Tried writing a flash fiction story using only dialogue and it totally flopped

I sat down last Tuesday and wrote a 500 word story with zero narration, just people talking back and forth. I thought it would feel punchy and real, like a movie scene on paper. But when I read it back, I had no clue who was speaking half the time or what was happening. Learned that even with dialogue, you still need a little bit of description to ground the reader. Has anyone else tried a writing constraint that backfired on them?

3 comments

3 Comments

jessicac282mo ago

Ugh I did the same thing last month it was a mess to read back.

hill.andrew2mo ago

Man yeah I hate that feeling. It's like looking at a wall of text your brain just skips over because everything blends together. I actually started putting a blank line between every single thought or step and it makes a huge difference. Even just using bullet points with dashes helps me keep stuff straight when I go back later. The worst is when you thought you were being super clear but it reads like scrambled eggs the next day.

patb1212d ago

Oh man, I gotta push back on that a little. Blank lines and bullet points work great for some things, but I've found they can actually make tech instructions worse if you're not careful. Like if you've got a step that needs to connect to the next one, a blank line in between can make you think it's a separate thought and you miss the link. I learned that the hard way when I wrote a note about fixing my router and ended up resetting it twice because I skipped a line and missed the "do this first" part.