Answers-9 November

By Cathy Caudill

What is the effective way to use narrative and dialogue in feature stories?

Narrative and dialogue is most effective when used to involve the reader. Dialogue, for example, can generate emotional appeal within an audience--readers do not always want to be told what was said, they like to hear what is said.

A writer cannot get a reader to emotionally react by simply describing the emotion that they want their audience to have; instead, by using narrative and/or dialogue, the reader will--in a sense--witness the situation, and from there they will reach that emotional impact on their own.

The descriptive element of narrative will also heighten this reader-within-the-story sensation, as they should be able to picture themselves present within a well-depicted scene.

What do we need to ensure we have to include or avoid in using dialogue and narrative?

In both narrative and dialogue, we must be cautious not to burden our readers with details that do not serve a purpose within the story. Wordiness and lack of focus can become tiresome for a reader, and they may set aside our work before they even reach the story's main point--or worse, they finished reading and could not extract the story's main point from the wordy mire.

We must include some sort of underlying theme, concept, assumption, arguement, etc. in order to avoid a simple surmision of the event--if the writer fails to convey the significance of the story, the reader will have very little to gain from it.