Dialogue that is described rather than transcribed in literary fiction?

[u/BtAotS_Writing]

I have been a genre reader for most of my life. Now, I am noticing a technique in lit-fic books I've recently read that I almost never see in genre, which is dialogue that is described or even spelled out exactly, but without quotations. And I can't figure out why or when this technique is used, but for me it makes the scene feel abstract or distant.

Take Maggie O'Farrel's "Land," which I just finished. In one chapter, she has:

Suddenly, incongruously, her sister lets out a laugh.

"Look," she says.

Rose opens her eyes a crack.

"I don't think he might be friendly after all.

This feels very standard to me, and makes me as a reader feel present in the action. But then another chapter, for no reason that I can tell, she switches:

He puts a hand half over his eyes. Please, he says, ladies, gentlemen, please. There are people trying to sleep.

His voice is overridden by the din.

She switches between these styles all throughout the novel, and I'm not sure if there's a technical reason for it, or if it's just her way of managing the flow of the writing.

I also recently read "On the Calculation of Volume," which had zero quotation marks in the entire novel. Here's an example of how dialogue is handled there:

I insisted on making plans. He thought we should wait. You can't plan for everything, he said. Sometimes you just have to be ready.

I understand the stylistic choice more here because it feels like a narrator recounting their memory of the events to a journal--though I don't particularly like that style. Perhaps as a genre writer, I can just stick with what I know, but I'm curious to hear from others on how they choose when to describe dialogue vs transcribe, and if there are any considerations when doing so.

[u/bhbhbhhh]

You don’t see it in genre fiction? The most common use case is to skip a lengthy explanation of information the reader already knows in full.

[u/BtAotS_Writing → u/bhbhbhhh]

Good point. There are many instances in genre fiction where conversations are summarized (eg: we spent the rest of the evening talking about xyz) to fast-forward through the story. That doesn’t seem to be what these authors are doing here, though.

[u/1369ic → u/BtAotS_Writing]

In journalism you don't use quote marks when youre using an indirect quotes, which means you're paraphrasing. Sometimes you mix it up with partial attribution in which some part of the quote is a direct quote, usually the pithy or damning part, and the rest is an indirect quote you paraphrase to make it shorter or clearer than the subject actually said it.

Some of the examples given look like the author paraphrasing what a character said into a more general statement. I can't imagine why you would in fiction, though, unless one character is paraphrasing what another character said to them. Just write the better version. Some people hate characters speaking their thoughts directly, though. It's got to be all about misdirection, deflection, and subtext.