Writing Words: Dialogue and Action

So. Since I can't concentrate on anything at the momement, I'll just ramble about a pet peeve of mine. Who knows, maybe someone else feels the same way.

To be clear, there are a lot of things that annoy me when reading; I don't differentiate between fanfics and "real" fiction in terms of quality. I mean, "real" fics (and all OC fics) have a lot of character building to do and fanfics don't (but they have to stay in character; more on that another time maybe), but one thing almost all of them have is dialogue.

What could piss me off about dialogue? Simple: far too much of it. I don't mean ponies talk a lot; I mean that what they say is all I get about what they feel. Body language is important. It lets the author communicate mood far more effectively than adverbs or introspection. Body language is the difference between sarcasm and surprise, confusion and accusations, affection and annoyance. The phrase, "How did you know?" can be asked in ernest (if accompanied by a furrowing of the brow) or it can be a sarcastic rejoinder (if the pony throws in an eye roll). Body language can also let a pony say one thing, while meaning another. Watch Sonic Rainboom again. Now imagine reading just the dalogue w/o Dash's nervous posturing. Totally different meanings.

I call it "talking head syndrome" and it is a thing that kills a lot of fics for me. It's one reason I hate script format and block quoting. It's most noticeable with Dash and Pinkie. The first, because she is too twitchy and doesn't stand still, the second because... she's too damn twitchy and doesn't stand still. Half of the fun of watching her are her facial expressions.

As important as body language is to canon characters, it's even more important for OCs. We all know Fluttershy's mannerisms; we can make an ok guess as to what she's doing via extrapolation, but if Stormbolt Shadowwings III (original character, donut steele) says "I'd like to see that" we gain no insight into his character. Sprinkling in a eye roll, or a nervous pawing at the ground, flared wings, whatever is much subtler and enjoyable to read than "he said, angrily."

I guess this comes back as part of show don't tell. I should probably write up something on that some day, huh? Not that every line of of dialogue needs physical descriptions to accompany it, but whenever you find yourself with a bunch of dialogue paired only with a few "$pony said"s, or whenever you find yourself tagging a segment with an adverb to describe the emotions a character is exhibiting, stop and think, "is there a gesture or other audio/visual cue that shows this better?" Odds are good it will improve your writing.

Now, there are times when talking heads are desirable: when a character is unable to see others (was unconscious, etc), or when you are doing an argument like in Ticket Master. Maybe a few more. So it's not always a bad thing. But it _is_ something you should be aware of and avoid unless you are explicitly going for that effect.