Dialogue

Part 1: How to write dialogue

Dialogue is an area where many people run into difficulty, and one of the things which makes people run-aground is a lack of knowledge about the rules which govern how dialogue is to be structured. Make sure you follow these basic grammatical conventions when writing dialogue in a story:

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1. Use Quotation Marks

Quotation marks need to surround any dialogue that’s spoken by a character. It may sound basic, but it’s easy to forget a quotation mark when writing, and if you don’t catch it during proofreading it can derail an entire paragraph.

There are no set rules on whether to use double (“) or single (‘) quotation marks. It seems that American authors tend to use the double (“), while authors with a British heritage prefer single (‘) marks. The most important thing is that you are consistent in your usage.

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2. Use Proper Punctuation

Dialogue must be punctuated. All punctuation marks must go inside the quotation marks, including punctuation marks at the end of a sentence (such as full stops, ellipses, exclamation and question marks).

A full stop should never precede a dialogue tag, such as “said”, “whispered”, “shouted”, etc. Normally a comma will be used, although exclamation marks, questions marks, ellipses and hyphens are acceptable in certain circumstances.

For example:

“I think it is going to be a hot day,” said Joe.

“What was the point of that question?” asked Jennifer.

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3. Only one Character can Speak in each Paragraph

Look at any book you’ve read recently. During a conversation, no two characters will speak within a single paragraph. The reason for this is that it looks sloppy and it becomes extremely difficult for the reader to follow who is speaking.

Read at the dialogue below. How many times do you need to reread it to figure out who is speaking to whom?

“I’m sorry but I’m here, Tom what was so urgent you needed me to come back so quickly?” He replied quite curiously. “We just got a case.” Reilly said bluntly with no enthusiasm then added there’s a “damsel in distress too” he smirked as Maguire suddenly brightened up. “We’ll then what are we waiting for?” Exclaimed the enthusiastic youngster. “You don’t even know where we’re going, do you?” Reilly said with a condescending tone. Maguire awkwardly laughed “You got me there” Maguire said embarrassed. “Well the last killing was located at Lincoln Park but I think we should say hello to the police” Reilly said with a smirk. “Are you sure last ti-” Reilly cut him off “We need the info for this case. We need to see if we can get any leads from the police, there has already been three murders!” he claimed. “Maguire, get the Ford convertible ready, we need to speak to the officers involved in the case”.

Now imagine how difficult it would be to follow this dialogue if instead of just two characters there were three, four or more people speaking. Fortunately, this can be easily fixed through properly spacing out the dialogue, so that each new piece of speech takes place in a new paragraph:

“I’m sorry but I’m here, Tom. What was so urgent you needed me to come back so quickly?” he replied, curious.

“We just got a case,” Reilly said bluntly, with no enthusiasm. “There’s a ‘damsel in distress’ too.” He smirked as Maguire suddenly brightened up.

“We’ll then what are we waiting for?” exclaimed the enthusiastic youngster.

“You don’t even know where we’re going, do you?” Reilly said in a condescending tone.

Maguire awkwardly laughed. “You got me there,” Maguire said, embarrassed.

“Well, the last killing was located at Lincoln Park, but I think we should say hello to the police,” Reilly said with a smirk.

“Are you sure? Last ti-“

Reilly cut him off. “We need the info for this case. We need to see if we can get any leads from the police; there have already been three murders!” he exclaimed. “Maguire, get the Ford convertible ready; we need to speak to the officers involved in the case.”

Remember: only one character can speak in each paragraph. Just drop down a line when there’s a new person speaking, and always make it clear who is saying what.

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