I write off and on, mostly little blurbs that pass for poems, every once and a while I write a short story, and once I wrote an entire novel.
Recently I have been struck with another story of novel length (that is, long as a novel, it isn’t novel that it is as long as it will be :p). However, when I sit down to write it I often find that the story consists, almost entirely, of dialoge. In fact, it is almost as if I am writing a script instead of a novel.
And yet, every time I try to insert details about the scene I picture in my head into the written word the whole thing suddenly feels very, very dry.
Now, understand, I love to read, and the authors I generally read do not rely so heavily on dialogue, so where does this trend come from and how can I remove it? Perhaps this isn’t really the forum for such a question, but I know there are quite a few authors out there and I assume many are fiction writers apart from non-fiction.
Is it dry because I already picture the scene in my head, so all renderings of the scene feel superfluous? Or is it that I really am writing dryly? sigh It is so very hard to critique one’s own work because you know exactly what you are trying to say, and you either succeed to your satisfaction or you don’t; I have a very hard time thinking outside of my own perception of myself.
Does anyone else encounter these problems?
Apart from that, what really sets authors apart? Some books I have read do feel very dry, and scene-setting actually serves to remove mys suspension of disbelief. Koontz is one author that comes to mind… his setting of the scene often seems more like a “Ok, here’s where we are. Now, back to the action!” but I have a hard time actually distinguishing this from, say, the majority of Stephen King’s work where the scene setting just, well, happens anyway (add Barker onto that list, too).