Way Station and What Does a Question Weigh‪?‬

Author’s note on the Dialogue

“Right, so my writing has a lot of it. They say actions speak louder than words, and while that’s true in life, I think the opposite is true in books. After all, how many times have you seen a film adaptation of a favorite novel and were disappointed that the movie focused too much on some bit of action that only had a brief mention in the book but omitted a lot of the characters’ dialogue in favor of those more cinematic moments and thus missed the point?

​I think dialogue-heavy novels are gaining traction with readers today. Well-written dialogue offers more immediacy than description that too often seems prosaic and irrelevant. A recent example of this is George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo. As an American history buff, I’ve read numerous books on Abraham Lincoln, but none of them were as engaging as this one, and a large part of the reason (though certainly not the only part) was that the book is almost entirely comprised of dialogue.

​However, some readers have told me that they find too much dialogue fatiguing. I would suggest slowing down a bit and savoring the dialogue. Allow the characters to speak with their own voices in your mind. Imagine the conversation unfolding in a natural way. Most of my books are around the 200-page mark, so they aren’t exactly tomes, and there’s no deadline. You won’t finish the book as quickly, but I think you’ll enjoy it more...at least, I hope you will.”