Dialogue Tips
Writing dialogue is hard. Balancing plot-driven dialogue with a natural edge, making sure your character has their own unique voice, and getting all those punctuation marks correct is a lot at once. This week, I wanted to list off some random structures and misuses of dialogue I have seen over the years. While this won’t be instructional, I want to point these out because you might read one example and think, “Oops, I do that!” If that is the case with any of these, don’t worry! I’ve been there and have made these mistakes, but I always say that mistakes are an opportunity for even better writing!
How Dialogue Works
When writing dialogue, there are many ways to go about it. Sometimes if you get too crazy with your variety, it can be hard for readers to understand. It’s a difficult balance to strike but here are some examples on how to structure and write dialogue to make sure we are all on the same page before I begin. This is not an exhaustive list, there are many more ways to do this, I just wanted to provide a basic understanding to start with.
Dialogue Punctuation:
Dialogue is set off inside both open and closed quotation marks.
“I love going to the pool.”
Dialogue can be a single sentence by itself, or it can have a dialogue tag. The dialogue tag is attached to the dialogue and completes the sentence. It is not a sentence on its own. To achieve this, put a comma at the end of your dialogue.
“I love going to the pool,” Mary says.
Dialogue can end in lots of punctuation. Exclamation points, question marks, commas, em-dashes, and more. These all function as a comma so when the dialogue tag comes afterwards, it is always lowercase (not including pronouns/ names) as it is a continuation of the sentence.
“I love going to the pool,” she said. (Correct)
“I love going to the pool,” She said. (Wrong)
“I don’t know if I like the pool?” she said. (Correct)
“I don’t know if I like the pool?” She said. (Wrong)
“I love the pool!” she exclaimed.
When dialogue is interrupted, you can use an em-dash. (Two small dashes with no spaces in between the words/punctuation creates this symbol on MS Word.)
“I love the—”
“I don’t like the pool! I don’t want to hear about how happy it makes you,” Emily said.
Dialogue can be split in half by the dialogue tag to show a pause or to shape your speech a certain way. Because the dialogue tag is still a part of the sentence, this does not end your sentence in the middle.
“I love the pool,” Mary says, “because it is my favorite place.”
If you choose to split the dialogue in half but write it into two different sentences, then you would end the sentence after the dialogue tag. The following sentence in the dialogue will be capitalized.
“I love the pool,” Mary says. “It is my favorite place.”
Dialogue Tags & Synonyms
Overusing different dialogue tags is easy to do. Do you ever worry you are repeating the word “said” too much in your text? You will want to use “said” more than anything else because this basic word blends into the background. If you are worried about this, you might try using some other tags to give your dialogue more variety but too much can have a negative effect. If you have a conversation where your characters whisper, say, shout, exclaim, state, tattle, press, or murmured... This is too much and can be quite rocky to read. I recommend using the fancier or more descriptive words only when the story really calls for it. Make these moments stand out but do not overuse them. Otherwise, stick to “said” to keep it simple and concise.
Constantly changing to different emotions across the dialogue tags can be jarring as well. Be sure to keep your characters’ and their emotions stable enough so it doesn’t feel like they are changing every single sentence. (Switching between whisper, snap, gloat, say, and shout will do this.)
Also, think before you use a dialogue tag if it is appropriate for dialogue. For example, to say a character sighs or laughs for a dialogue tag is commonly done. But is laughing talking? Is sighing talking? It is not. You can talk and sigh, but you cannot sigh as a way to talk. Be sure to catch these details so you avoid using these tags incorrectly.
Examples:
“I hate going to school,” I sighed.
Possible Correction: I sighed. “I hate going to school.”
“That is so funny!” I laughed.
Possible Correction: “That is so funny!” I laughed. (put “I laughed” into a new sentence, not as a dialogue tag.)
Dialogue Tag Placement Confusion
“That’s a great idea, Scott.” Dan said, “I would like to help you with that.”
“Hey, how are you?” Bob said, “Did you want to meet up some time?”
Putting the dialogue tag on the second sentence of dialogue.
I’ve seen this a lot. I’m not sure if it is an attempt at variety, but when it comes to dialogue, too much variety can be distracting or confusing. In this instance of variety, the dialogue tag is being moved around. While that is possible, I would never use it this way because it is confusing. While the entire statements are being said by the same person, it is hard to tell, and your reader might wonder who is saying the first part of these sentences. To correct this, you can restructure your lines (as I show below) but an easy fix is to attach the dialogue tag to the first sentence, instead of at the beginning of the second.
Now, if a sentence of dialogue is interrupted by a tag (but is still one entire sentence) you can plug the dialogue tag in the center. If not, put it only at the end or beginning.
Examples:
“That’s a great idea, Scott. I would like to help you with that,” Dan said.
“That’s a great idea,” Dan said, “I would like to help you with that.”
“Hey, how are you?” Bob asks. “Did you want to meet up some time?”
“That’s a great idea,” Dan said. “Let’s meet up on Thursday?”
Combining Tag with Multiple Actions: Too Much at Once!
When writing, it’s important to keep your language clear and concise. This means avoiding repetition, using one adjective for a description instead of three, and more. Have you ever seen dialogue tags where the sentence feels like a big list of actions?
“I would love to go,” Jeff says as he holds open the door and walks into the café after me.
“I love listening to music!” the girl says as she enters the room carrying a radio and popping open a CD case.
“Don’t forget the milk,” mom says as she picks up a carton of eggs and puts it into her basket besides the pineapple before leaning down and grabbing a container of butter next.
These sentences are run-ons. You have the dialogue (which is a part of the sentence,) the dialogue tag, and then all these actions and things going on. If everything is in the same sentence, it is usually happening all at once. But are we able to talk, hold open the door, and walk into the café all in the same moment? No. These things all happen individually, no matter how close they feel in a moment. These need to be split up. Your dialogue, when able, should only be attached to the dialogue tag. If not, it is way too much at once and can feel cluttered.
To fix these, consider creating a new sentence and cut down on some of the descriptions.
Possible corrections:
“I would love to go,” Jeff says. He holds open the café door for me and we walk inside.
A girl enters the room with a radio and CD case in her hands. “I love listening to music!” she exclaims. She pops open her CD case.
“Don’t forget the milk,” mom says. She picks up a carton of eggs and puts it in the basket besides the pineapple. Next, she leans down to grab a container of butter.
Dialogue with no Breaks Over Multiple Paragraphs
Most memorably, in books like Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling, where characters sometimes have huge dialogue backstories or explanations, there are moments when the dialogue stretches over more than a paragraph, without taking a break. As a kid, I read these sections, so confused where the dialogue began or ended because I didn’t understand the punctuation for these moments.
If you have a long text of dialogue, it will start with an open quote (“) like normal. But, when it goes to a new paragraph, you do not use the close quotation mark (”) because the speaker is still talking. The start of the new paragraph inside that dialogue will begin with an open quotation mark (“) to show that the dialogue is, in fact, continuing. Only once you have come to the very end of the dialogue do you finally close it.
Here is any example of one continuous line of dialogue over multiple paragraphs. Notice how at the end of each paragraph (within the dialogue quotation marks) there are no closed marks until the very end. Imagine someone is talking to their friend about their boyfriend.
“Brad told me he was going to the grocery store to pick up some snacks. It was Labor Day so I wanted marshmallows, chocolate, graham crackers, and more. We were out of milk, eggs, and butter. His mother was coming over the next week too, so we needed to restock the wine.
“Anyways, I get home and Brad isn’t there and all the groceries are on the kitchen floor. The milk and other perishables had spoiled! How could he do that? I called his cell phone, I called his work, I couldn’t reach him.
“Did you know I always thought something would happen to him? Brad had a way of forgetting his phone at home or getting back from work at weird times. I just didn’t think it would happen so soon. I didn’t think I wouldn’t see him for months after that.”
Now, my big argument against dialogue like this is that, unless the character is sitting in a quiet room and holds their audience captive, I don’t think this is very natural. Stories and dialogue should be interwoven in between the setting, the other character’s reactions, and more. I would recommend breaking up this character’s conversation about poor Brad some other way but, this has served its purpose as an example!
Conclusion
That’s it for today! I could keep going but I think this is plenty of information to enjoy right now. If you are a subscriber or are a Patron over on my Patreon page, be sure to head over there to see even more examples on all these topics. I will have a page of dialogue over there as well with all these different mistakes in them where I will point out rewrite suggestions, and more.
I hope these tips help! Be sure to drop into the comments section below and either let me know what one is your favorite or what tip you have never heard of before. Happy writing!
Best,
Danni Lynn, Evangeline40003