Writing Dialogue

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Knowing how to write dialogue is a crucial weapon in the writer’s arsenal, so for today’s Word-Craft Wednesday, I’m going to talk about some of the mechanics and style you should know.

Basic grammatical guidelines

All right, let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. 

The first word inside the quotation should be capitalized.  This is because the quotation is a sentence within a sentence, and the first words of sentences are always capitalized.

Ana said, “You can’t have the last piece of pie, Jill.”

If the quotation is being followed by a speech tag (for example, Bob said, he said, or Ella shouted), end the quote with a comma instead of a period.

“I was saving that piece,” Ana said.

This only works with periods.  Leave exclamation points and question marks as they are.

“That’s so unfair!” Ana said.

“Why?” Jill asked.

Also, notice that commas, periods, exclamation points, and question marks are always inside the quotation marks.

Now, observe the punctuation and capitalization in these two sentences.

“It’s not fair,” Ana snapped, “because you took the pie I’ve been looking forward to all day!”

“Sure it is,” Jill replied. “Your name wasn’t written on it or anything.”

In the first sentence, I am “interrupting” Ana’s statement with a speech tag, followed by a comma.  I do not capitalize “because,” since it is still technically part of Ana’s sentence.  However, when Jill speaks, she speaks in two separate sentences.   So, I put a period after the speech tag and capitalize “your,” since it is the first word of a new sentence.  Now, check this out:

“There you go,” Ana said, “blaming it on me.  Sometimes, I just want to punch you.”

“Sometimes” is capitalized because—that’s right—it’s a new sentence.

There are also occasions where you will have a quotation inside of a quotation.  To do this, use double quotes (“) on the exterior quotation and single quotes (‘) on the inside quotation.

“Did you just say, ‘Sometimes, I just want to punch you?’” Jill said.

The final punctuation mark always goes inside the innermost quotation mark.  Now, I have read books that used single quotes on the outside and double quotes on the inside, but those were generally older prints.  Modern day American usage follows the example I gave above; I don’t know about British or older guidelines.  

Finally, and perhaps the most important grammatical rule of dialogue is that every speaker gets a new paragraph.  You would never do this:

“Jill, you’re such a jerk!” Ana said.  Jill said, “At least I’m not a freak.”

Ana and Jill get separate paragraphs, like this:

“Jill, you’re such a jerk!” Ana said.

Jill said, “At least I’m not a freak.”

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember that each speaker gets their own paragraph.  It is incredibly difficult and confusing to read dialogue where multiple speakers are crammed into the same paragraph.  After years of reading, we are actually mentally programmed to expect dialogue to follow this rule—so when it doesn’t, it really throws us for a loop.  (I suppose that if all books were written using a different rule for dialogue, we would be trained to read it that way.) 

You would think that if reading one-speaker-to-a-paragraph dialogue comes naturally, writing it would as well.  However, this is not the case—so if you didn’t know to follow this rule, don’t feel bad.  Reading and writing, while related, are separate disciplines.  You might subconsciously be aware of how it’s supposed to be but you might not be consciously aware of how to make it that way.  It’s a little like the difference between looking at a painting and actually painting a painting. 

Basic style guidelines

Speech tags are one of the most important things in dialogue.  However, they can also be extremely problematic.  Read the following dialogue.

“Jill, you’re such a jerk!” Ana said.

“At least I’m not a freak,” Jill said.

“You think I’m a freak?” Ana said.

“I think you’re worse than a freak,” Jill said.

All of the speech tags have exactly the same verb.  It’s very repetitive and boring; this is a big fight, so I want it to be interesting.

“Jill, you’re such a jerk!” Ana said.

“At least I’m not a freak,” Jill replied.

“You think I’m a freak?” Ana asked.

“I think you’re worse than a freak,” Jill countered.

Why is it that this doesn’t seem that much better?  It’s still repetitive.  It’s supposed to be a heated argument between two sisters, and all of those speech tags are cluttering it up.  Once we have established that Ana and Jill are the speakers, we can actually drop the speech tags.

“Jill, you’re such a jerk!” Ana said.

“At least I’m not a freak,” Jill replied.

“You think I’m a freak?”

“I think you’re worse than a freak.”

Isn’t that better?  It moves much faster now.  However, be careful not to leave out the speech tags for too many quotations in a row.  

“I hate your face!” cried Ana.

“At least my face isn’t ugly,” Jill snapped.

“You are the most terrible person on the planet!”

“Well, it sure takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”

“What the heck is your problem?”

“You’re my problem.  I was perfectly happy before you came in here and ruined my day.”

“Oh. I ruined your day?”

“Yeah.  My day is totally shot now.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting there to be some sort of pie-related justice!”

“You didn’t seem so interested in justice when you took the cookie I had been saving.”

“Is that what this is all about? Revenge?”

“No. It’s about showing you what a rotten, prissy little princess you are.”

“I’m a prissy little princess?  Well, at least I’m not an evil dictator!”

“How am I an evil dictator?”

“You’re like Hitler, but with pie.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“You don’t make any sense!”

Now, who was the last speaker?  If you answered Ana, you’re correct.  However, you might have found that somewhere around “My day is totally shot now,” you had to double-check to see who was saying what.  This kind of dialogue with minimal speech tags certainly keeps the speed of the dialogue up, but it slows the reader down when they have to back-track to be sure they have the correct speaker in mind.

So how can we fix this?  We could throw in a few speech tags every couple of paragraphs as reminders, but they would make the dialogue feel flat and slow again.  The solution is to use “beats.”

“Beats” are so named because their function is to insert a very brief pause in the dialogue.  If you’ve ever done any acting or drama, you might see something like this:

CHARACTER 1: I am very angry with you.

CHARACTER 2: Oh, sure you are. [Beat] Wait, are you?

This direction indicates to the actor to pause, but only for a very brief moment.  In writing, the dialogue beat is generally indicated with a short sentence. 

“Oh, sure you are.” Betty shook her head. “Wait, are you?”

Beats like this are great because they also allow the reader to visualize other aspects of the scene, rather than just the dialogue itself.  If you think about all of the subtle body language we use, you can understand how dialogue is visual as well as auditory.  

Beats also alleviate some of the need for speech tags.  In my above example with Betty, I don’t need a speech tag to understand that Betty is the one speaking.  She has her own paragraph, and she is the only person mentioned in it.   However, if you follow a quotation with a beat instead of a speech tag, use a period instead of a comma.  Here’s a comparison.

“Oh, sure you are,” Betty said. “Wait, are you?”

“Oh, sure you are.” Betty shook her head. “Wait, are you?”

While I’m talking about beats, I feel like I also ought to mention amplified speech tags.  A simple speech tag is just the speaker (Bob, Mary, she) and a verb (said, cried, shouted).  I have heard a lot of different terms for modified tags, including amplified and “super said,” but the idea is that you add some sort of modifying word or phrase.  For example, “Bob said angrily” or “Mary cried, shaking with rage” would be modified speech tags.   The first example with Bob simply involves tacking an adverb on, while Mary’s example is a little more elaborate.  Mary’s example is sort of like combining a speech tag and a beat. 

Here’s how a combination of speech tags and beats affects Ana and Jill’s argument.

“I hate your face!” snapped Ana.

Jill rolled her eyes. “At least my face isn’t ugly.”

“You are the most terrible person on the planet!”

“Well, it sure takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”

Ana threw her arms up in the air. “What the heck is your problem?”

“You’re my problem.  I was perfectly happy before you came in here and ruined my day.”

“Oh. I ruined your day?”

“Yeah.  My day is totally shot now.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting there to be some sort of pie-related justice!”

Jill snorted. “You didn’t seem so interested in justice when you took the cookie I had been saving.”

“Is that what this is all about? Revenge?”

“No. It’s about showing you what a rotten, prissy little princess you are.”

“I’m a prissy little princess?” Ana gasped for a moment, searching for words. “Well, at least I’m not an evil dictator!”

“How am I an evil dictator?”

“You’re like Hitler, but with pie.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“You don’t make any sense!”

As you can see, the pace of the dialogue is still rapid, but it is far easier to tell who is saying what.  As a bonus, we have some details that help us visualize the argument a little better.

There is no magic formula for dialogue

When it comes to writing dialogue, there is no fixed way to do it, though different schools of thought suggest different methods.  It’s a matter of style and style preference, and every writer in the world is going to have his or her own opinion.

A lot of writers disagree about amplified speech tags.  Some writers believe in cutting as many adverbs as possible from writing altogether, so they discourage an adverbial “super said.”  This is because “shouted” and “said angrily” basically mean the same thing, but “shouted” is a lot stronger. Many also would say that my sentence example with Mary several paragraphs back should just be changed from an amplified tag to a beat, so you don’t have all the extra words cluttering things up.  It’s also in vogue right now for people to suggest that you use almost no speech tags at all, relying almost exclusively on beats and identifying nouns to establish the speaker.  

My opinion on all of this is to trust your intuition.  There isn’t such a thing as one right way to do it.  I believe that you need a variety of speech tags, amplified speech tags, and beats to keep your dialogue interesting.   You don’t want the tags and beats to distract from the dialogue, especially while writing a heated argument, so keep a minimalistic approach in mind.  Of course, what you do all depends on the type of dialogue you’re writing.  A heated argument needs to have fewer speech tags than a lengthy, laid-back discussion.  If you have more than two speakers, your need for tags or beats increases greatly, just so that you can tell who is saying what.   

Either way, you want to hit that just right balance, as if you were salting a bowl of soup.  You don’t want it to be so incredibly salty that you can only taste the salt, but you also don’t want it to be bland.  And, just like a taste for salt, the taste for speech tags and the like is highly subjective.

Now—go grab your pens (or keyboards) and write some awesome dialogue! 

How do you like to write dialogue? Share any thoughts, suggestions, or questions in the comments. 

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