How To Write

Dialogue

Alrighty alrighty alrighty!

Today's lesson is on something that deeply irritates me whenever I read a story, and that is the way people incorporate speaking.

Speaking is a large part of every story. It's very difficult to have a book without any dialogue, which means we all have to incorporate it in some way or another.

I'm here to help you learn how to write it effectively!

To get a more specific look at what we're learning today, I should note that we are not learning about how to keep a conversation flowing, or what you should write for dialogue, we are looking more along the lines of technicalities; i.e. periods, commas, actions and tags, etc.

Let's get started with the biggest mistake people make.

"If I could, I would." She grumbled.

This sentence is incorrect. This is one sentence, and 'She' should not be capitalized. Instead of a period in quotes like this, you use a comma.

"If I could, I would," she grumbled.

This version is more correct. It is one flowing sentence.

This rule applies also to other punctuation.

"And what makes you think that?" she asked.

"You could just believe me!" they shouted.

"If I knew, I would tell you. You believe me, right?" he pleaded.

With all of these, the end of the quote is not the end of the sentence as a whole, because you have to add the part where they were speaking. 

However, if you choose not to add the tag, you use a period instead of a comma, because it is the end of the sentence.

"Then Mai shouldn't have left."

Another thing to mention is if the tag is at the beginning of the sentence.

He rolled his eyes and replied, "They knew what they were doing."

This gets a bit trickier here, as you may notice. The comma goes after the tag (replied) and before the quotes. However, since the quote is the beginning of the spoken sentence, it is capitalized.

And now we move into split dialogue.

1. "Please help!" she screamed. "Please, somebody help me!"

2. "If you knew what they were doing," he snapped, "you would have stopped them when I told you to."

3. "But-" she gasped, "-how could I have possibly known?"

4. "And yet-" They sat down with a cold smile. "-you could not stop me."

5. "What could we have done?" She ran her shaking hands through her hair. "What could we have done differently?"

In sentence 1, we see two separate sentences in the dialogue. Therefore, the tag (screamed) does not need a comma after it, and can end there. However, the first piece of dialogue and the tag are part of the same sentence, so 'she' is not capitalized.

In sentence 2, the quote is all one sentence. Therefore, we use a comma both before and after the tag (snapped), and 'he' is not capitalized.

Sentence 3 is another example of what you could do with sentence 2. Dash marks can be used to show the break in a sentence, or a pause in their speaking instead of the commas. However, a comma still has to be used after the tag (gasped), and 'she' still must be lower case.

In sentence 4, the quote is one sentence, but they are separated by an action. In this case, you would use dash marks to show the break, and capitalize the subject (they). However, when you continue the sentence, ("-you could not stop me"), you do not capitalize it, as it was part of the earlier sentence.

Sentence 5 is, like sentence 1, two separate sentences. In this case, the first quote and the action are not one sentence, unlike sentence 1, and you would capitalize 'she'.

Another thing to note about split dialogue, you only split the dialogue where you want a pause or a breath in the dialogue. For example:

"If you knew what they were," he snapped, "doing you would have stopped them when I told you to."

This sentence sounds strange, because the part where the tag is is not where a natural pause would be in this sentence.

I hope this helps!