Hello. I hope y'all are doing okay. I just wanted to ask. I've been writing the 2nd chapter of my novel and I noticed that on my second chapter, there are only few conversations. I focused on describing the setting and character. Is that okay?
NOVEL CONTENT
It should be balanced, I guess.
I'd say so. Sometimes too much exposition makes the writing clunky, so be sure to break it into easy-to-digest pieces. Most readers do want to know about the world their MC's are in, and if you're describing characters, you can also 'show and not tell'. It's good practice either way!
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Rtriste It depends on your intent for the chapter. If the chapter doesn't have dialog doesn't mean it can't be interesting and engaging. It's all about pacing, which is easy to tell when reading the story out loud. If you find the paragraphs are tongue twisters when read aloud then they may come across as info dump.
Also the purpose of dialog is to establish or highlight conflict between characters. So if your chapter isn't intendeding to show this, dialog wouldn't necessarily be needed.
I usually have scenes of dialogue and scenes of description. While I do try to even things out, putting some description in between the dialogue and some dialogue in between the description, I don't think it's a bad thing for a scene to be mostly focused on one or the other. As long as it's interesting.