Which is most important in writing dialogue from memory: accuracy, succinctness, or liveliness? According to Wikipedia a dialogue is a “conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie”. “the book consisted of a series of dialogues”. To bring that down a dialogue is a conversation between two or more people in real life or a movie or a book. I love reading books with good dialogue in them. There are three ways that you can use dialogue in a story. There is accuracy, succinctness, and liveliness. Accuracy is staying on one topic through the whole conversation. Succinctness is a word that I have never heard about before. According to Wikipedia succinctness is “marked by compact precise expression without wasted words“. And last but not least liveliness. Liveliness is when there is action packed into a story with a lot of words and interesting thoughts. What do each of these have to do with a story? Let’s go farther and find out.

First let’s look at accuracy. In a fictional story there will probably not be accuracy because the author could of probably made it off the top of his or her head. In “The War Of The Worlds” H.G. Wells used a lot of inaccurate things because martins would probably never come and invade earth if they existed. If they did though he would be very accurate about it. In biographies or autobiographies accuracy is crucial to the telling of the story of one’s life. You do not want to have fake details about someone’s life even if it were an accident.

Next is the term succinctness. I don’t think it is good to be succinct because I like the extra details in a book or movie. Sometimes things are better if they aren’t succinct. there are some good things from being succinct though. G.A. Henty’s books are not succinct so that is probably why I like them so much. I enjoy reading stories where the dialogue is clear and not confusing, but I do not like when the dialogue is brief. I like reading long conversations, it keeps me involved in the story and I like getting to know the characters. 

Now for liveliness. I like liveliness because I like action. Action is good in a story. I also like long conversations with lots of detail. Out of all of these three liveliness is my favorite because action is amazing and in long talks is even better.