L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami July 8, 2014 - 11:57am

Be written completely in dialogue? With maybe the exception of breaking apart the dialogue by action, I remember when I use to interview characters through the means of something like a therapist, or friend in a classroom, or a parent.

The whole exchange would be written as pure dialogue to: indirectly convey backstory, and set up the mystery that would unfold later.

  • For example: A couple of kids are exchanging information about what each other doesn't like about the house next door -- about whether it may be haunted, when the one of their friends is murdered in the house. With no particular suspects known, and cops unwilling to investigate, they set forth to investigate the matter themself.

I'm not really sure if I can replicate the methodology now, as it's been so many years since I've written using that method.

But i'm considering flash fiction with this method, using purely dialogue.

I know this creates an arc of sorts: the character has events thrown at them, that repeatedly aggrivate their personal history in order to force them to come to terms with their past.

So those days I wasn't really thinking about genre really.

Jack Campbell Jr.'s picture
Jack Campbell Jr. from Lawrence, KS is reading American Rust by Phillipp Meyer July 8, 2014 - 12:14pm

Yes. Check out The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy. It's written in the style of a play, but really there are very few stage directions. Everything is done through dialogue.

Seb's picture
Seb from Thanet, Kent, UK July 8, 2014 - 1:39pm

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk is another example.

I attempted this for Arrest Us - http://litreactor.com/events/arrest-us/donation

Aud Fontaine's picture
Aud Fontaine from the mountains is reading Catch-22. Since like, always. July 8, 2014 - 3:34pm

Wouldn't Heart of Darknes also be in this category? There aren't many exchanges but essentially it's just Marlowe telling a story to a crew on some other boat.

XyZy's picture
XyZy from New York City is reading Seveneves and Animal Money July 9, 2014 - 8:02am

Terry Bisson's "They're Made of Meat" is completely dialogue. No action or even setting description, just two nameless voices conversing (I think only two, but there could be more.)

I imagine it's one of those things that makes for a good exercise, but is rarely done outside of that. I know Clevenger used to do one week in his classes on dialogue and the assignment was to write a short piece in only dialogue... but on the whole it is really hard for readers to differentiate two nameless, faceless voices. So it's usually less "pure" than that: some set-up, some moments of physical action to break it up (lest we forget that physical action is a large part of communication,) some description of a physical space with bodies/characters in it. Something to ground the reader. Outside of Bisson's piece and writing exercises/challenges, I don't know of any "pure" dialogue stories.

It's really hard to do, so I encourage you give it a shot, but the simple answer is "yes, a story can be written using only dialogue."

There are a lot more monologue pieces with just a single character talking with no physical action/description (I'm thinking Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, or Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues (My Last Duchess)) but in a similar vein to what your looking into, you may find some inspiration in epistolary works. (Or in the examples already cited in this thread.) There have been quite a few dialogic epistolary works, though most of the "pure" epistles were probably more of an 18th or 19th century phenomenom. Modern epistolary usually blends a lot more voices and mixes in with active narration more. 

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami July 9, 2014 - 8:49am

You mentioned Epistolary, I think the only one I've read so far is Dracula. I'll have to look into these epistolary novels your speaking of.

Actually I want to find a twitter epistolary. I know I've written some, but it seems like something that would be hard to get a novel treatment out of.

While it's not literary fiction (depending on how you define it), Neuromancer started out this way. I was far to absorbed to really notice till mid book when that changed.

Redd Tramp's picture
Redd Tramp from Los Angeles, CA is reading Mongrels by SGJ; Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk; The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault July 9, 2014 - 6:37pm

Oh mannnn what an idea! A great idea, that sounds beyond difficult to pull off. It never occurred to me that Rant by Palahniuk falls into this category, as it was pulled off so cleanly with a sort-of documentary feel.

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami July 9, 2014 - 6:57pm

I may have to check it out then. I've read a little bit of Haunted.

Redd Tramp's picture
Redd Tramp from Los Angeles, CA is reading Mongrels by SGJ; Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk; The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault July 9, 2014 - 8:26pm

Rant is...mindblowing. Haunted was the first Palahniuk book I read, and, for me, it was a masterpiece. I never thought a book could be like that. And while it's no longer my favorite Chuck book, I still claim it to be spectacular. 2nd up was Rant, and it sealed Chuck Palahniuk as, probably, my favorite author ever. Truly original and exquisitely, deceptively, pulled off.

simulacrum's picture
simulacrum from Las Vegas is reading shit July 10, 2014 - 12:37am

The Fall by Camus does not exactly qualify since the entire story is a monologue but maybe it could give you an idea or two.

Poor Folk is an epistolary story by Dostoevsky in which the entire story takes place through the correspondence of two poverty-stricken lovers.

justwords's picture
justwords from suburb of Birmingham, AL is reading The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson; A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby July 10, 2014 - 1:10am

"Dolores Claiborne" - Stephen King

"The Tell-Tale Heart" - Edgar Allan Poe

"The Cask of Amontillado" - Edgar Allan Poe

Go for it, girl! 

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami July 10, 2014 - 12:47pm

Given the nature of what I'll be writing in the next months, I might try reading a mixture. Like Tell-Tale Heart, and Rant. Then some short stories by Hans Christian Anderson, Grimm, Kilping, and A.A. Milne.

I'm still not sure how I feel about Oida yet. Some characters were Mary Sues, though that could simply have been a style of the time period.

justwords's picture
justwords from suburb of Birmingham, AL is reading The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson; A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby July 10, 2014 - 6:40pm

Are you talking about the original stories by brothers Grimm? Those are pretty blood-thirsty, scary tales, if you've not read the originals. The wicked stepmother had to put on iron shoes that heated to white-hot and dance in them til she died. Now That's revenge!

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami July 10, 2014 - 7:58pm

Yep, those are the ones I'm wanting to read. Lol

That and the version I have is starting to deteriorate.:/

I used to write horror, so I've been interested in Grim for a long time. Even as my own style has become less ... supernatural? And more societal.

justwords's picture
justwords from suburb of Birmingham, AL is reading The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson; A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby July 12, 2014 - 12:11am

I have a collection of the original folk stories and cautionary tales the Grimm (how appropriate!) brothers collected from the Garman/Polish/Slavic village sources they had access to; it's quite eye-opening. Needless to say, Uncle Walt D. would not approve.

We English majors are a strange lot, yes?

Gordon Highland's picture
Gordon Highland from Kansas City is reading Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore July 12, 2014 - 4:12am

I wrote a monologue story once that was just a long voicemail a gangster left his boss about why he was quitting; had an arc to it and everything. And I did that dialogue-only exercise in a Clevenger workshop, which I mainly used to hone my chops in creating distinct voices and exhibit the balance of power shifting between the characters. It's a challenge to get the necessary exposition in there without sounding clunky (one reason that most theatre doesn't do much for me), but once I revised it with just a little action, it came out decent. It was very "Orange is the New Black" (though many years earlier) about a lady-prisoner's first day and the dick-waving between cellmates.

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami July 12, 2014 - 2:17pm

It really hard to do, which is why I've sort of been finding other method to convey back story. It wasn't to long ago, that I would dump back story in the beginning.

Then at some point I realized that wasn't practical. (That had to have been why my detective short was about 5,000 words long, when I only get to 3,000 these days on my best days.)

Can you even find an original Grim these days? I keep wondering about those books on the Koscoe bookshelves, whether those are the originals or perhaps the edited versions. The edited versions always seem to have the lamest reasons, at least with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Or honestly, even Bridge To Terribithia. (What kid doesn't curse these days? Let's be honest.)

justwords's picture
justwords from suburb of Birmingham, AL is reading The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson; A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby July 12, 2014 - 8:24pm

@Sarah: Try Alibris.com-- a lot of times they'll have copies of out-of-print and hard-to-get books. I got my copy at a very old, very strange bookstore here in B'ham called Reed's Books. Call Powell Books in Portland, Oregon. Try your local librarian; when I was editing, the downtown library and Southern History branch were excellent references. 

My copy is "The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm"-- translated from the original (210 stories) plus 32 tales that have never before appeared in English". Jack Zipes did intro and translation. 1987 edition, from Bantam Books, from original edition "Kinder- Und Hausmarchen" published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815; first 211 tales are based on the seventh and final edition published in 1957. Illustrations by John B. Gruelle, in "Grimm: Fairly Tales," translated by Margaret Hunt in 1914. I hate to tell you how cheap it was; but I got it in 1987.

Good luck!

ps: the kids in "South Park" are supposed to be 8, and they have extensive X-rated vocabularies. I never heard my kid say those words when he was 8, but then, he knew I'd kill him!  :)

justwords's picture
justwords from suburb of Birmingham, AL is reading The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson; A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby July 13, 2014 - 7:09pm

^ hmmmm. Troll?

Delete Me's picture
Delete Me August 31, 2014 - 2:06pm

Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway is the closest I have seen someone successfully pull off dialog only story telling. His even has a paragraph at the top setting the scene.

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami August 31, 2014 - 3:24pm

Downloading initiated, prepare for consumption.