i have been writing my story on a narrative theme..i.e the writer ( being me ) is telling the story of her life. Is it important to put lots of dialogue in? if im missing lots of acutal " speaking" between characters, will it make the text less readable and boring? views would be great!
I have to admit that I haven't read many biographies, but I generally do not find a text boring just because it lacks dialogue. Like David, I do believe it is more difficult to insert dialogue in a biography, because it has to be very accurate (doesn't it?) and our memory is sometimes not very helpful in such details. That being said, I still think that biography is partly a work of fiction. After all, our memory doesn't keep things unaltered. Firstly, it is selective. Secondly, things tend to fade with time. Thirdly, some things might even change once our perception about them changes. But, this is probably not helpful. No, I don't believe a book without dialogue is more boring. Keep up the good work!
No one has answered for ages - so I will share a brief opinion.
I think that you can use dialogue in most writing. There are just some places in which you have to be rather more careful than others - and biography is definitely one of those places.
In particular, if there is anyone alive or anyone who knew a person still around, you need to be very careful to prefix any "quote" with something like 'As I recall xxxx said....' It would be difficult to take any legal action against you for your recall - which is yours whether it is right or wrong - but words specifically ascribed to another person are far more risky.
I suspect that achieving good dialogue in biography would be more difficult than elsewhere... But - the best thing is to try it - see if it works for you.
:-)
David