most of it is helping me do targeted reduction of passive voice and overused adverbs and the like).

GreyWolf 🚫

@awnlee jawking

JoeBobMack 🚫

@GreyWolf

You are exactly right about PWA and dialogue tags! It's weird. I looked on their website for some explanations about some of the reports and didn't find much. Like, for example, the basis for their

Dominions Son 🚫

@GreyWolf

It occurs to me that one could argue that a first-person narrative is 100% dialogue. It's either quoted conversations or it's dialogue from the narrator to the reader (with occasional reactions to questions the narrator places in the mouth of the reader). Not perhaps the most useful way of analyzing a story, but, arguable.

1. technically, that's monologue not dialogue.
2. I would argue that to the extent that it is true of 1st person narration, it is equally true for both 3rd limited and 3rd omni.

Replies: Switch Blayde GreyWolf

Switch Blayde 🚫

@Dominions Son

it is equally true for both 3rd limited and 3rd omni.

Sort of for 3rd-omni. After all, the godlike narrator is telling the story. But not quite so much as 1st-person.

Not 3rd-limited, though. No one is telling the story. There is no narrator. No one is telling the story. The reader lives the story through the POV character. The POV character doesn't tell the story.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Switch Blayde

There is no narrator. No one is telling the story.

Unless the story is 100% dialog, where does the narration come from? Someone is telling the story or there is no story.

Replies: Switch Blayde

Switch Blayde 🚫
Updated:

@Dominions Son

Someone is telling the story or there is no story.

Okay, when someone writes, "Joe heard the door slam shut and he jumped," I guess "someone" is telling the reader that. But that "someone" is not a narrator like a 1st-person narrator or to some extent an omni narrator.

But when an author writes in a close 3rd-limited, "The door slammed shut. Joe jumped," the reader "sees and hears" it as if he were Joe.

Of course the author writes the words that conveys everything to the reader, so I guess the author is telling the story. But how it's done differs. There's no narrator telling the story.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Switch Blayde

There's no narrator telling the story.

If there is narration, there must be a narrator. I don't care how you think the reader interprets it.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Dominions Son

If there is narration, there must be a narrator. I don't care how you think the reader interprets it.

That's a common failure, not tracking the narrator's influence. That's why, for 3rd Omni stories, I prefer identifying the narrator and learning their personality and character traits, including speaking styles, BEFORE writing the story, so you'll not only know how the narrator will respond to any given situation, but also their personal flaws and limitations to better account for potential dishonest narrators (which are, of course, expressed by the characters and NOT the narrator themselves).

Replies: Switch Blayde

Switch Blayde 🚫

@Vincent Berg

That's a common failure, not tracking the narrator's influence. That's why, for 3rd Omni stories, I prefer identifying the narrator

3rd-omni has a narrator. But 3rd-limited does not. One could think of the author as the narrator, but that would be wrong in literary terms.

A 1st-person narrator can be an unreliable narrator, but an omni narrator cannot be unreliable. The omni narrator is all-knowing. Now the perspective of the POV character in 3rd-limited can be unreliable. He's not a narrator, but the scene is from his perspective. So if he thinks Sally is beautiful when in fact she is not, in that scene the reader is told she's beautiful.

GreyWolf 🚫

@Dominions Son

I did say 'one could argue' :) so I will. My narrator might well (he would, actually) claim that it's a dialogue with his imagined reader, including answering the questions he believes the reader would answer. He'd certainly hate the insinuation that the tale he's telling is 'a long boring speech' (one of the primary definitions of 'monologue').

It's not that useful (as noted), just ... arguable :)

Vincent Berg 🚫

@GreyWolf

it's calling "laughed" in:

I laughed for a moment. "Wow, that's harsh!"

a dialogue tag. No, that's an action, followed by a piece of dialogue.

Actually, a better description for those are 'action tags', since you aren't specifically tagging the dialogue, but using physical descriptions of character actions. But that doesn't reduce dialogue, instead it reduces the unnecessary "he said"/"she said" and the obnoxious "he laughed"/"she chuckled"/"he guffawed"/"she smirked".

Replies: GreyWolf

GreyWolf 🚫

@Vincent Berg

I can go with that. It's a better way of keeping up the every-so-often 'so-and-so-is-speaking' nudge. Another thing I'm working on - some form of tagging is needed ever so often, and 'said' gets annoying. I just read an old story (not of mine) earlier today, and some of the earlier conversations are 'said', back and forth, over and over. Annoying!

I do use 'chuckled' and 'smirked'. Probably too often, but I'm trying to write those as action and not dialogue tags more and more. Like I said, I'm really not on the 'said above all else' side, but I agree that other things get overused and often don't add value.

JoeBobMack 🚫

@GreyWolf

Just checked my own writing (Book 2, specifically) and I'm just below 60% per ProWritingAid.

Did you feed the whole book into ProWritingAid at one time? I tend to feed it a chapter at a time (around 2500 words for me on average with few chapters more than 800 words off that number in either direction). When I've tried feeding larger amounts, it's taken a LONG time to process.

Replies: Michael Loucks GreyWolf

Michael Loucks 🚫

@JoeBobMack

Did you feed the whole book into ProWritingAid at one time? I tend to feed it a chapter at a time (around 2500 words for me on average with few chapters more than 800 words off that number in either direction). When I've tried feeding larger amounts, it's taken a LONG time to process.

I pointed it to my Scrivner projects and it basically choked. It took it > hour on a relatively powerful machine. Of course, my books are 500,000 to 600,000 words, so 'Scivner integration' is a bit misleading.

And I'm talking before I could even tell it to look at just one chapter (6K words).

From the trial, I'd say it's not going to work for me without a TON of manual work.

Replies: GreyWolf

GreyWolf 🚫

@Michael Loucks

The book I tested with was about 450k words. It took about 30-45 minutes on my relatively powerful laptop (albeit in a somewhat less powerful VM on said laptop - for various reasons, mostly related to Windows stuff - my writing tools live in a VM). I have never had PWA default to 'Manuscript' (the whole thing) without letting me pick a chapter - that sounds like a bug or a strange misbehavior. When opening a new project I always get a display with both 'Manuscript' and a way to get to chapters.

If you try it again and it again just opens the Manuscript without letting you pick a chapter let me know. I do have a nebulous contact on the PWA development team (thanks to spending a lot of time with them working through a bug that happened if you had no graphics acceleration at all - see VM comment above. It's fixed now).

So, I would never actually use PWA that way. However, using it chapter by chapter (3-6k chapters, pretty much) with Scrivener source is fast and efficient. It handles scenes transparently (unless you want to work scene-by-scene, in which case you can).

I have one real annoyance with it. It doesn't handle italics. It doesn't alter them, but it neither displays them nor allows you to enter them. So, sometimes I've written e.g. "I do not like that." If I forget what I wrote, I'm likely to edit that to "I don't like that in PWA (yes, with the mixed italics). I'm getting better at remembering not to do that :) And if I want to add italics, I put __ in front of the word and do find-and-replace to find them (replacing with nothing, so it's easy to drop the ones where I simply highlighted something already italicized).

Anyone not using italics won't have that problem, of course :)

Replies: Michael Loucks

Michael Loucks 🚫

@GreyWolf

When opening a new project I always get a display with both 'Manuscript' and a way to get to chapters.

If you try it again and it again just opens the Manuscript without letting you pick a chapter let me know. I do have a nebulous contact on the PWA development team (thanks to spending a lot of time with them working through a bug that happened if you had no graphics acceleration at all - see VM comment above. It's fixed now).

I get the screen to pick chapters but it hangs there for ages and ages before I can select any checkboxes. The UI is totally frozen during this period. Once it unfreezes, I can select chapters.

Replies: GreyWolf

GreyWolf 🚫

@Michael Loucks

Interesting. I don't even have checkboxes, just a list. Maybe a platform variation?

Replies: Michael Loucks

Michael Loucks 🚫

@GreyWolf

Interesting. I don't even have checkboxes, just a list. Maybe a platform variation?

Mac for me. I'm going to try it on my other Mac and make sure it's not something strange with this installation of Scrivener or my Mac.

Replies: GreyWolf

GreyWolf 🚫

@Michael Loucks

Windows for me. I get a list that's fairly similar to Scrivener's, with a set of triangular list-collapse/expand controls.

The exception is (and I just tested this), if I had 'Manuscript' selected and quit, then it's on 'Manuscript' on restart. Which is bad. If it's a new document (or I trash the settings files), that doesn't happen.

Replies: Michael Loucks

Michael Loucks 🚫
Updated:

@GreyWolf

The exception is (and I just tested this), if I had 'Manuscript' selected and quit, then it's on 'Manuscript' on restart. Which is bad. If it's a new document (or I trash the settings files), that doesn't happen.

That may well be the problem! Let me check that!

ETA: To fix it, I wiped the application, all preferences, and all application support items. Once I did that, the strange problem went away and I could click on a single scene. I tested and you were correct that clicking on 'manuscript' was, indeed, the problem, given the Scrivner file in question is 600K words.

Replies: GreyWolf

GreyWolf 🚫

@Michael Loucks

Glad it helped! I find PWA's Scrivener integration quite useful (and the workarounds would be annoying).

It'd be nice if they tossed up a dialogue box saying "Are you sure you want 'Manuscript'? It may take a very long time to load."

GreyWolf 🚫

@JoeBobMack

I fed it the entire book. It took maybe 30-45 minutes to digest. I pretty much never do that - this one test was the only time.

JoeBobMack 🚫

@GreyWolf

Yup. In fact, your example is exactly what they (and others) recommend as one way of minimizing dialogue tags.

helmut_meukel 🚫

@JoeBobMack

When all is said and done, much is said and few is done.
I see too many stories where excessive dialogue kills the action.
It's as bad when the narrator rehashes – again – why a character hesitates to do what's urgently needed.

Just my €.02

HM.

richardshagrin 🚫

@JoeBobMack

Die a log. Is a log alive enough to die? Trees are alive, but once a logger makes it a log, is is already dead. Not sure why the "ue" is added to log. Must be something English, if it sounds like "log" why add extra letters?

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Dialogue as a percentage of novels

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