# Limited-Speech Stories



## Shouden (Apr 14, 2009)

and by Limited-Speech I mean Limiting the Speech to only three or less characters.

I'm going to be working on expanding a short story I recently wrote called "The Long Road" and so far it only has two speaking roles. I'm thinking about keeping it this way.


I know this isn't traditional, but I think, anyway, that it's a good way to practice giving descriptions, and it cuts down on the dialogue. (I hate long dialogue chains.)

Anyways, what are your thoughts on this? And have you ever or would you ever do it?


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## Poetigress (Apr 14, 2009)

Generally, with short stories you don't have room for many characters, so having something short with three or fewer named/major characters isn't unusual at all.  In novels, you still usually wind up with two or three major characters, but in most cases there's a much larger supporting group of minor characters as well.  

Off the top of my head, it's difficult to think of a novel that only has two or three characters, period -- larger stories tend to involve more people.  Maybe romance novels, I don't know, but even there I think you usually have a subplot or two going on, more than just the couple's love story.  I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "speaking roles," and how you're differentiating major and minor characters.  Even a character who only appears for a couple paragraphs may need some incidental dialogue, so the distinction of speaking vs. nonspeaking doesn't translate so well from film/TV to prose.

And, personally, I don't mind a lot of dialogue, as long as it's serving a purpose and sounds believable.  I'd rather have lots of dialogue than long descriptions or summaries any day.


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## Shouden (Apr 14, 2009)

Well, like with my story, I have Captain Taia and her husband Froal and they're two kids, but only Taia and Froal have any dialogue; they are the only two characters that speak. I know it'd be nearly impossible to do a full length novel with only two characters speaking, but I think for a story under 5000 words it'd be doable.


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## foozzzball (Apr 14, 2009)

I have to admit, one could do something really interesting with that. The children never speak, like outsiders in this family relationship. External, even when communicating with the parents because there's no dialogue from the children it might appear as if they're almost not there at all, or maybe even malignantly 'other' and broken. It could symbolize that the children are a block in their parent's lives, some strange hurdle neither of them wants to address directly to resolve.


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## Shouden (Apr 14, 2009)

that's a pretty negative way of looking at it, fooz. I think you're reading too much into it.


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## foozzzball (Apr 14, 2009)

Well any element you include in a work, particularly an out-of-the-ordinary one like that, is something all readers will read something into. Disconnecting your parents from your children like that, specifically in that way - killing off their communication - sends a powerful message. Not a very good one, we don't like it when parents and children are disconnected.

It's especially creepy because children are generally regarded as very chatty young things unless there's something wrong - it's never anything good that gets a child to stop being chatty.


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## Henk86 (Apr 14, 2009)

I my experience something that only involves very few characters is only odd in a classicly written play, contemporary drama and post-modern works often only have a few characters or even no characters at all, as daft as it sounds.


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## Shouden (Apr 14, 2009)

> Well any element you include in a work, particularly an out-of-the-ordinary one like that, is something all readers will read something into. Disconnecting your parents from your children like that, specifically in that way - killing off their communication - sends a powerful message. Not a very good one, we don't like it when parents and children are disconnected.
> 
> It's especially creepy because children are generally regarded as very chatty young things unless there's something wrong - it's never anything good that gets a child to stop being chatty.



perhaps you should read the story before you make judgements. There's no need to "disconnect" the parents from the children. The kids are five and three. and the main story takes place early in the morning.

It might be a tad unhealthy to instantly jump to the conclusion that I was disconnecting the parents from the children. Sounds like you need some counseling.


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## foozzzball (Apr 14, 2009)

I thought we were discussing the concept rather than your specific implementation of it? See, I was judging the idea itself rather than the specific story.

Okay. Let me read it.

Okay. Uhm. Wow. I won't say anything further because you will start swearing violently at me.


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## Shouden (Apr 14, 2009)

*sigh* yeah, yeah, my writing sucks compared to yours, fooz. yadda yadda yadda. I don't care about that. And besides, I don't think anyone jumped to the conclusion that I was disconnecting any one from any one. Only you. But, enough bickering. Let's just get back on the subject at hand.

which is: Limiting the dialogue in a story to only a few characters. You can have more than three characters, but only three or less have any dialogue.


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## foozzzball (Apr 14, 2009)

The issue here is that I assumed you were working on playing with the flavour of your work. By playing with your narrative, in this case through limiting dialogue, it is possible to get a variety of interesting artistic effects. Apparently you're not interested in that, though?

If you're really looking to get past dialogue because you don't like writing lengthy chains of dialogue (why?), paraphrase it. 'Adam and Betty had a meandering conversation about what to have for dinner, they couldn't decide.'


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## Tanzenlicht (Apr 14, 2009)

I actually did sort of wonder about having children in a story who don't speak.  What you've described here is four characters, two of them children but only the adults speaking for 5000 words.  In general terms, and this thread seems set up for generalities, that's well into where we start wonder if we have a case of creepy twins on our hands.

Taking the piece in question into consideration it makes perfect sense for it to have only two speaking roles as there are only two characters of any consequence on screen (so to speak).

If you expand it further then forcing it to remain a two character piece could easily become a meaningless experiment.  And if the kids get involved, but never speak it will be creepy and foozzzball's point will have become valid.  So it's something to keep in mind as you write more.

In this particular case you may be setting yourself up for a not terribly interesting story of two people discussing the road trip they are on.  Particularly if you are attempting to limit dialogue and spend time on descriptions.

In general, and as usual, it depends on the story you're trying to tell.


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## Shouden (Apr 14, 2009)

*shrug* I suppose it does depend on the story. and Like I said, it probably wouldn't work for a novel. Just something I'm trying out. I, or course, can always go back and change everything later.

Although, I suppose if you were telling a novel about a couple people traveling through space, although, that'd be pretty boring.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 14, 2009)

I think maybe I've written things like this, including a few pieces that didn't have any dialogue at all (though I tend to prefer writing spoken words, myself).  Supposing you wrote a story about, say, a guy and his dog traveling through unsettled territory or something like that, maybe you'd only have one person who ever says anything.  I mean... yeah, as has already been mentioned a bajillion times, it depends on the story.
If it strikes you as weird that only two people speak in this story you're writing, maybe give the other characters some dialogue too.  Because if it strikes you as weird, it'll strike your audience as weird for certain.

Also, nothing wrong with long chains of dialogue.  In fact, I've read a few books claiming their superiority, and the need to incorporate lots of them, if only because they move quickly and keep the reader feeling like he's making good progress.  You feel pretty smart after reading 10 pages in just two minutes, right?  Dialogue does that sometimes.  And I also think it's way easier to progress things with dialogue than anything else.  So you shouldn't shun long strings of it.


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## Shouden (Apr 14, 2009)

I think I more don't like the look of long dialogue chains than their use. I mean, they have their place, and I have used them, I can stand to look at something I've written and just see quotation marks down the left side.

But anyway, I suppose that's for another topic.


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## foozzzball (Apr 15, 2009)

Some ways of formatting dialogue without leaving quotation marks on the left side.

Dependent Clause, "Quotation."

Complete sentence. "Quotation."

For example:

Shouden said, "Dialogue is bad."

Fooz totally did not think that. "Dialogue is pretty sweet."

Mix it up more. Like dialogue.


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