: Re: How to write a character who uses a lot of smalltalk without boring the reader? Since a lot of what they say is by definition irrelevant to the plot should I just skim over it? I'm worried

Remember the law of conservation of detail: When a detail isn't important, don't waste time describing it.
When literal speech does not contain any information which is relevant for the plot, get rid of it. You can instead describe the conversation in an abstract summary to convey that the conversation did happen, but the content wasn't relevant. Switch back to literal speech when the conversation turns to something plot-important:

While waiting in the lobby Bob and Alice killed time by chatting about the weather. Then Bob tried to start a discussion about recent sports events, but Alice didn't seem to be interested. After about half an hour of idle smalltalk, Bob finally got the courage to ask the question he wanted to ask for weeks:
"Alice, would you like to go out with me?"

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: Re: How to write a character who uses a lot of smalltalk without boring the reader? Since a lot of what they say is by definition irrelevant to the plot should I just skim over it? I'm worried

More posts by @Tiffany377

: How do I start using my heart over my head? A little bit of background: I am trained as a electrical engineer and the more analytical stuff comes very easily to me. I've become way too analytical

: A question about dialogue and paragraphs? First question I've asked on here so hopefully it isn't a silly one. I am a little confused about a certain paragraph/dialogue convention I am using

: Description and speech in one paragraph? Can you please advise if there is a preferred way of separating speech and description into paragraphs in English writing? Specifically, I mean a description

: How should I write a post containing analysis and python code? I have written a python script that takes in data analyses them and gives some results. I want to write a blog post analyzing

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