Dialog

[Carter]

It's something that just kills me every time I write. My WIP is so character driven, that I have to have a bunch of dialog. I've read several books trying to see how other authors use it, but it never feels right when I use it. For me, when I make a character start talking, I always start a whole new paragraph. I'm about 118 pages in, and I've kind of only just now realized that it also looks weird.

So where does it go? Just in the middle of a paragraph, willy nilly?

[reenkam]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Whenever a new character starts talking, you start a new paragraph. If one character is saying a lot, you make new paragraph to avoid massive character blocks. Sometimes it makes sense to have bits of description worked between dialogue within a single paragraph. Sometimes a paragraph starts with descrition and goes to dialogue. It pretty much all works.

And a lot of dialogue is fine. Lots of books have lots of dialogue.

[Carter]

It's actually more like, whenever a character starts talking, I automatically start a new paragraph. It's as natural as indenting to me. The thing is, they don't always have "blocks" of stuff to say until the next character starts talking.

Another problem I run into is a follow up to what they say. Such as
"I'm hungry," he said.

he said, she said, exclaimed (character name), questioned (character name) stuff like that bugs me too, do I always have to put a "he said" after they talk?

[PeeDee]

You have to put dialog tags. Or the literary police will arrest you.

No, you don't have to have 'em. So long as it is clear in the exchange who says what line, you can have many, or none.

I'm not sure what you're asking in your first message, though.

[Stew21]

I think Carter is asking about sections of all/only dialog.

Be sure to include action and other scene exposition. You can also use bits of action for the characters while they are speaking as tags instead of tagging them with "he said."

"You can go to hell." Kate stirred the cream into her coffee without looking up.

[swvaughn]

I have no idea if any of this will help, but I think (I'm probably wrong) you mean: Do you have to hit Enter every time a character starts speaking, and should dialogue always start on a new line? (Or not.)

Anyhoo. You can put dialogue at the beginning, middle, or end of a paragraph. In fact, I believe in mixing it up - vary, stagger, what have you. Since I have my WIP handy:

“Yes. No . . . strip first. I’ll have to get at that leg, eventually.” Jazz stepped back, and finally tore her gaze from the sight of his ruined flesh. “Donatti. Get the basin out of the big bag—wait, hand me the small one first.”

I did as she asked, and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Shouldn’t have sprung this on you.”

“I’m all right.” Jazz released a shallow breath and visibly pulled herself together. “Well, Houdini, at least I can say you’re never boring. Got any more . . . whoa.”

I followed her stunned gaze. “Christ, Ian!”

“What?” he countered.

“Don’t you believe in underwear?”

Ian scowled. “As a matter of fact, I don’t. And why should it bother you? Don’t you have the same equipment?”

“Yeah, but I don’t go showing it off to everyone! And you said I didn’t have any manners. Get a towel or something.”

“What the hell’s goin’ on in here?”

Shit. The motel owner, shotgun in tow, stood in the open doorway with a grim expression, holding what I assumed was a master key. “Not much,” I said, resigned to a lack of explanation. Anything I came up with now would sound ridiculous. At least the gun wasn’t pointed at me this time.

This is part of a scene with three people, and a fourth coming in at the end. Some dialogue is attributed (tagged), and some is not. Some dialogue lines start at the beginning of the paragraph, some hang out in the middle, some are at the end.

It's all about balance, and you get to dance around trying to find yours. The "only rule" in writing can also apply to dialogue: do whatever works. :D

[mscelina]

And if your story is character-driven, nothing will work better than the dialogue between them to involve the reader in your story/their lives. I find that I discover more about my characters from dialogue than exposition: how they speak, idiosyncracies, the tone--it's a great way to show their personalities rather than telling about them. Don't sell dialogue short.

[Ravenlocks]

The best part of this thread was reading the excerpts. :)

My WIP is so character driven, that I have to have a bunch of dialog.

I don't think this is true. You can do a lot of delving into your characters' minds without using much dialogue. The story should have as much dialogue as you want to put in, the amount that feels right to you. You shouldn't feel compelled to include more than you want to.

I'm also kinda hoping "character-driven" doesn't mean plotless in your case as it does in some. A plot is always a nice addition to a novel. :D

[preyer]

i agree with raven. consider subtext as your friend. invite subtext in for tea. lace said tea with liquor. tell subtext how attractive they are. have sex with subtext. six weeks later deny all knowledge of knowing subtext. move to another state for a few years, ignore subtext's communications, claiming you work too much as an excuse. hear from a friend that subtext is now a lesbian. call subtext hoping for a three-way.

something else to consider is the pace of the scene. sitting down in a restaurant having a normal conversation and you can let details of their surroundings develop between talking. if someone is robbing the place three seconds after the characters sit down, you're more apt to want to front-load the scene with description rather slow your action down. same deal with dialogue. for instance, you'd probably set up the scene before the characters got into a shouting match, pausing to throw a plate or rip up the paternity result, not lengthy descriptions on their feelings, thoughts, and implications.

duh, eh? yeah, well, sometimes being reminded of the obvious stuff helps.

i will say the one thing i'm not a big fan of is dialogue smack dab in the middle of a paragraph. to me it just brings the pace to a dead stop for some reason, and it looks out of place usually in the midst of dialogue, imo. notice how sw and molly's example had that at the very end of the scene? if you're going to do it, that's pretty much the one and only place i'd do it, else i'd work it out anywhere else. to me, middle dialogue is rather akin to putting a period on the scene's conversation. maybe that's just me.

[johnzakour]

I'm not sure what the problem is. It's quite natural to start a new paragraph when a new person is speaking. You don't have to use "he / she said" all the time but there's nothing wrong with it.

Here's a block from my latest release that is fairly text heavy (this is before any pro editing):


I sprung up to my feet and ran toward Randy. Reaching him, I grabbed the vine that had a python-like grip on his throat and slit it. Randy pulled the excess grape parts away from his throat.

“Are you DOSing crazy!” Randy screamed at me, his pale skin now as red as his hair.

Not exactly the thanks I was expecting.

“Uh, maybe,” I said.

“Plants stand down,” Randy said in a firm, yet still geeky (and angry) voice.

The plant released its grip on Randy. I looked over at Randy’s companion, she was free now also.

Randy dusted himself off, glaring at me all the while. “Zach, don’t you read the emails I send?”

I shook my head. “I skim them.”

Randy stomped a foot on the ground throwing his arms up in the air. “You skim them…” he mocked.

“You do send me a lot of email,” I said.

Randy rolled his eyes. “I’ve only sent you 23 messages this week.”

“Yeah, but Randy, it’s only Tuesday.”

“Every message I send you is of the utmost importance.”

“I agree,” HARV said, appearing from the room’s holographic projector. HARV was always one to bend over backwards to take Randy’s side.

“Randy, you send me more email than my mother and people trying to sell me natural male enhancement…”

Randy threw his arms onto his hips. “Well, your mother hasn’t inserted a multi-million-credit, super-highly-advanced, cognitive computer into your brain. Has she?”

“No, of course not,” I said.

HARV continued his rant. “As for those other people, I won’t even justify that with a comment. Though you probably could use some help in that area.”

I use "said" a lot but I don't always start a paragraph that has dialog off with the dialog. I mix it up a bit.

Not sure if that helps or not.

[Straka]

saying your novel is character driven is tricky - i just got busted in letting that slip. All stories have characters, that's why they are stories. To me a character driven book is one like Fight Club. Its about people I doubt I'd really like to be friends with in real life but like hearing about them.

Tyler's words coming from my mouth, and I used to be such a nice person. ;-)

[job]

It's actually more like, whenever a character starts talking, I automatically start a new paragraph. It's as natural as indenting to me.

You change paragraphs every time you switch to a new speaker.
This is a convention.



The thing is, they don't always have "blocks" of stuff to say until the next character starts talking.

Sometimes the character will have a lot to say or there will be bits and pieces of action or thought or description all around the dialog. This makes for a long paragraph.

Sometimes there will be a single word of dialog.

Both of these are all right.

The space around short pargraphs is called 'white space' and it is highly desirable.


Another problem I run into is a follow up to what they say. Such as
"I'm hungry," he said.

he said, she said, exclaimed (character name), questioned (character name) stuff like that bugs me too, do I always have to put a "he said" after they talk?


This is 'tagging'.


--Tags can be a 'said'.
"You're a frog," the magician said.

-- Tags can be a 'saidism' -- questioned, added, opined and an infinite etc.
"You're a frog," the magician intoned.

-- Tags can be an action.
"You're a frog." The magician waved his magic wand.

-- Tags can be an internal -- that is, something the speaker thinks.
"You're a frog." The magician considered this problem.

-- Tags can be internal monologue -- the speaker talks to himself.
"You're a frog." Oh good, the magician thought.

-- Tags can be by responsion -- that is, it's obvious because it's a response.
"What do you think?" George said.
"We have problems," the Magician said.
"What?"
"You're a frog."

-- Tags can be by 'voice' -- that is, only one character sounds like that.
"Ye be a frog, lad."


There are a couple other basic ways to tag, but they're more complex and would take longer to explain.


Read some folks with good technique. Watch how they tell you who is speaking. Dunnett does this very well.

[James D. Macdonald]

Go, read The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Note how a master does dialog.

[AnnieColleen]

-- Tags can be a 'saidism' -- questioned, added, chortleed and an infinite etc.
"You're a frog," the magician intoned.

Or a tag can be a Tom Swifty.

"You're a frog," the magician croaked.

Not a recommended technique!

[Dustry Joe]

"Damn!" said Tom, grandly but cooly.

[job]

"Damn!" said Tom, grandly but cooly.

Oh, Giggle.

[ORION]

ha ha ha ha I just now got that...

[FennelGiraffe]

--Tags can be a 'said'.
"You're a frog," the magician said.

-- Tags can be a 'saidism' -- questioned, added, chortleed and an infinite etc.
"You're a frog," the magician intoned.
Or a tag can be a Tom Swifty.

"You're a frog," the magician croaked.

Not a recommended technique!
I'm going to quibble with job's terminology. (It wouldn't be AW if somebody didn't find something to argue about. :D)

The above examples are tags; the rest aren't. They do the same job--identifying the speaker--but they aren't tags.

One reason for making the distinction is punctuation, which I've highlighted in these examples. A tag and the associated dialog are all one sentence, so a comma is used to separate them. In the other attribution examples, the dialog is a sentence unto itself and the identification of the speaker is a separate sentence. Thus, a period is used.

-- Tags can be an action.
"You're a frog." The magician waved his magic wand.

-- Tags can be an internal -- that is, something the speaker thinks.
"You're a frog." The magician considered this problem.

-- Tags can be internal monologue -- the speaker talks to himself.
"You're a frog." Oh good, the magician thought.

-- Tags can be by responsion -- that is, it's obvious because it's a response.
"What do you think?" George said.
"We have problems," the Magician said.
"What?"
"You're a frog."

-- Tags can be by 'voice' -- that is, only one character sounds like that.
"Ye be a frog, lad."
Other than my one quibble, I actually agree these are good examples of the range of techniques available for dialog attribution.

I would further suggest that dialog tags (by my definition of the word) are best used as little as possible. For the most part, rely on the other techniques.

[johnzakour]

"Tags" can also come at the beginning of the sentence, for instance:

Lunging at me he said, "Tag you're it!"

(Though I'm not sure using FG's terminology this is a tag. It's still a technique you can use.)

[preyer]

you don't even have to read the book, just pick it and flip through it to find examples of how dialogue is used. i think to make it simpler, take ten minutes and do a little excercise: if D is dialogue, T is a dialogue tag (like 'he said' or 'Tom belched') and X is description, arrange some or all of these into a list, print it out and keep it by your keyboard until you don't need it anymore.

for example:

X. "D."

"D," T.

X. "D," T. X.

and just find as many combinations as you can. you're likely to come up with some pretty ridiculous examples you'll never use, but also some interesting things like:

"I... can't... help it" -- Biff's finger tugged on the trigger-- "you... have... to die!"

the one thing i've never been criticized on is my dialogue. funny, that. there're some basic 'rules' to keep in mind, such as don't make the character sound stilted if that's not your intention (my definition of stilted, others may disagree, is when a character's speach is unrealistic and usually too formal), you can use dialogue to kill a lot of exposition, but avoid the 'well, bob, as you know...' trap, and good dialogue isn't necessarily *realistic* dialogue, which, imo, is a tough concept to grasp. i think the perfect example of the last thing is in 'star wars' when obi-wan says, 'you must do what you feel is right, of course.' it's an awesome bit of dialogue... which no one i've ever met in real life would ever say. after he says, 'that's good, you've taken your first steps into a larger world,' or whatever, in real life i'd look at this old man who's been alone for twenty years, the fact he's wearing a robe with a phallic symbol hanging off his belt, and who speaks like that and say, 'yeah, you're a pervert, ain'tcha? this whole force thing is just a scam to get into my poncho, isn't it? we got robots for that kind of thing, old man!'

[BlueLucario]

It's something that just kills me every time I write. My WIP is so character driven, that I have to have a bunch of dialog. I've read several books trying to see how other authors use it, but it never feels right when I use it. For me, when I make a character start talking, I always start a whole new paragraph. I'm about 118 pages in, and I've kind of only just now realized that it also looks weird.

So where does it go? Just in the middle of a paragraph, willy nilly?

It's simple. When you start dialogue, make a new paragraph. And for each dialogue they are one space apart.(Press enter two times). You can try that if you want but I suggest you put a space between quotes so it's an easy read.

Each quote is a new paragraph. Stay that way. Imagine a whole conversation one paragraph. Is it confusing? Some readers are used to reading quotes seperately so just keep it that way.

[cethklein]

That's not always true. Example:

"Shut up Lex," Brennor said with a smirk. "Also, don't even try and tell me you think those drones can't fire back, because they most certainly can. As I recall I even won our little wager on that subject last time, did I not?" He then leaned back in his chair, awaiting Lex's response which was sure to follow.

See I used two sets of quotes in one paragraph. Now once Lex replies to Brennor, THEN I need to start a new paragraph.

[johnzakour]

The point is there are a lot of ways to do dialog. TMK (to my knowledge) each speaker just needs their own paragraph(s) but there are many variations of this.

[Dustry Joe]

"Shut up," he explained.

[job]

I'm going to quibble with job's terminology. (It wouldn't be AW if somebody didn't find something to argue about. :D)

The above examples are tags; the rest aren't. They do the same job--identifying the speaker--but they aren't tags.


Hi Fennel --

I would not dare to quibble terminology with you. (g)

'Tags' and 'tagging' make a terminology of convenience for the many ways of attributing dialog. So useful, especially as other ways of saying can be less simple and clear.

[job]

You change paragraphs every time you switch to a new speaker.
This is a convention.

Coming back to this. Sometimes two speakers exist in a single paragraph. Rare, though.


"It's too late," George said and waited for the answering, "Much too late," from Susan.

[johnzakour]

Coming back to this. Sometimes two speakers exist in a single paragraph. Rare, though.


"It's too late," George said and waited for the answering, "Much too late," from Susan.

"Oh yuck," said John. "I find that awkward wording, plus it just makes things more complicated," he added.

The point is there are many acceptable ways to get the job done. The most important thing is to write!

[FennelGiraffe]

Hi Fennel --

I would not dare to quibble terminology with you. (g)

Awww, come on. Let's quibble! :box:

Coming back to this. Sometimes two speakers exist in a single paragraph. Rare, though.


"It's too late," George said and waited for the answering, "Much too late," from Susan.

I'm not sure that's really Susan's speech being quoted. To me it reads as George's expectation of what Susan will say. At the very least it's ambiguous whether Susan actually says it. But it is indeed a rare circumstance that would work that way.

[preyer]

there's a reason two speakers in one paragraph is rare. i doubt you'll find many professionals and editors advocating this approach. or many writers, for that matter. *if* you do find an example, chances are the second character's dialogue is just a few words.

honestly, i can't think of a single instance where a professional has done this and made it into print, and the fact that *if* you find an example that you'll probably have to slog through fifty books to do so should tell you something, eh?

my advice on this one is just don't do it.

[dpaterso]

From the Turkey City Lexicon (http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html) by Lewis Shiner and Bruce Sterling (available on the SFWA.org (http://www.sfwa.org/) website, under Resources):

"Said" Bookism

An artificial verb used to avoid the word "said." "Said" is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than "he retorted," "she inquired," "he ejaculated," and other oddities. The term "said-book" comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word "said," which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.

Tom Swifty

An unseemly compulsion to follow the word "said" with a colorful adverb, as in "'We'd better hurry,' Tom said swiftly." This was a standard mannerism of the old Tom Swift adventure dime-novels. Good dialogue can stand on its own without a clutter of adverbial props.

Also worth reading:

The Standard Deviations of Writing (http://www.sfwa.org/writing/mistakes_allen.htm) by Roger MacBride Allen.

-Derek

[job]

there's a reason two speakers in one paragraph is rare. i doubt you'll find many professionals and editors advocating this approach. or many writers, for that matter. *if* you do find an example, chances are the second character's dialogue is just a few words.

honestly, i can't think of a single instance where a professional has done this and made it into print, and the fact that *if* you find an example that you'll probably have to slog through fifty books to do so should tell you something, eh?

my advice on this one is just don't do it.


Having said that each new speaker gets his own paragraph, I felt it necessary to add that sometimes, rarely, they don't.

I wouldn't do it myself since it would be distracting, but I have seen it a time or two.

[job]

Oh heck

"It's too late," George said and heard the answering, "Much too late," from Susan.

(jo, thinking ... hmmmm ... I hope I got it right that time.)

[ZannaPerry]

I'm not real crazy about dialogue myself. Sometimes I don't feel I can get as emotional as my characters and what they say and not make it sound like a soap opera. But sometimes.....only sometimes I will get a good hour of writing in with just dialogue and I would be sooooo into it that I can't stop. I usually try to focus just on dialogue first and then go back and write the actions and emotions in between. It helps me....and every writer is different I have to keep telling myself.

[Stuart Clark]

I concur with all of the points expressed previously. You don't always need tags, especially if it's only two people talking, it should be obvious from the dialogue who is saying what. In addition to that, "he said" "she said" after every spoken line I find gets a bit irritating.

I do use a new paragraph for each new speaker and I don't think there's a problem putting speech in the middle of a paragraph as long as it is clear who is saying it. I wouldn't use two speakers in the same paragraph - but I will have additional words spoken from the same character later on in the same paragraph. Here's an example from my WIP:

Wood strode purposefully into Lieberwits' office. The detective looked up at his entrance. "What you got for me?"
Wood looked up where the small office's holo-screen should be. "That thing work?"
"Yeah." Lieberwits pushed the button on his desk that would bring the screen to life.
"It's hooked up to the mainframe, right?"
"As far as I know. Should be."
"All right," Wood huffed. He looked up at the rectangular screen now transmitting pictures. He lifted his arm and pressed a button on his wrist unit, changing the input of the monitor, and then continued to type on his wrist as he began to access the central computer. A moment later a still picture appeared on the screen. It was the image of a young man. It was no-one that Lieberwits was familiar with.
"Who's that?"
"That…" Wood pointed to the screen, "…is one Toby Napoli."
Lieberwits scrutinized the image further. Napoli looked like a regular guy. A wide grin and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. His face framed by thick, dark, curly hair that came down to his collar, fashioned in a style that dated the picture somewhat.
Wood seemed to read his mind. "That's an old picture," he said. "Taken from his college files."