Dialogue is a vital part of most fiction stories, but long conversations can get confusing for a reader if they're not tagged, punctuated and delivered correctly.
These are some rules of thumb to follow to help you get all your speech tags and verbs right. You can break a lot of these rules - grammar is always flexible - but you must know them first before trying to break them.
This is a big chapter, so here's a summary of what we'll cover:
1) New speaker, new line
2) Getting the punctuation right
3) Where to put tags
4) When to omit tags
5) Said versus other verbs
6) Double telling and other verb no-nos
7) Names or pronouns?
8) Using action to break up dialogue
9) When to avoid dialogue altogether
1) New speaker, new line
In fiction writing, if you're swapping to a new speaker you would generally put their dialogue on a new line. Putting two speakers in the same paragraph can be confusing - the reader will need to take a second to figure out that you've swapped to someone else, which adds reader strain.
INCORRECT
"But Mr Plimplomb," she said, "whatever will we do?" He looked at her and smiled. "My darling, we'll run away together."
CORRECT
"But Mr Plimplomb," she said, "whatever will we do?"
He looked at her and smiled. "My darling, we'll run away together."
2) Getting the punctuation right
For speech, normally you'd use quotation marks - " ". Some writers use inverted commas instead.
The first word in a new bit of dialogue is typically capitalised.
Additionally:
Dialogue at beginning of sentence: Capitalise the first letter of the dialogue, end with a comma inside the quotation marks, and don't capitalise the next word after (unless it's a name). If you use a question mark or exclamation mark instead of a comma, you still wouldn't capitalise the next word.
Examples:
"My darling, we'll run away together," he said.
"My darling, shall we run away together?" he said.
"My darling, we'll run away together," Mr Plimplomb said.
Dialogue in the middle of a sentence: Capitalise the first letter of the first bit of dialogue, but not the first letter of the second bit. End the first with a comma as above, and use a comma to lead into the next bit of dialogue.
Example:
"But Mr Plimplomb," she said, "whatever will we do?"
More complicated example:
"Mr Plimplomb, really," she said. "You must think so little of me." (this is not 'dialogue in the middle of a sentence', it's two separate sentences)
Dialogue at the end of a sentence: The same rules apply, but with the speech tag coming before the dialogue. The speech tag ends in a comma, and the first letter of the dialogue is capitalised.
Example:
Then Mr Plimplomb said, "Fine."
Other punctuation you can use in dialogue
Use an elipses to suggest the speech is being drawn out at the end. "I don't know how I feel about this..."
Use a dash to indicate the speech has been cut off. "I don't know how I feel-" You'd then add dialogue immediately under it to 'cut it off' with.
YOU ARE READING
The Book on FICTION WRITING | Advice for New Writers
Non-FictionThe #1 Wattpad book on fictionwriting. So you want to be a fiction writer? Here's what you should know. * * * Everyone likes to say that in fiction writing, there are no rules. But, well, they're wrong. There's a LOT of rules, and you can't start t...
