Too Much Talking!

My characters talk too much. I need more action, but I tend to see the scenes in terms of conversations. Any suggestions?

I think you should envision where your characters are. Set the scene. Dialogue is good but you need action too to move it along. Make something unexpected happen that jolts them out of their conversation and forces them to react. Whenever I write a scene when my characters feel like they're becoming talking heads, I throw in something weird.

So maybe you can interrupt a conversation with something goofy like a bird falling out of a tree and landing in a character's plate. Or...give them a destination and very little time to get there. That could work.

I'm having the same issue, but I'm not worried about it as this is just the first draft. My MC is doing a LOT of talking (well, monologue) but if it means I meets the word count, it's staying! I think, at this point of the story, we're still establishing the characters and that means they need to talk about how they think and feel, rather than a single paragraph describing their eye colour, hair colour and favourite brand of perfume.

I never give huge amounts of detail of the setting in whatever I write. I prefer the characters to do the talking and the reader to imagine the setting. If there's something important to the plot, I'll describe it - otherwise I just let it go by.

Thanks everyone! Great ideas. I'm just focusing on getting the scenes down now, however the ideas come out and then going back to work in some action later on. I think that just must be how my mind plans or brainstorms, in dialogue. The rest can come later.

That's exactly what's been worrying me! I have been writing great streams of diaglogue and when I read it back I just kept thinking that surely I need more showing rather than telling all the time? I have done what Sort of Bookish suggested by including action in the dialogue and the conversations are all designed to move the plot on and reveal stuff about the characters without the dreaded info dump. Like Stacey M says, though, it is only the first draft (of many I reckon) so I will worry about it once I've finished the entire story. Which I am determined to do!

Same problem here too - I am just going with it at the moment, I will return and edit later on! x

I've been reading a book called "The Scene Book" and the thing you can always keep in mind is that ever scene has a purpose. If the purpose of a scene is to inform the reader of something quickly then dialogue can help but if you want to reveal something about the characters or set them up for the conflicts that will move the story forward, then you will need to show rather than tell.

But this is something you can worry about when you begin editing in December or January. For now, just get your story out. :)

i have this issue too. My book is basically set in 'land of the dialogue' at the moment. Not much I can do about it at the moment. Half the book is set in the city and the other half in the country, so hopefully once we leave the city we can all just shush for a bit and look at the pretty trees.

They can stop and look at the trees, smell the roses, all that jazz. ;)

I don't think dialogue is necessarily bad. I'm writing everything as 'dialog' and 'monologue' in a way: emails, chat transcripts, phone calls, internal monologue, diary entries, those weird imaginary conversations you have with someone else in the safety of your own mind. Description of events take place in either the internal monologue or in the dialogues, when characters tell each other what they did and who they met etc. I'm not quite sure it'll work but right now i don't care about that.
I also agree: work with what you've got. If your brain is supplying dialogue then use that. You can fill in the descriptive stuff later.

I find myself rolling with the dialogue, too, at the expense of everything else. I'll have one entire edit where I go in and add more description and more sensory details that add to the feeling of the scene. Remember that description can be more than just visual - smells, sounds, smells, temperature, etc. can all add to the given mood of a scene.

Having your characters feel and react and think and have action as they converse is a great way to have the scene be more than just talking heads. Be careful on adding randomness just for the sake of action. Even things that happen to the protagonists must have a reason that has to do with the plot. If they react to outside stimuli all the time, it sometimes will make them not as engaged as them going out and actually doing things, you know?

Eh. My writing style is about 70% dialogue, 30% other. It is what it is. Get your words out and revise later, but just know that maybe this is a strength of your work, not a failing.

I am having trouble with inserting things which aren't dialogue but still move the story forward. It seems wrong to insert descriptions and actions which have nothing to do with moving the story forward, but since the story is about internal growth...yagggg!!!!
I have sent "Ann" skating, helping to stop a suicide, looking for a lost child, but she still spends most of her time making toast, eating lunch, driving in a car, brushing her hair and going to parities so she can have these important conversations with everyone. Someone once told me there cannot be too much dialogue? True? or Excuse.

Absolutely true. Also, dialogue = white space and easier to read than big chunks of description. Plus, people talk to each other while they're doing other activities!

I've found myself in this spot often because a lot of the conversation she has is over the phone. I try to interject what she is doing while on the phone- twirling her hair, pouring a drink, biting at her nails. As far as talking with someone in person, I make sure that I establish the environment and play off of that. Where are they? What do they see, smell, hear? What else is going on around them? What, as they are speaking, could they be doing at the same time to either give away their emotion or just help the reader to visualize what is happening?

This is happening to me a lot too but because this is a first draft I'm just going with it where it works and I'll worry about it later. Someone suggested to make sure something is happening during all this talk and that's a good idea. My major professor used to say "nothing happens nowhere" - set the scene, throw in details about what's happening to or around your characters as they talk. But above all, right now? Keep writing :)