Writer Senses

"Poppy Field" by Claude Monet. Image courtesy of Pixabay.com. To dialogue or not to dialogue? What does dialogue do for fiction? Is it necessary? Generally recommended? Vital? Or is it completely optional and its absence has no bearing on the quality or palatability of the writing? ******** Dear Writer, Nonfiction writers regularly do not include dialogue in their work. In many cases, we would find it strange to do so. The core question, as with any craft-related issue, is what is necessary for a given work to succeed. This is largely dependent upon the goals, skill, and style of the author. In fiction, it behooves most writers to include dialogue since stories are told from the perspectives of sentient characters or through anthropomorphized, otherwise inanimate, characters. (For a great example of this, see the old Animaniacs episode, " A Gift of Gold .”) Failure to do so for avant-garde reasons will likely isolate a large portion of your potential au...