June 18, 2009
I am the first to confess that I love writing description. Drive me by a hillside of grazing sheep and maybe a stray butterfly floating on the wind (see, there I go again) and I will describe the heck out of it…for pages…and pages…and then maybe just one more…
This is what I’ve been told lately and so have been diligently working to correct this **ahem** flaw so to speak. It is painful for me to let go of any word (I love them so…) let alone whole paragraphs. And it has been a struggle to turn some of my narration into dialogue, but I do see the difference when I re-read. I do see my work becoming more “active” so to speak.
I still believe there is a place for narrative prose in literary works and sometimes wonder if perhaps some of my beta readers are comparing my manuscript to chick lit work or science fiction pieces. I know as a reader of literary fiction, I am forgiving (and actually enjoy) the paragraphs of description and detail but wonder sometimes if I’m the exception.
So tell me, where do you sit on the dialogue vs. narrative debate? What do you lean toward in your own writing?