Need feedback on the amount of dialogue

[Guest]

Need feedback on the amount of dialogue to put in a 70-80,000 word novel. Is there a respectable % of dialogue?

[Ian]

Somewhere between 0% and 100%. It depends on so much.

[Andy]

There needs to an amount that feels natural and necessary.

It really is like asking 'how long is a piece of string.'

The answer : as much as you need to do the job well.

[Ron]

The right amount of dialog is the amount of dialog that your book needs. There are no rules.

[Mike]

You need to make sure you aren’t writing a screenplay unless you’re writing a screenplay. Your readers won’t understand the situation with only dialogue and long drawn out dialog without beats of descriptive world building risks becoming boring. How much is too much or too little depends on the read through.

[Melvin]

Writing is an art, not a formula

[Christian]

Use dialogue when needed. There is no set amount. Just make it relevant. Henry James's masterpiece "The Bostonians" is almost 500 pages, and has relatively little dialogue. Meanwhile, Robert A Heinlein's masterpiece "Methuselah's Children" is dialogue heavy.