I love writing dialogue. I have a strong sense of how my characters talk, look, and sound, which makes conveying elements of the plot through conversations really really easy. Reviews back when I used to write fanfics frequently centered on compliments around character voice, how it sounds like they're reading an episode of the show, and between that and enjoying screenwriting in college, i really think my writing style has internalized that... for better and for worse.
As im drafting my novel, I feel like the dialogue is too much. This is even more true now because the start of my novel isn't as action heavy- for the first seven chapters, it's all about setting up the duo protagonist's situations in the world, and for one in particular (a suicidal high schooler who painfully overthinks social interactions due to depression and a history of bullying) it seems like every scene is talk-thought-talk, which is repetitive.
Ive identified the problem but don't know how to get out of it. I'VE TRIED switching to describing feelings, but the prose has started looking like random metaphors interspersed ebtween absurdly long dialogue scenes, which just makes the problem worse. The conversations and thoughts surrounding them are important context for why the characters do what they do, but i also don't want 7 chapters of talking heads.
Help?