: Re: How to avoid pages of dialogue? I'm starting my story with my protagonist found (by the police), bleeding at a crime scene. When he wakes up, he has no recollection i.e. he's lost his memory.

@Sims2267584

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Depending on your narrator you could for example have the protagonist react to the questions with inner monologue instead of external dialogue. If the inspectors ask him "What's your name?" he could start to think "That's a good question. I have no idea. But will they believe me? I probably wouldn't believe myself. Was it something with a 'J'? Or a 'G'?". You could also have the inspectors ask him again if he hasn't responded for some time.

This allows you to switch between the external dialogue and inner monologue to make the scene more varied. The inner monologue could also be used to simply analyze his surroundings or to think about the last few hours he can remember.

If you are writing from the perspective of one of the inspector's you could do a similar thing by having him analyze your protagonists facial expressions, posture, gestures, clothes... to find clues that would help him find out what is going on and whether the protagonist is telling the truth.

If you narrator is omniscient you could explain some things from all of the peoples perspectives and add a few remarks or hints about things they may not know yet - or not anymore.

In any case you should think about what the people are doing. A dialogue,e specially an interrogation, is not a sterile environment where nothing happens and a few puppets are talking to each other. There are people, emotions, reactions - things that can be seen and that can be analyzed. To avoid long walls of one-sided dialogue try to embrace the silence.

Embracing the silence is extremely difficult for many people - which is why it's important in dialogue to know when to give the other one room. Your inspectors will not constantly bombard your protagonist - they will ask him a question and then wait. And if nothing happens they will ask again. Perhaps not so nice anymore. And they will circle back to a topic after making a bit of smalltalk. They know when to wait for the reply and they have the required patience - they have aaaaaaaaaaaaall day for this. And this silence can be filled with descriptions of the people, the room, their thoughts, their memories, ...

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