Keeping Your Readers Interested: Action, Dialogue and Narrative

When writing a story, authors have to strike a balance between action, dialogue and narration in order to be effective. They need to keep the reader guessing, pace their novel properly and mix things up a bit.  

There are no actual rules about how to blend action, dialogue and narration. You have to experiment a little, weave them together and find your story’s unique rhythm. However, there are a few questions you can ask yourself about your story to help with this — especially during the redrafting stage — that can help you to strike the right balance.

• Do you need to give the reader some background information on the characters at a certain point in the plot so they can connect with them more? If so, it may be best to use narration, dialogue or a combination of the two in order to do this. 

• Are your characters providing too many background details in conversation with each other? If so, maybe try using narration to explain these details to the reader. 
• Is the plot moving a little slowly? Do you need to speed things up? If so, it may be worth inserting more dialogue or action to introduce a new conflict. 
• Do you have too many dialogue-heavy scenes in a row? If so, you should consider using action or narration to break up long stretches of conversation. 
• Do you find that your characters are constantly confiding in others things they should only be thinking to themselves? If so, the best course of action may be to insert more narration. 
• Likewise, are your characters alone in their heads when conversation would be more effective and lively? If so, perhaps consider using more dialogue in your scene. 

• Is your story unbalanced in any way? For example, do you have too much action, too much dialogue or too much narration? If so, try adding more of the elements that are missing.
  
  

We hope that these tips help when writing or redrafting your novel. Remember: pace your work, mix it up a little and, above all, just write!