Hey guys! Welcome back to the Writer’s Nook! I hope y’all have had a good week. Last time, we talked about point of view and I recommended some exercises to play around with POV that I hope you enjoyed if you tried them! Today, let’s dive into dialogue.
For some writers, dialogue is easy and fun and the best part of writing. For others, it’s the bane of their existence. Whatever your opinions on dialogue, hopefully you’ll find these tips helpful, and if you’re a dialogue-hater, maybe you’ll find it a little easier after reading this. So let’s chat!
First, I’ll give you the basics for formatting dialogue:
- Always start a new paragraph when a new character speaks.
- For example:
“What’re y’all doing after school?” I asked, catching up with the group.
“Homework,” replied Julie. “What else?”
- Dialogue is shown with phrases in quotation marks, usually (but not always) followed by a dialogue tag like “he said.”
- For example:
“Do you guys want to get some ice cream later?” Martin asked.
- Punctuation, like commas, periods, question marks, etc. always go inside the quotation marks.
- Examples:
“Can we please get a puppy?” Gina begged.
“Looks like rain later,” Dad remarked, standing at the window with his hands on his hips.
Alisha raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, right.”
As you can see in all of those examples above, there’s a number of ways you can format dialogue. How and where you place the dialogue tags is up to you and depends on the the tone of the sentence. Sometimes you can interrupt dialogue with a tag or an action to create a break in the character’s words, like this:
“Oh, and by the way––” Jason reached across the table and stole a bunch of fries from Kelly’s plate –– ”anybody got Mr. Thompson’s homework? I dipped that class today.”
This example interrupts Jason’s words with an action as he’s talking, using em dashes to interject and abruptly cut off the words. It’s a different visual effect than writing it like this:
“Oh, and by the way…” Jason reached across the table and stole a bunch of fries from Kelly’s plate. “Anybody got Mr. Thompson’s homework? I dipped that class today.”
Or like this:
Jason reached across the table and stole a bunch of fries from Kelly’s plate. “Oh, and by the way, anybody got Mr. Thompson’s homework? I dipped that class today.”
See the difference? None of these formats are incorrect or less effective, but they all tell the scene just a little bit differently.
But you can also do something like this, that’s a little bit less of an interjection but still a break in the middle of the sentence:
“Are you really sure,” Terri said, drawing out her words, “that this is the only way?”
That kind of interjection tells the reader to take a breath in the middle of the sentence, and adds emphasis to the description that Terri is deliberately drawing out the sentence. Instead of simply saying that Terri is talking slowly, your mind reads it that way because of the interruption in the middle of the sentence.
As an additional note, if you’re writing a full-on conversation, you don’t always need dialogue tags after every sentence. For example:
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us,” Jamie snapped, fixing me with a glare. “How could you keep something like that from us?”
“Because it wasn’t my thing to tell,” I argued. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it. You found out when Maddy was permitted to tell. That’s the best we could do.”
“Yeah but you knew,” Jamie shot back. “And you should’ve told us.”
“I’ve already told you, I couldn’t. Sworn to secrecy.”
“Right, like I’d believe that.”
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Come on, man. You’re blowing it out of proportion.”
Okay, I’ll stop before I get out of hand and write an entire story right here. But I used an argument because the rapid-fire exchanges are best to show a situation where dialogue tags aren’t needed. I started with them, of course, to introduce who’s talking and what the general mood of the scene is. But then once the conversation gets going, I have the characters exchange words in turn so you still know who’s talking despite the absence of dialogue tags. In those two lines, the tags would’ve been redundant and clunky. Unless I wanted to show one of the characters completing an action or shifting the tone, the tags are unnecessary. The words alone add emphasis to what’s being spoken, in this case, emphasizing the snappy tone of the argument.
Another note, while we’re on the topic: the word “said” is not evil. A lot of advice out there says to always avoid the word “said” when writing dialogue. That advice is bad. You are allowed to say “said.” If you’re constantly replacing it with other terms, you lose the meaning of those terms and the emotion you’re trying to convey. “Said” is a sort of filler word that the reader’s eyes can glance over. It’s a simple note to say who’s talking, and it doesn’t bring any attention to the way the character is talking. If you do want to note that a character is speaking in a certain way, you can either use an adverb –– ”said quietly” –– or replace “said” with something like “murmured,” “whispered,” or “mumbled.” Keep in mind, though, those verbs are all very different connotations of “speaking quietly.” If you’re going to replace “said,” make sure you’re choosing the right term.
Now that we got the basics down, let’s talk about dialogue as a tool for conveying emotion. Dialogue builds authenticity in your characters, especially when you’re able to show their personalities through the way they talk. It’s a great tool for following the “show, don’t tell” rule. If your character can show the way they feel rather than you saying something like “Katie was saddened by the news” or even “Katie said sadly,” it boosts the emotion you’re trying to get across.
Some ways you can show emotion through dialogue are by using things like ellipses (...), em dashes (––), italicizing or capitalizing words (though be careful with this and don’t overdo it), and having your character stutter, start their sentences over, or cut off in the middle of a sentence. Those are all tells of high emotion. Like this:
“W-Wait, no–– No, stop––”
In just this short sentence, it’s clear that the speaker is desperate, afraid, and possibly shocked. They start with a stutter, speak only in short words, and cut off before they finish a complete sentence. I didn’t write any action around it, but you can tell that this line would show up in a high-tension, high-stakes scene where something or someone the narrator cares about is on the line. There’s a sense of danger and fear. And all of that was conveyed just by using some funky punctuation.
I won’t go too much more in-depth, because this stuff can be nuanced and complicated and I don’t want you to feel like it’s super difficult. Don’t overthink it and give yourself writer’s block. These are just some things to keep in mind if you’re trying to figure out how best to frame a conversation in a story, but they’re obviously not straight-up laws.
The best way, in my experience, to test out if your dialogue sounds right is to read it out loud, using the inflections and emotions you imagine for the scene. If the words don’t feel natural, as though this was a real-life conversation, that might be a sign to go back and simplify some stuff. Your characters shouldn’t sound like robots; they should sound like people. Think about how conversations carry on in real life and in movies and such. People often don’t speak in perfect, complete sentences, and in groups, they talk over each other. You don’t want your dialogue scenes to be hot messes, of course, but try to tap into your characters’ voices when they speak. Speech shows a lot about a person, and the same is true in fiction.
Okay! Now that we’re through that, let’s talk about books! This is a library blog, after all. While perusing Twitter today, I came across a couple threads of awesome books featuring Black protagonists, many of which are written by Black authors. A lot of these I’d never heard of despite them being out for awhile, so I want to uplift these writers. Black lives and Black stories matter, always. Here’s a thread from FierceReads of YA books by Black authors:
And here’s another thread of YA fantasy and sci-fi with female Black protagonists (I’ve already added like all of these to my TBR, they sound awesome!):
As for what I’ve been reading lately, not a whole lot lol. I haven’t finished or started anything since last week; I’ve been writing more than reading these days. I am so close to being done with the second draft of my wip, THE DIVINE SAINT. I only have a few chapters left to revise, woohoo!
That’s all I’ve got for ya today! Try out writing some dialogue scenes!! Read some good books! And leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions for next week’s post!
Till next Wednesday,
Anna 😎✌🏻
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