Talking About Action

Greetings,

The heroes are now in the Yucatan, Mexico. Digging through ancient Mayan sites to find clues about a hidden city, they encounter black-clad villains, underwater beasts and the scariest of all: camera-toting tourists. And despite  that it takes them a day or more to do so, the action translates from my Muse-poked brain onto the digital version of the book within the space of a paragraph or two.

 On the other side there is dialogue. Dialogue is great. Dialogue is fun. Dialogue is... wow, lengthy. Characters interacting and developing at real time as the reader reads about it is one of the things that, to my feeling, makes or breaks a book. You can have all the great concepts and plot twists you want, the most imaginative scenery laid out before you and the craziest action making you flip pages like you're thumbing through the Yellow Pages, but if the characters never seem to do anything but move the reader from location to location then the book is really a waste of a good tree.

Dialogue can also be so much fun, literally playing cat and mouse with presumptions and false conclusions, which then need to be dissected, all the while drawing the reader along from the unknown into the secret knowledge needed for the heroes to reach their goal. I think it's the most intimate way for a reader to experience a story. That's why so many protagonists start out knowing nothing of the challenges awaiting them and slowly but surely learn the ropes of the trade, so the audience can feel the accomplishment too.

Lengthy. I find dialogue certainly adds towards a fair share of the book's volume already. I can spend (and will) just a whole chapter of the hero and a friend talking to each other in the back of a truck as they speed towards their destination, trying to figure out what to do next. I need it too, because as it stands I've plotted already way too much information that the audience needs to absorb within the course of the story in order to make sense of the world they are venturing in. No doubt a lot will get cut in the editing, but for now having the characters discuss rather than do is the only way to keep the reader feel she is still part of this roller coaster ride.