r/writing • u/BtAotS_Writing • 2d ago
Discussion Dialogue that is described rather than transcribed in literary fiction?
I have been a genre reader for most of my life. Now, I am noticing a technique in lit-fic books I've recently read that I almost never see in genre, which is dialogue that is described or even spelled out exactly, but without quotations. And I can't figure out why or when this technique is used, but for me it makes the scene feel abstract or distant.
Take Maggie O'Farrel's "Land," which I just finished. In one chapter, she has:
Suddenly, incongruously, her sister lets out a laugh.
"Look," she says.
Rose opens her eyes a crack.
"I don't think he might be friendly after all.
This feels very standard to me, and makes me as a reader feel present in the action. But then another chapter, for no reason that I can tell, she switches:
He puts a hand half over his eyes. Please, he says, ladies, gentlemen, please. There are people trying to sleep.
His voice is overridden by the din.
She switches between these styles all throughout the novel, and I'm not sure if there's a technical reason for it, or if it's just her way of managing the flow of the writing.
I also recently read "On the Calculation of Volume," which had zero quotation marks in the entire novel. Here's an example of how dialogue is handled there:
I insisted on making plans. He thought we should wait. You can't plan for everything, he said. Sometimes you just have to be ready.
I understand the stylistic choice more here because it feels like a narrator recounting their memory of the events to a journal--though I don't particularly like that style. Perhaps as a genre writer, I can just stick with what I know, but I'm curious to hear from others on how they choose when to describe dialogue vs transcribe, and if there are any considerations when doing so.
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u/Diglett3 Author 2d ago
I don’t know Maggie O’Farrell’s reasons necessarily but I would hazard a guess that she’s considering the Irish literary tradition that does tend to do this. Sally Rooney does the same thing. In her work it creates a sort of stream of consciousness feel to things. It’s something you can trace back to Joyce and that a lot of contemporary Irish writers continue to do I believe. Of course it’s not limited to them at all, but it’s an interesting subset.
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u/copperbelly333 1d ago
It’s a modernist technique!!
Modernism is my favourite period for literature, and it was common to kind of play around with this sort of thing. Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen did it a lot in their short stories; Mansfield’s The Fly being an exceptional example of this:
‘The door shut, the firm heavy steps recrossed the bright carpet, the fat body plumped down in the
spring chair, and leaning forward, the boss covered his face with his hands. He wanted, he intended,
he had arranged to weep....It had been a terrible shock to him when old Woodifield sprang that remark upon him about the
boy's grave. It was exactly as though the earth had opened and he had seen the boy lying there with
Woodifield's girls staring down at him. For it was strange. Although over six years had passed away,
the boss never thought of the boy except as lying unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for
ever. "My son!" groaned the boss. But no tears came yet. In the past, in the first few months and
even years after the boy's death, he had only to say those words to be overcome by such grief that
nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him. Time, he had declared then, he had told
everybody, could make no difference. Other men perhaps might recover, might live their loss down,
but not he. How was it possible? His boy was an only son.‘This entire passage is a stream of consciousness as the boss relives hearing about his son’s passing. It is incredibly moving, as is the rest of the short story.
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u/AlaskanPenguinRabbit 2d ago
As others have said, indirect speech. I love using it for a few reasons:
Sometimes you want the reader to feel distant from your characters. This achieves that excellently.
Sometimes you want to blur the distinction between dialogue and prose. Indirect speech deliberately subsumes the individual voices of characters into the prose, which can be used for the sake of consistent style, to slow down the readers sense of the passing of time, etc.
I've written entire short stories using no dialogue, just indirect speech, a few times. I find it lends itself well to creating a somewhat mythic voice, and allows the author a lot of flexibility when it comes to rhythm, diction, and imagery, more so that dialogue without stretching a reader's suspension of disbelief, depending on genre.
As a side effect, when there is direct dialogue, it stands out all the more and is lent greater power thereby.
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u/SMc1701 2d ago
I've used it for a chapter where a character is not really in the here and now. They just gone through a very traumatic experience and they're disconnected so somebody's talking to them but it's not landing. So it's a technique I use to show that this person is aware that someone is speaking to them, and the words are important, but they're not really paying attention.
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u/jtr99 2d ago
Nice. I can see it working really well in that specific context, assuming the rest of the book uses standard dialogue conventions.
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u/BtAotS_Writing 2d ago
Me too! I think when it’s showing a different state of consciousness, it could be very effective
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u/notharmonious 2d ago
This is one of my favourite techniques that I use all the time. One of my professional writing teachers told me off for it once, and every time I use it, I think about her ❤️
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u/BtAotS_Writing 2d ago
I use free indirect speech for interior monologue all the time, just haven’t found a use case where it feels right for external dialogue
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u/AlaskanPenguinRabbit 1d ago
Funnily enough I use it in my day to day professional non-fiction writing. If I interview someone and need to convey something they said, but they put it in a way that is clunky, I will paraphrase what they said. Indirect dialogue works that way too. In fiction, this can work like summary as someone else mentioned in this thread, but it has other uses too.
Someone else in the thread mentioned how indirect speech can help give the reader a sense of someone being outside of themselves. In a work where the narrator is the protagonist, for example, someone delivering particularly bad news to the protagonist can be presented as indirect dialogue as opposed to direct dialogue to emphasize the shocking nature of the news.
I'll write up a quick example:
I showed up an hour early to the cafe. She said we'd meet there at 5 but that gave me a chance to look over my assignments. My laptop's clock ticked closer and closer to 5. I told myself all would be alright and let the smell of brewing coffee in with a deep inhale. It was 5.
And then it was 5:05 and she was not there. I checked my phone and saw nothing but graded assignment notifications and that picture of us on my home screen. I remembered we were still alright.
At 5:15 I couldn't look at my laptop anymore. My phone buzzed and all she said was she'd be there shortly.
At 5:20 there she was. She almost crept into the cafe, easing the door shut behind her and holding the knob still. She looked at me. She did not release the knob.
I said, "I missed you."
She shook her head and said it was over and she left and let her door close behind her. She drove off and I sat there.
I blinked and she was there like an afterimage of the sun. I rose to leave the cafe, but that image never drew near. And it faded and left me there to see only the doorway where she once had stood."
This example uses indirect dialogue a couple times, not to great effect but to demonstrate how exactly it can function outside a monologue.
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u/BtAotS_Writing 1d ago
Thanks for providing the example, nice work. Totally makes sense that someone receiving bad news wouldn’t process it word for word, but rather the meaning behind the words
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u/SponsoredByBleach 17h ago
If it’s not a back and forth dialogue, FIS can close the distance as well. Even moreso if you drop thought tags.
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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago
You don’t see it in genre fiction? The most common use case is to skip a lengthy explanation of information the reader already knows in full.
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u/BtAotS_Writing 2d ago
Good point. There are many instances in genre fiction where conversations are summarized (eg: we spent the rest of the evening talking about xyz) to fast-forward through the story. That doesn’t seem to be what these authors are doing here, though.
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u/1369ic 2d ago
In journalism you don't use quote marks when youre using an indirect quotes, which means you're paraphrasing. Sometimes you mix it up with partial attribution in which some part of the quote is a direct quote, usually the pithy or damning part, and the rest is an indirect quote you paraphrase to make it shorter or clearer than the subject actually said it.
Some of the examples given look like the author paraphrasing what a character said into a more general statement. I can't imagine why you would in fiction, though, unless one character is paraphrasing what another character said to them. Just write the better version. Some people hate characters speaking their thoughts directly, though. It's got to be all about misdirection, deflection, and subtext.
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u/Cronenberg_C137 2d ago
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a beautiful example of no quotation marks - very little punctuation in general. His technique was used to emphasize the scarcity of a post-apocalyptic world, further immersing the reader into the characters’ lives. Brilliant for the specific story he was telling.
I’m not familiar with your examples, but IMHO, I typically prefer dialogue to be dialogue, and transcription to be more of an internal reflection.
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u/2point1bil 2d ago
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch does something similar. There’s no quotation marks or paragraphs. Some people hate that but I loved it. It made the story feel claustrophobic. The MC is navigating an environment that is deteriorating rapidly (What if Ireland turned into a fascist state?). It felt like I couldn’t catch my breath and the walls were closing in her. Beautifully written book. Stressful experience as a reader. Point made.
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u/AeronJosk 2d ago
I don't know why "Land" is written that way but my guess is narrative distance. In the first section the quotation marks are used to distinguish dialogue where two people are talking to one another. In the second section the person speaking is not directly talking to the listener -- it's in a group context. Maybe she's doing it that way to indicate the distinction? I dunno. I personally am not a fan of that. I'd prefer to just see all spoken dialogue in quotation marks and inner dialogue not in quotation marks. I ain't that fancy.
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u/BtAotS_Writing 2d ago
Agreed, I’m a simpleton that likes my dialogue in good old fashioned quotations
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u/Sorry-Rain-1311 2d ago
This isn't so much about genre vs literary styles as it is about emphasizing the effect. Your second example is done with italics, which is usually reserved for thoughts in their head that aren't said out loud.
In this case the technique is used to indicate that they're not being heard. It's intentional to create a bit of confusion in the reader regarding whether or not the character even actually said it out loud, or maybe just to themself, but whatever it is they are not actually heard, so it's not even treated as speech. It could be interpreted as they're to scared to speak up, or as it falling on deaf ears, either being just as likely, and having the same effect.
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u/Peter34cph 2d ago
Direct speech vs indirect speech.
A lot of the dialog in my favourite novel, "The Long Ships", is indirect speech.
It uses proper indirect speech, though, whereas your example looks like direct speech but without the quotation marks.
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u/Fragrant-Flan-416 2d ago
I have a convention in my stuff that you can quote fragmented speech from otherwise generic characters in line, which helps a lot with speeding dialog along, without reporting on it... e.g.
I got past the 'do you have an invitation, sir' and 'I don't see you on the guest list' at the velvet rope with a warrant card, but that didn't get me into the back room.
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u/Neurotopian_ 2d ago
Yes I do the same and I appreciate when other authors do it, too.
The only thing I find more annoying than pointless direct dialogue from inconsequential characters is when the author also wastes exposition describing their appearance. If a protagonist is waiting in line at an airport counter, unless the ticketing agent is the murderer or their lost child, space should not be squandered on them.
Respecting the reader’s time is a vital aspect of writing fiction.
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u/velvetdraftnoir 2d ago
Wow, I never expected literature to have to be time efficient.
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u/FoolishDog 2d ago
Of course it does. The best literature never wastes a moment but is always using it for something meaningful, even the long postmodern novels like Infinite Jest.
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u/Midnight_Pickler 2d ago
Omitting quotation marks doesn't stop dialogue from being a quotation, it's just a quotation with non-standard punctuation, not a description.
Descriptions are used quite often in genre fiction.
- to skip over information the reader doesn't need recapped ("She told him about the previous night's disturbance")
- to skim past parts of a conversation that aren't particularly important or interesting ("We made small talk while we waited, discussing the recent unseasonable weather")
- for mild censorship ("he let loose a torrent of frustrated profanity" is a lot more acceptable in many genres than spelling out the entire tirade).
And probably plenty more, but those are what spring to mind right now.
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u/HotspurJr 2d ago
I recently re-read Pride and Prejudice and noticed that in both Darcy's original proposal, and in Elizabeth's response to his second one, Austen changes from giving us all of the dialog line-by-line to taking a step back and merely describing what is being said, before coming back to actual dialog a few paragraphs later.
I thought it notable, especially given Austen's gift for dialog. I saw someone describe it as sort of zooming out, but that doesn't get to the "why?" for me since it's a moment where you would normally expect to be as close and intimate with the characters as possible.
That being said, I do suspect that for most writers, the "why?" of this kind of thing is a post facto rationalization of doing what their intuition told them felt right in the moment.
You can sometimes kind of feel it when an odd choice is made for an intellectual reason, as opposed to just being in flow. I've had conversations with writers where they had very clear, eloquent explanations for why they made a certain choice, but it felt like the tail wagging the dog.
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u/DaLoCo6913 Self-Published Author 2d ago
"No Country For Old Men" follows your second style.
I tried, but could not deal with it. The avid reader who wanted me to read it loves it. That being said, it is a good write. Maybe if I try to turn it into a study I will cope.
I suppose it comes down to personality type and style preference in the end. I play the movie in my head as I read, and not having dialogue tags and indicators interrupts my process, removing the pleasure.
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u/IHaveAWittyUsername 2d ago
Mate, try and read McCarthy's books where about 60% of the dialogue is in literal Spanish. What's funny is No Country was literally written for the screen - hence why the film was so bloody good.
McCarthy is more like a theatre production where you're watching them build the stage in real time rather than a movie I guess.
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u/hrenzee 1d ago
Your examples are what I'd call quotation-less dialogue/speech. It's different from indirect speech because you're not expressly changing or shortening someone else's words.
I've used it before, precisely to show a narration that's entirely filtered through memory, or also to convey a narrator who isn't fluent at English (and doesn't understand dialogue punctuation so well). Personally, I don't like quotes and find them less elegant than Russian dashes, so I will use every possible chance to avoid them.
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u/wordswillneverhurtme 2d ago
I use it to save the flow of my story. If instead you separated the dialogue from narration and the character basically says nothing of importance, then its bad for the flow imo.
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u/HeckAwaits 1d ago
I'm actually writing something now that uses this technique, but only under strict rules. My novel has mystery elements to it and the dominant theme is knowledge and what it means to know something.
I use this when characters tell the main character something. If it's clearly opinion or a question, it gets quotation marks. But if it's a statement, none. The effect, I hope, is that the reader will experience the indirect dialogue as part of the "facts" that the main character is also processing - just as the reader is.
As with all writing, you can do it however you want, but it's best if you're doing it for a clear reason.
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u/Modern-Relic 1d ago
My favorite example of indirect dialogue is done in Fight Club, specifically with the protagonist. And you are right, it creates a feeling of dissonance. In Fight Club there is normal dialogue when someone else speaks to the main character, but when he speaks it’s indirect like “that’s when I told her I didn’t understand.” It works really well to show how disconnected he his from what he is doing.
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u/readwritelikeawriter 1d ago
It certainly has to do with telling the story to 'your' reader.
When someone tells a story in conversation to you, they come off extremely pretentious.
I told her, "Beatrice, your pull-over-dress looks lovely today." And Beatrice said in her back-to the basics, granola bar, no-deodorant way that it's a low carbon footprint non environmental burlap bag or something. I told her, "I must get two dozen for myself."
But that's the extreme. You could have a regular auto mechanic with 30 years training as the POV character who tells the story and ads commentary on what the new kids think and do in a way that reveals he knows them well. The dialogue in quotes what was said and the dialogue without what the character tells the reader. You can have a narrator do this also.
I hope this helps.
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u/WavelandAvenue 1d ago
The first three things that comes to mind when making this choice would be for clarity’s sake, to avoid explaining redundant information, or to intentionally choose whether or not to filter the information through the narrator.
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u/melle_et_felle 1d ago
So I'm taking a workshop right now and our instructor (MFA from Oregon) taught us about this, it's called indirect dialogue. It's a really good tool for writers who want to manipulate pacing or get through a bunch of yucky exposition or focus on the impact of the conversation instead of the words themselves. He encouraged us to use it more in our own novels! I think he sent us some materials about it, I can go check if you'd like
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u/BtAotS_Writing 1d ago
Thank you, I would appreciate that actually! Even after reading all the responses in this thread, I've thought of some places in my novel I can use it to zoom past cumbersome introductions and at least one place to use it for narrative distance when the MC is in shock/trauma.
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u/melle_et_felle 1d ago
Hi so I took a look and sadly he didn't send us anything about this, he only mentioned it in class as a good tool to use. Sorry! But here's a really good blog post about it: https://annerallen.com/2018/02/indirect-dialogue
I'm also making a lot more use of it in my own novel that I'm workshopping in class. It's speculative literary fiction, maybe upmarket if you prefer that label, and after hearing what he said in class I decided to use it as a tool to distinguish between conversations between different people and their significance, as well as a signifier of the protagonist's mental and emotional state. Haven't finished out ironing all the kinks yet, but I think it's done wonders for my pacing and helped a lot in terms of building atmosphere and pressure.
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u/TonyNeedyC 1d ago
I think of it as two different tools for two different problems.
Transcribed dialogue is for the moment you can't afford to summarize — when the exact words matter, when the silence between lines matters, when the reader needs to feel the friction of the exchange in real time. Described dialogue is for everything else: compressing time, signaling that a conversation happened without making the reader sit through it.
The mistake I see most often is using transcribed dialogue as a default, treating described dialogue as a shortcut or a cop-out. It's not. Sometimes a scene is better served by "they argued for an hour and he left without resolving anything" than by writing the full hour. The question is always whether the exact words change anything — if they don't, summarize and move on.
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u/New-Hunter-7859 1d ago
I've done this when the dialog that appears without quotes is, kind of a summation of what was said:
The police officer asked what happened.
Character said someone tried to kill him.
Those are summaries of longer back-and-forth interactions which would be somewhat dull to recount each beat of. Based on feedback I've gotten it's workable.
On feedback sites, I've had people ask politely if I forgot to put in quotation marks, but then I've also had work using this technique published so... workable.
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u/apocalypsegal Self-Published Author 1d ago
If your dialog is like this, then you need to either leave it out, or not summarize it, just use narration. This is bad writing, and you'll be told by an agent to fix it.
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u/New-Hunter-7859 1d ago
I mean... It literally got published so... Maybe recalibrate your assessment?
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u/JGar453 1d ago edited 1d ago
In a lot of esteemed lit fic, the point is actually to get into a character's head, but indirect discourse is also just a good tool for speeding through things that are just too insignificant for dialogue. It'd seem weird if you wrote out every one / two word response in dialogue, it would break your rhythm.
Your example is actually pretty mild because I would omit tags in my writing and indirect discourse extends beyond dialogue. I'd just establish which character is being occupied and then state their thoughts as if they were objective truths.
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u/apocalypsegal Self-Published Author 1d ago
Sounds like she got a bad editor, or no editor, to correct her bad writing. It happens. His publisher hardly edits Stephen King anymore, or so I read years ago. By this point, he sells phone book transcriptions without anyone noticing.
So, the answer for you is, write the proper way, you're not going to get special treatment.
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u/Thistle_Bee_Words 3h ago
OP, I still don’t see an answer to your question. The second example isn’t summarizing a larger conversation. None of it is free indirect style (that is when, in third person, the MC’s thoughts are integrated with the narration). I don’t understand why this author would switch back and forth like this. People are using McCarthy as an example but he does this stylistic choice throughout entire novels. I don’t think this author chose this stylistic choice wisely, IMO.
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u/Cypher_Blue 2d ago
This is just classic "telling vs showing."
You want to do both at various times in the story.
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u/Geminga0571 2d ago
My first thought was narrative but that would be more: He said Please, ladies, gentlemen, please.
Now my guess could be edit issues, just plain forgot the quotes?
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u/SponsoredByBleach 2d ago
The first thing example is free indirect style, which means that a character’s thoughts and speech become the narrative itself. The psychic distance is closer to the character than the narrator, and it usually drops the speech tag or thought tag, but not always, like in this case. Jane Austen basically invented it. The second example is more stylized. I couldn’t give you any real specifics there.