Writing Dialogue
Hello! If you’re reading this, get ready to walk out a better writer. 😉 (For real!) Today let’s talk a little bit about dialogue. I’m going to pull some from my Wings of Fire fanfic, and we’ll analyze it together. Ready?
(For those savages who haven’t read Wings of Fire, well, first of all, you really should! And second, they’re dragons.)
“Peace? You awake?” Cliff’s voice did not successfully reach the volume required for a whisper, but it was reasonably less loud than it usually was.
“Mm hm,” he confirmed. He glanced at the window and saw that the first moon had slipped behind the horizon. The others would follow her in an hour. Peacemaker rolled onto his feet, shook out his ruff, and stretched his wings.
“Great! I was going to let you sleep in until past sunrise and everything, but I’ve been so bored for the past thirty minutes.”
“Wow,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “Your generosity overwhelms me. And you said you were bored? Why don’t you try sleeping? It’s a very effective way to pass the time. Take Mantis, for example.”
The HiveWing lay on his back, wings twitching as though he were flying in his current dream. “Sh, no, come back,” he whined quietly.
“I’ve tried,” Cliff said.
“No you haven’t.”
“Yeah, I haven’t.”
So, there are a few things I have to say about writing dialogue.
1. Begin a new paragraph when someone new starts speaking. I highlighted the speakers with different colors for this one. Notice how each paragraph has only one color? When writing a novel, it’s very important to distinguish between each speaker clearly so that the readers don’t need to think too hard about it. If I never start new paragraphs, it would get confusing. Look at this:
“Hey—you’re not going back to sleep either,” Cliff pointed out, getting up to follow him. “Yeah, but at least I tried.” Cliff drummed his talons against the stone floor. “Can I come with you?” “No.”
Could you tell who was talking? Not as easy as it was before, right?
2. Next is dialogue tags. You know, he said, she said, I exclaimed, Lucy scowled, Ray laughed, Laya mused. They can be fancy, and they can be simple, too. The important part is how they’re written. Here’s the basic rule: Dialogue tags should always start with a lowercase letter, unless beginning with a name. What do I mean? Let me show you.
“This is a sentence followed by a dialogue tag,” he explained.
“This,” she said, “is a sentence interrupted by a dialogue tag. These are usually placed strategically so that the reader needs to pause.”
“This is a sentence.” He crossed his arms. “That was an action. There’s no comma because the action is unrelated to my speech.”
“And this is a sentence followed by a dialogue tag and an action!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands out beside her.
“And that example was just weird,” he speculated with a raised brow.
And that’s really all I have for writing dialogue. Hope this is helpful!
P.S. I have not made any big progress in SMV since November 5th. T.T It’s partly to do with school, and partly to do with the fact that I have no idea how to write any of the characters in one of my groups. Now that I’m writing this, though, I realize I should probably just keep going with the other group, so as not to let Writers’ Block win. Oh! And I’ve finished and named Chapter 11! Introducing: The Road to Revolution. :D
Total Word Count for Week 1 of NaNoWriMo:
28,185
-25,163
3,022
Alright! Not too bad. (Though it really should’ve been closer to 10k, but oookkk.) How is everyone else doing with their writing goals this month?
