December 28, 2025
Why Dialogue Carries the Plot
I do not treat dialogue as decoration between events.
In these novels, dialogue is the event.
The choices characters make in speech are choices that shape consequences.
A withheld answer, an interruption, or a question asked too late can change the direction of an entire chapter. That is why I spend as much time cutting dialogue as writing it.
If a line only explains information I already gave the reader, it usually goes.
Dialogue must either reveal character under pressure or move the moral stakes forward.
Clive