Using Narrative and Dialogue in Stories

A piece of dialogue, or a quote, is often used to get a reader's attention. You draw in the reader with something of interest rather than a bland statistic. While it is not traditional dialogue, or conversation, between two people, a reader can imagine the interviewer as the other person posing the question that the quote is answering. Pieces of dialogue and narrative can also be used to paint a clearer picture or scenario. They add color to a piece. Also, to get quotes, an interviewer would ask questions, getting responses from the interviewee, basically having a conversation. If you insert the questions into the story, you can set the scene, which would be a conversation between two people.

Narrative is usually in the first person, but feature stories, for the most part, are not first person. What you can take from a narrative essay is a defined point of view. This would help a feature story to be clearer, more easily understood, and overall a better piece of work. Working with dialogu, you need to make sure that what you include in a story is important and not frivilous information. If the conversation is about something seemingly insignificant, but reveals further information about the person, then it can and should be included in the story.