: Re: How to avoid turning dialogue into Q&A session? I noticed a problem I have in my fictional writing. My dialogues quickly turn into interrogations. Here is an exaggerated example. "How did
OK, I'm going to rephrase your question a little. Your problem is this: You have information to impart, which is (a) interesting and (b) important. However, the act of imparting that information is neither interesting nor important.
I hope that sounds about right to you. And I think you'll find this way of phrasing the problem also hints and some potential solutions.
Make the scene important
If you don't have a good reason why the scene of two people talking is important -- consider making one up. Examples off-hand:
Your protagonist is trying impress the other character, and win their favor.
Your protagonist hates the other character, and is just looking for a fight.
The other character's story is a perfect echo of something that happened to your protagonist, so the protagonist has a bunch of internal reactions to almost every detail.
Make the scene interesting
A dull infodump can be livened up if the interaction between the characters is interesting, off-kilter, or fun. If the other character is memorable, it'll feel like a scene, not an interrogation.
Think of the Oracle in The Matrix. She just tells Neo plot information -- but she has fantastic style and personality; so the scene is fun and memorable.
Spotlight the information, not the conversation
If the problem is that imparting the information is kind of dull, then... maybe we don't actually need that part? Like, at all?
Maybe you can skip the conversation -- and just show the reader what you had intended to tell.
You can change point-of-views, just for the story being told, and let the second character narrate that bit -- instead of a Q&A, you get a vivid, straightforward account.
You may even conclude that your book needs more POV characters. Or that you need to position your protagonist where they can see the important part, experience it for themselves, instead of just hearing about it from somebody else.
So: A lot of dialogue can be improved, not by dialogue techniques at all -- but simply by building your piece to avoid having long Q&A sessions being necessary :)
Hope this helps; all the best!
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