The One-in-Three Rule

Have you ever had the feeling, while reading a long exchange of dialogue, that you are skating on the surface of the story? You realize that so-and-so might say such a thing, and that the response to that statement is also true to the ear—but the material seems so slight that you’re dissatisfied. You wish everybody would just stop yakking for a minute. Come up with something exceptional.

For many writers, dialogue is the first narrative form that they master. As they are typing, the words that their characters will say come easily. After all, how many conversations have we had in our lives? Yet within this facility lies a trap. While we can “hear” how a character of our own devising says a delicious bon mot, the reader does not necessarily have the same experience. Spoken words on a page are flat, to a very large extent, and need to be framed by context. 

Deft alternating between the immediacy of dialogue and the grounding that prose narrative provides is one of the tricks of good storytelling. I have a loose rule of thumb that for every three lines of dialogue, a character’s thought or some piece of physical business—a wry look, coughing nervously, etc.—should be inserted. Such work need not be deep. The character may merely think, for instance, that what this boor just said to him was insulting. Adding to “she said,” the one word “sneering” tells us quite a bit about how that line of dialogue is being spoken. These asides provide context, in other words. They add complexity not only to the character but also to the story itself, particularly when what the character thinks is at odds with what she says. 

Exercise: Throughout a review of a draft, look for stretches of dialogue. If any one of them goes on for more than a quarter page, look for places where you can insert a narrative aside.  If you can do so roughly every third line, you will find that you are adding depth to the scene. What’s being said is only one level of a multi-layered, textured passage.

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” — Soren Kierkegaard

Copyright @ 2025, John Paine