I understand the importance of dialogue in a story, it's what hooks us to characters and how they react to things, it's a great tool for showing rather than telling (so long as the character isn't become a funnel for an infodump), etc.
I'm writing a story from the first person though, and I'm wondering about balancing the amount of dialogue with the narration, as that is itself a form of dialogue. Like how much, if any, slack does 1st person take up from inter-character dialogue?
At what point does one say "You don't really need to detail the conversation with the checkout clerk regarding the shopper's value card"?
That sort of thing. I've found myself going back and injecting dialogue into places where I'd written something like "I told so-and-so to go and blahblahblah", usually when it was an area of text that just felt kind of flat and barren. (My character uses a slight, but easily understandable dialect and a frankly Whedonesque sort of wordplay, and I keep invented slang terms to things readily understandable because of the context. That can spice up simple descriptions and scenes, but I don't want to use as a crutch or substitute for entertaining or useful conversations.
I'd like to hear people's viewpoints. General rules of thumb you might prefer, should any exist, good examples to keep in mind, etc. The most obvious "good example" would be the Dresdenverse, but I don't want to just ape Jim's style, or accidentally craft something that's going to be limited to people who like the same things about it that I do.
So I'm looking for food for thought.
Feed, me, Seymour.