The Mechanics of Writing Dialogue ..................................................

Lecture 7

A

V ZH VDZ LQ DQ HDUOLHU OHFWXUH ¿FWLRQDO SHRSOH DUH RIWHQ PRUH

memorable than real people because they are less complicated and
PRUHYLYLG%\WKHVDPHWRNHQGLDORJXHLQ¿FWLRQFDQEHPRUHYLYLG
and memorable than real speech because it is more focused and coherent than
UHDOVSHHFK)XUWKHULQ¿FWLRQGLDORJXHKDVDSXUSRVH²XVXDOO\WRHYRNH
character, advance the plot, or provide exposition—while real-life dialogue
LVRIWHQUDPEOLQJLQFRKHUHQWRUGXOO,QWKLV¿UVWOHFWXUHRQGLDORJXHZH¶OO
talk about the mechanics of writing dialogue and some basic techniques for
using dialogue tags and for mixing speech, action, and exposition.

Rules of Dialogue
z The mechanical rules of dialogue, including frequent paragraph breaks
and the use of quotation marks, serve two fundamental purposes: to
separate direct quotations by the characters from the rest of the narrative
and to clarify for the reader just who is speaking at any given time. Some
excellent writers have ignored these conventions in writing dialogue, but
in most cases, using nonstandard formats or punctuation for dialogue is
not worth the extra effort it requires from the reader to interpret the text.

z 7KH¿UVWUXOHIRUZULWLQJGLDORJXHLVWKDWDOOGLUHFWTXRWDWLRQVVKRXOGEH
set apart from the rest of the text by quotation marks, and the second
rule is that every time a new character speaks or the speaker changes,
WKDW¿UVWOLQHRIGLDORJXHVKRXOGEHVHWDSDUWZLWKDSDUDJUDSKEUHDN
Also, the beginning of a direct quotation should always begin with a
capital letter.

z In its most basic form, a GLDORJXHWDJ is simply the name of a character
or a pronoun standing in for the name, plus some variation of the verb
VD\: “He said,” “Bob exclaimed,” and so on. The rules for punctuating
dialogue tags can be a little tricky.