Dialogue
Dialogue refers to a conversation or discussion or to the act of having a conversation or discussion. It can also describe something related to conversation or discussion.
Dialogue, when used as a literary technique, helps to advance the plot of a narrative, as characters engage in dialogue to reveal plans of action and their inner thoughts and emotions. Sometimes, authors show us a character’s inner dialogue where thoughts and feelings are revealed as the character has a conversation with him or herself. Often, we read outer dialogue, which occurs between two characters as spoken language.Examples of Dialogue:
“Lisa,” said Kyle, “I need help moving this box of toys for the garage sale. Will you help me?”
“Sure!” Lisa put her book down and moved to lift one end of the box for her brother. She glanced down into the box. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “You can’t give away your Harry Potter collection!”
“Well, I am not taking them to college with me.” Kyle smiled at his little sister. “Do you want them?”
“Yes!” Lisa smiled back. “I will read them all again, and it will remind me of how we used to pretend to be Harry and Hermione.”
“They are yours, Squirt.” As Kyle smiled as his sister, he realized how much things would change in the next few days.
Here are the main rules for writing dialogue:
- Each speaker gets a new paragraph. Every time someone speaks, you show this by creating a new paragraph. Yes, even if your characters are only saying one word, they get new paragraphs.
- Each paragraph is indented. The only exception for this is if it’s the start of a chapter or after a scene break, where the first line is never indented, including with dialogue.
- Punctuation for what’s said goes inside the quotation marks. Any time the punctuation is a part of the person speaking, they go inside the quotes so the reader knows how the dialogue is said.
- Long speeches with several paragraphs don’t have end quotations. You’ll see more on this below, but overall, if one character is speaking for so long they have separate paragraphs, the quotation marks on the end are removed, but you start the next paragraph with them.
- Use single quotes if the person speaking is quoting someone else. If you have a character who says, “Man, don’t you love it when girls say, ‘I’m fine’?”, the single quotes indicate what someone else says.
- Skip the small talk and focus on important information only. Unless that small talk is relevant for character development, skip it and get to the point, this isn’t real life and will actually feel more fake if you have too much.
