Conversations

[Patricia Abbott]

What is your preference/thoughts on when a long conversation takes place in a novel. A conversation where necessary information is given. Like a police interview or the protagonist explaining the action to her boyfriend. Do you prefer almost no interruptions? By this I mean things like:

She got up and cleared the table as she listened.
He cleared his throat and continued.
The phone rang but she didn't bother to answer it.
They both listened to the sink dripping in the other room.

Obviously in a long conversation, there needs to be some of this. But do you think it should be kept to a minimum or do you find long conversations tedious and need breaks.

Thanks for the help.

[Pepper Smith]

I think for it to sound natural, things have to be going on. Conversations don't take place in a vacuum, so if there's a need for some task to be performed during the conversation, then it would be natural for it to be done. Also, acts performed during conversations can tell you something about the characters performing them, like their state of mind and their engagement in the conversation.

[Patricia Abbott]

This would be my preference at least to some degree, but I was quite surprised looking through a bunch of books how often several pages go by with nothing other than tags.

[Eric Christopherson]

What am I trying to accomplish in the scene? That's the first question I ask myself. The fewer the interruptions--the beats, the description--the faster the pacing and vice versa.

What you're describing--pages of nothing but talk--is sometimes called "spitfire dialog" and isn't considered a good thing (except where the pacing is supposed to be very fast).

[Pepper Smith]

Just giving it some thought, it probably depends on the story and the depth that the author allows you to get into their characters. If action is the primary goal of the story, then probably the little subtle details are going to get passed over.

It's also possible to take it entirely too far in the other direction, though. For instance, I recently read something where the protagonist was making something for her catering business while chatting on the phone, and in addition to the dialog, you get a step-by-step description of how she prepared the item, which had nothing whatsoever to do with either the dialog or with character development. (She goes to such detail describing the preparation, and then several paragraphs later says she pulled it from the oven, with no indication that it had ever been put in the oven to begin with, one of those 'huh?' moments that pull you out of the story.)