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Implied dialogue: 4 reasons to use it in fiction

15/8/2023

Discover what implied dialogue is and four ways you can use it in your novel, whatever the genre, to enrich your readers’ experience.

What’s in this post

Find out more about:

what implied dialogue is
reducing psychic distance to involve the reader
summarising information the reader already knows
breaking up large chunks of dialogue
making direct speech more impactful

What is implied dialogue?

Implied dialogue is information that could be included naturally in a character’s speech but is instead offered in a narrative form that implies that direct speech has taken place.

Here’s a comparative example:

Version 1: Direct speech
‘Take a seat,’ Ava said. ‘And brace yourself. I’m having second thoughts about Steve and Akeno. Yes, I know I originally ruled them out because of all the witnesses who vouched for them. But there’s a gap. I double checked the times and no one saw them between 8.45 and 9.30. That’s forty-five minutes – easily enough time to sneak out of the club, hike up the trail with the equipment and plant it near the glade. I hate to say it, but they could be our thieves.’

Version 2: Combination of direct speech and implied dialogue
‘Take a seat,’ Ava said. ‘And brace yourself. I’m having second thoughts about Steve and Akeno.’
Yes, she’d originally ruled them out because of all the witnesses who’d vouched for them, but there was a gap. She’d double checked the times and no one had seen them between 8.45 and 9.30. Forty-five minutes – easily enough time to sneak out of the club, hike up the trail with the equipment and plant it near the glade.
‘I hate to say it’ – she grimaced – ‘but they could be our thieves.’

In the first version, aside from the speech tag (Ava said), the information is conveyed as present-tense direct speech. I’ve used single quotation marks, but doubles would have been fine too if I’d been writing in a different style.

In the second version, some of that direct speech has been rendered as third-person past-tense narrative instead. It still has the feel of Ava’s speech because the narrative follows on coherently from her introductory statement about having second thoughts. That she actually spoke these words to the listener is therefore implied.

4 reasons to experiment with implied dialogue

Whether you use implied dialogue, and how often, is a stylistic choice. There are certainly no rules. However, it’s worth considering the impact it can have on your writing and the way your reader engages with your prose.

Here are four reasons why I think you should experiment with it.

1. Reducing psychic distance to involve the reader

When two or more characters are talking to each other through direct speech, the reader is relegated to the role of invisible listener.

With implied dialogue, the narrator shifts their gaze towards the reader and invites them to participate by being an active listener.

That reduces the psychic (or narrative) distance between the narrator and reader so that our experience of the novel is more intimate.

EXAMPLE 1
Below is an example from p. 290 of False Value by Ben Aaronovitch. Our protagonist Peter Grant narrates in the first person, which means that the psychic distance between him and the reader is usually fairly intimate – he’s always telling us, the readers, what’s happened.

In this example, he’s on a Skype call with an FBI agent called Reynolds who’s updating him on what she’s discovered about a case.

By rendering some of Reynolds’s speech as implied rather than direct, Aaronovitch subtly ensures that the reader’s still invited to the party. It’s as if Grant has looked away from Reynolds on the screen for just a moment, and towards us.

‘Spoiler,’ said Reynolds. ‘I re-interviewed the surviving witnesses and they agreed that Anthony Lane opened fire at the Mary Engine and the jars on the rack. Before you ask, they were both interns and didn’t know where the items had come from.’ [Direct speech. Wider psychic distance between narrator and reader]
The dead guy, a certain Branwell Petersen, MIT graduate and former Microsoft employee, had died, the witnesses thought, because he stepped between the shooter and the Rose Jars. [Implied dialogue. Closer psychic distance between narrator and reader]
‘The interns said he threw himself into the line of fire,’ said Reynolds. ‘As if his life was less important.’ [Direct speech. Wider psychic distance between narrator and reader]

2. Summarising to avoid repetition

Sometimes the reader has already accessed information via a viewpoint character. If that character then shares the detail with another via direct speech, the reader will be subjected to repetition that encourages them to skim.

A narrative summary enables authors to imply the spoken sharing of information without actually putting the whole conversation down on paper twice.

EXAMPLE 2
In the excerpt below, the protagonist – with the help of a companion – has escaped from an unknown location after being kidnapped.

I stopped to orientate myself and spotted a street sign – Coldharbour Lane. I’d been in bloody Brixton the whole time. […] I wanted off the street, but didn’t want to put a random homeowner in danger. Instead we ran left towards the train station. [Narrative: Location of lair]
[…] After less than a hundred metres, Foxglove was showing signs of serious distress and I felt her stumble a couple of times, but we’d reached the shopping parade by then and fortunately the Nisa Local was still open. A nervous black girl of about fifteen who was manning the tills gave us a weary look of disgust as we rushed in. Then got all confused when I told her I was a police office and that I needed to use a phone. I retreated with Foxglove into the corner where we’d be hidden by the shelves and called Guleed. [Narrative: Location of store]
[…] Guleed picked up, and I said, ‘We’re in the Nisa Local near Brixton Station and Chorley’s lair is on Coldharbour Lane.’ [Direct speech: Repetition of narrative x2]

Notice how the dialogue at the end of the excerpt repeats information we already know because Grant has narrated the journey of discovery and the direction he takes in the previous paragraphs. It’s repetitive and dull.

But actually, I’ve butchered it. The real excerpt from pp. 329–30 of Lies Sleeping, also by Ben Aaronovitch, looks like this:

I stopped to orientate myself and spotted a street sign – Coldharbour Lane. I’d been in bloody Brixton the whole time. […] I wanted off the street, but didn’t want to put a random homeowner in danger. Instead we ran left towards the train station.
[Narrative: Location of lair]
[…] After less than a hundred metres, Foxglove was showing signs of serious distress and I felt her stumble a couple of times, but we’d reached the shopping parade by then and fortunately the Nisa Local was still open. A nervous black girl of about fifteen who was manning the tills gave us a weary look of disgust as we rushed in. Then got all confused when I told her I was a police office and that I needed to use a phone. […] I retreated with Foxglove into the corner where we’d be hidden by the shelves and called Guleed. [Narrative: Location of store]
Guleed picked up, and I told her where I was, and where Chorley’s lair was, and let her get on with it. [Implied dialogue]

Take a look at the final line. Aaronovitch uses narrative, rather than direct speech, to imply what Grant has actually said to Guleed.

The repetition is gone. Instead, of laboured direct speech that tells readers what they already know, the implied dialogue is taut and pacy, and lets us move on to the next part of the scene.

Summarising information via implied dialogue doesn’t necessarily reduce the word count, but that’s fine. The goal is not to necessarily to reduce the number of words (though that may be the result) but to keep the reader interested and drive the story forward.

3. Breaking up would-be monologues

When non-viewpoint characters have information to share, direct speech is the perfect vehicle because we can learn about their experiences even though we haven’t been party to them.

However, when there’s a lot of detail, that information can turn into what feels like a monologue. The reader can end up dislocated from the environment, as if the speaker is talking in a vacuum or floating in white space. You might see this referred to as ‘talking heads syndrome’.

Implied dialogue is the antidote. It breaks up the dialogue so that while some of what was said is rendered in direct speech, chunks of it are voiced by the narrator. That is, what was actually spoken by the non-viewpoint character is implied.

EXAMPLE 3
Below is a fine example from False Value again, this time on p. 287. Consider how long Reynolds’s spiel would have been if Aaronovitch hadn’t broken it up by allowing the protagonist and first-person narrator, Peter Grant, to bear some of the burden.

It’s implied that the 113 words about what happened on August 2015 were spoken by Reynolds, but it’s Grant who delivers the information to the reader on her behalf. The monologue has been avoided but we know exactly how that conversation went.

I flipped the master power switch as soon as I was inside and pulled a Coke out of the fridge to serve as a coffee substitute while I waited for my PC to boot up. As soon as Skype was running, Reynolds’s call flashed up. [Narrative. Closer psychic distance between narrator and reader]
‘What was all that about?’ I asked when I saw her face. [Direct speech. Wider psychic distance between narrator and reader]
‘Skinner’s been connected to another case,’ she said. [Direct speech. Wider psychic distance between narrator and reader]
At 10.15 on a Monday morning in August 2015, one Anthony Lane walked into the offices of an obscure tech start-up in San Jose carrying a concealed handgun. He talked his way past the receptionist before using the threat of force to gain access to the secure area at the rear and then, once he was in, opened fire. One person was killed instantly, two others were wounded and Lane himself was shot eight times in the back by a responding police officer. The attack barely made the news, being just one of several hundred to several thousand – depending on where you set the parameters – of active shooter incidents so far that year.
[Implied dialogue. Closer psychic distance between narrator and reader]
‘It wasn’t on my list,’ said Reynolds, ‘because the perp was dead.’
[Direct speech. Wider psychic distance between narrator and reader]

And don’t forget the impact on reader inclusion discussed earlier. This monologue-breaker has also served to turn Grant’s narrative gaze towards us – the readers – rather than focusing solely on the person who’s talking to him via Skype.

4. Making direct speech more impactful

Using implied dialogue can also enable direct speech to shine a little more brightly, especially when there’s a punchy spoken one-liner that deserves to stand out on the page.

EXAMPLE 4
The excerpt below is from p. 369 of Lies Sleeping. The author uses a combination of direct speech, implied dialogue and narrative to present a coherent telling of the what the characters are saying and doing.

In this case, the implied dialogue is how readers know about the relatively mundane conversations that have taken place between the characters, but note in particular the penultimate line in which we learn that Guleed said she’d been about to phone.

What that does is put her closing direct speech centre stage. And that’s right and proper because it’s anything but mundane. It’s a section-closer that drips with suspense and tension – compelling the reader to turn the page so they can find out more about the problem Guleed’s identified, what the implications are and how the team are going to fix it.

‘I’ve checked for booby traps and handed it over to the local boys. Alexander is sending a search party tomorrow.’ [Direct speech]
He asked after Stephanopoulos and I passed on the assurances that Dr Walid had given me. I asked if he was heading back tonight and he said he was. [Implied dialogue]
‘Anything else to report?’ he asked. [Direct speech]
‘A creeping sense of existential dread,’ I said. ‘Apart from that I’m good.’ [Direct speech]
‘Chin up, Peter. He’s on his last legs – I can feel it.’ [Direct speech]
Once Nightingale had rung off I called Guleed, who’d been arriving as a nasty surprise to bell foundries and metal casting companies from Dudley to Wolverhampton all day. [Narrative]
She said she’d been just about to phone. [Implied dialogue]
‘I was right,’ she said. ‘There’s another bell.’ [Direct speech: Standout one-liner]
[SECTION BREAK]

Summing up

Implied dialogue does what it says on the tin. It is narrative that implies what characters said to each other, even though it’s not presented in the present tense and (often) with quotation/speech marks surrounding it.

And while direct speech that’s rich in voice, conveys mood, and shows intent is knockout, it may be that you’re concerned about excluding your readers – or, worse, boring them. If that's the case, experiment with this tool and see what effect it has on your prose when you mix things up a little.

Related resources and cited texts

Dialogue resource centre
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book)
False Value, Ben Aaronovitch, Gollancz, 2020
How to Line Edit for Suspense (multimedia online course)
Lies Sleeping, Ben Aaronovitch, Gollancz, 2018
Narrative Distance: A Toolbox for Writers and Editors (multimedia online course)

About Louise Harnby

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.