how to write speech in fiction

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• Punctuation |

Quotation marks

How to punctuate dialogue in fiction.

Structure and punctuate the dialogue in your novel or story to make readers believe they are listening to a real conversation and watching your characters interact with one another. You want to make it clear who is saying what, but achieve this as unobtrusively as possible.

Enclose direct speech (also called quoted speech, in which you repeat a character’s exact words) in quotation marks.

• “The cake tastes like bread,” Maya said.
• Lulu said, “The water tastes like paper.”
• “And the apples smell like tangerines,” said Farley.
• “Run!” she shouted.
• He asked, “Why?”

In American and Canadian writing, double quotation marks enclose quoted speech. Single quotes are generally used instead as speech marks in British, Australian, and other writing.

Use a comma to separate quoted speech from the speaker.

• “This vacation is boring , ” said Lulu.
• “I knew that , ” Maya said.
• She yelled , “Dragon!”
• Farley said , “I can’t find my shoes.”

Such clauses (“Maya said,” “she yelled”) identify the speaker and are called speech tags. Use commas both before and after a speech tag if it interrupts a speaker’s sentence.

• “The cake , ” she said , “tastes like bread.”
• “Why , ” she wondered , “do we need money?”

But use a period after a speech tag if a new sentence of quoted speech begins after it.

• “The cake tastes like bread,” said Maya . “ T he tea smells of coffee.”
• “I don’t know,” she said . “ Y ou can ask him yourself.”
• “We sell all kinds of packages,” Poco said . “ L et me show you our catalog.”

Capitalization

Capitalize the first word of a sentence of direct or quoted speech.

• Maya said, “ T he hens are loose again.”
• Lulu asked, “ D o you know where they are?”
• Farley cried, “ N ot again!”
• “ W e haven’t booked our tickets yet,” said Maya.

Capitalize the first word after a speech tag if it starts a new sentence.

• “We’ll call him again tonight,” Maya said. “ M aybe this time he’ll answer.” A new sentence begins after the speech tag.
• “Is he here?” she asked. “ W e need to speak with him.”

If a sentence of quoted speech that began before a speech tag continues after it (i.e., the speech tag appears mid-sentence), don’t capitalize the word that follows.

• “I think,” Maya said, “ w e should call him again tonight.” The same sentence continues after the speech tag.
• “Do you know,” she asked, “ i f he is here yet?”

Question marks and exclamation points

If a line of quoted speech ends in a question mark or an exclamation point, omit the comma that generally appears before the speech tag.

• Incorrect: “Who are you? , ” she asked. Correct: “Who are you?” she asked.
• Incorrect: “It’s here! , ” she cried. Correct: “It’s here!” she cried.

However, if the question or exclamation follows the speech tag, use a comma as usual.

• She asked , “Who are you?”
• She cried , “It’s here!”

Dashes and ellipses

Mark interrupted speech using an em dash .

• “You really should—” “Don’t you tell me what to do, Farley Dash!”

An ellipsis (three consecutive periods) can also mark an interruption. More often, it signifies indecision, an incomplete thought, or a pause. In dialogue, an ellipsis can show faltering speech or a thought trailing off.

• Maya asked, “Would you like another slice of chocolate cake?” “Oh, I really shouldn’t, but . . .”
• “I heard . . . what was that? Did you hear that?”

Speech tags: Who said what

Use a speech tag (also called a dialogue tag) to identify the character who is speaking. Here is a dialogue from The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett.

• The tree , in a voice like a very old door swinging open, said , “Serves you right.” There was a long silence. Then Rincewind said , “Did you say that?” “Yes.” “And that too?” “Yes.”

See how the conversation continues without a speech tag attached to every line of dialogue? Once the two speakers have been identified, the reader understands that they take turns speaking. Another speech tag is needed only when a new speaker is introduced or clarification is needed, as in the following conversation from Little Women .

• “Jo does use such slang words!” observed Amy , with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug. Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle. “Don’t, Jo. It’s so boyish!” “That’s why I do it.” “I detest rude, unladylike girls!” “I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!” “Birds in their little nests agree,” sang Beth , the peacemaker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the “pecking” ended for that time. “Really, girls, you are both to be blamed,” said Meg , beginning to lecture in her elder-sisterly fashion.

Omitting unnecessary speech tags helps the reader follow along with minimal disruption. You can also omit speech tags the first time a person speaks if it is clear who is speaking, as in the following excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , where both boys have already been introduced to us.

• Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved—but only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the time. Finally Tom said : “I can lick you!” “I’d like to see you try it.” “Well, I can do it.” “No you can’t, either.” “Yes I can.” “No you can’t.” “I can.” “You can’t.” “Can!” “Can’t!”

Of course in a conversation with more than two characters involved, you may have to use speech tags more often, as in the following extract from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

• We stared at him until he spoke: “Hey.” “Hey yourself,” said Jem pleasantly. “I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said . “I can read.” “So what?” I said . “I just thought you’d like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin’ I can do it. . .” “How old are you,” asked Jem , “four-and-a-half?” “Goin’ on seven.”

Use clear and simple speech tags. Don’t try to mix things up by unnecessarily finding synonyms for the verb say . Use alternatives to the word said (such as observed , whispered , cried , shouted , yelled , noted , remarked ) only if necessary to convey meaning to the reader.

Action tags

Action tags describe an action different from speaking and merit a sentence of their own. They are therefore separated from speech using a period, unlike speech tags, which take commas.

• “Farley says he ate a whole bar of chocolate this morning,” said Poco, looking up from his phone. Rita leaned forward . “Did he say chocolate ?” “Hmm? Yes. Why?” “Farley hates chocolate. It’s code . ” She got up and peered out the window . “Someone’s watching us.” “Nobody’s watching us, Rita . ” Poco scratched irritably at his chin . “You and Farley are always worrying about nothing.” “Oh yeah?” Rita pointed to the building opposite . “Then who is that?”

Here is an extract from The House of Mirth in which Edith Wharton effectively uses action tags to make us feel we are in the room, watching what’s going on. Note how she uses commas with speech tags but periods with action tags.

• “How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman . ” She leaned back in a luxury of discontent . Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake. “Even women , ” he said , “have been known to enjoy the privileges of a flat.” “Oh, governesses—or widows. But not girls—not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!” “I even know a girl who lives in a flat.” She sat up in surprise . “You do?” “I do , ” he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for cake.

If the action is described in an adverbial phrase appended to a speech tag, use commas as usual, as in the final line of the example above. But don’t use verbs that don’t describe speech as speech tags. Smiling , yawning , winking , and laughing , for example, are acts different from speaking.

• Incorrect: I don’t know what you mean,” she yawned . Correct: “I don’t know what you mean,” she said with a yawn.
• Incorrect: “Here it is,” he smiled . Correct: “Here it is,” he said , smiling.

Of course you can use such verbs in action tags, but use a period then rather than a comma to separate the tag from the speech.

• Incorrect: She yawned , “I don’t know what you mean.” Correct: She yawned . “I don’t know what you mean.”
• Incorrect: He smiled , “Here it is.” Correct: He smiled . “Here it is.”

New line for each speaker

To make it easy for the reader to follow a conversation, use a new line (paragraph change) each time the speaker changes. End each line of dialogue with a period. The paragraph change indicates to the reader a change in speaker, as in the following extract from The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.

• “Sarah, it’s bad for you to talk like that.” “Oh? How am I supposed to talk?” “I mean if you let yourself get angry you’ll be . . . consumed. You’ll burn up. It’s not productive.” “Oh, productive! Well, goodness, no, let’s not waste time on anything unproductive.”

Multiple paragraphs, single speaker

In the rare case that speech by a single speaker runs into multiple paragraphs (a running quotation), place an opening quotation mark at the start of each paragraph but a closing quotation mark only at the end of the final paragraph. All previous paragraphs remain unclosed. This tells the reader that the speaker has not changed at paragraph change.

• As Dash writes: “ Paragraph 1. “ Paragraph 2. “ Paragraph 3. ”

You will probably need to do this only when quoting a long speech, essay, or monologue. In normal dialogue, characters don’t speak entire paragraphs’ worth of words in one go.

Thoughts and internal dialogue

A character’s thoughts are often enclosed in quotation marks.

• “Why not?” he thought. “I can always change my mind later.”
• “She seems kind,” mused Maya. “I’m glad he met her.”

Quotation marks may be omitted with interior monologue. This can make it seem as though you are in a person’s head, listening in on their thoughts.

• It is, thought Peter Walsh, beginning to keep step with them, a very fine training. ( Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf)
• Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! ( Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery)

When quotation marks are omitted and a thought appears mid-sentence, the first word is often capitalized to set off the thought from the rest of the sentence.

• Then suddenly I thought: Why, what would life be without my puppy! ( A Dog’s Tale by Mark Twain)
• So I thought, Why waste five hours trying to versify the incident? ( Something Else Again by Franklin P. Adams)

But it is not essential to capitalize the first word of a thought if it is clearly being directly quoted, as in the following sentence from Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea .

• I suddenly thought, if he is no longer in the army, why does he have to come and see me at a holiday weekend when the roads are full of traffic?

A writer may also use formatting options, such as italics, as Terry Pratchett does in Going Postal , where the main character, Moist (yes, that’s his name), is in conversation with another character. Moist’s spoken words are enclosed in quotes and his thoughts shown in italics.

• Hold on a minute , Moist thought, this is only one city. It’s got gates. It’s completely surrounded by different directions to run. Does it matter what I sign?

Indirect or reported speech

Don’t use quotation marks if you are reporting a conversation or dialogue instead of quoting the speaker’s exact words.

• Direct (quoted) speech Poco started washing the apples. “Why didn’t you call me last night?” “I had a migraine,” Lulu said. but Indirect (reported) speech As he started washing the apples, Poco asked Lulu why she hadn’t called him the night before. She said it was because she’d had a migraine.

Dashes instead of quotes to mark dialogue

Dashes may be used instead of quotation marks to punctuate dialogue, as in this excerpt from A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle.

• — Will we go for a stroll, so? he said. — Yes, she said. — Right. He wiped the blade of the shovel on his sleeve. — Let’s get this gleaming for the lady. He let the spade hop gently on the path. Melody heard music. — Now we’re right, said Henry Smart. He held out his arm, offered it to Melody. — Hang on, said Melody.

Dashes can make dialogue seem more immediate, as though you’re watching two people talking. However, dashes are less common than quotation marks, which are more popular as speech marks for a reason: they indicate clearly where quoted speech begins and ends.

Omitting speech marks from dialogue

Some writers prefer to omit punctuation altogether, using neither quotation marks nor dashes. Cynan Jones’s The Dig omits speech marks to create an effect that is more immediate, more direct, more urgent.

• We’ve had a report of fly-tipping. He waited. I just wanted to ask whether you would know anything about that. What did they tip? asked the man. The policeman didn’t respond. He was looking at the junk and the big man saw and said, Does it look like I throw things away? Just wondered if you could help, sir, said the policeman.

Before opting for this minimalist style, ask yourself if your short story or novel requires it. Speech marks clearly outline quoted speech in a passage. By omitting them, you are making the reader pay extra attention to understand which words are quoted speech and which are narration. If you do use this method, review your writing carefully to make sure you don’t confuse (and irritate or tire out) the reader.

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Use a comma instead of a period at the end of a quote to separate it from the speaker.

Don’t use a comma after an exclamation point, even at the end of quoted text.

Don’t use a comma after a question mark.

Use a comma after a speech tag before the start of quoted speech.

Internal discourse can be punctuated with or without speech marks. A thought can begin either with a capital or a lowercase letter.

Both quotation marks and dashes can mark dialogue in fiction. Quotation marks are more common.

• How-To Guides

How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples)

One of the biggest mistakes made by writers is how they use dialogue in their stories. Today, we are going to teach you how to write dialogue in a story using some easy and effective techniques. So, get ready to learn some of the best techniques and tips for writing dialogue!

There are two main reasons why good dialogue is so important in works of fiction. First, good dialogue helps keep the reader interested and engaged in the story. Second, it makes your work easier to write, read and understand. So, if you want to write dialogue that is interesting, engaging and easy to read, keep on reading. We will be teaching you the best techniques and tips for writing dialogue in a story.

Internal vs External Dialogue

Direct vs indirect dialogue, 20 tips for formatting dialogue in stories, step 1: use a dialogue outline, step 2: write down a script, step 3: edit & review your script, step 4: sprinkle in some narrative, step 5: format your dialogue, what is dialogue .

Dialogue is the spoken words that are spoken between the characters of a story. It is also known as the conversation between the characters. Dialogue is a vital part of a story. It is the vehicle of the characters’ thoughts and emotions. Good dialogue helps show the reader how the characters think and feel. It also helps the reader better understand what is happening in the story. Good dialogue should be interesting, informative and natural. 

In a story, dialogue can be expressed internally as thoughts, or externally through conversations between characters. A character thinking to themself would be considered internal dialogue. Here there is no one else, just one character thinking or speaking to themselves:

Mary thought to herself, “what if I can do better…”

While two or more characters talking to each other in a scene would be an external dialogue:

“Watch out!” cried Sam. “What’s wrong with you?” laughed Kate.

In most cases, the words spoken by your character will be inside quotation marks. This is called direct dialogue. And then everything outside the quotation marks is called narrative:

“What do you want?” shrieked Penelope as she grabbed her notebooks. “Oh, nothing… Just checking if you needed anything,” sneered Peter as he tried to peek over at her notes.

Indirect dialogue is a summary of your dialogue. It lets the reader know that a conversation happened without repeating it exactly. For example:

She was still fuming from last night’s argument. After being called a liar and a thief, she had no choice but to leave home for good.

Direct dialogue is useful for quick conversations, while indirect dialogue is useful for summarising long pieces of dialogue. Which otherwise can get boring for the reader. Writers can combine both types of dialogue to increase tension and add drama to their stories.

Now you know some of the different types of dialogue in stories, let’s learn how to write dialogue in a story.

Here are the main tips to remember when formatting dialogue in stories or works of fiction:

• Always use quotation marks: All direct dialogue is written inside quotation marks, along with any punctuation relating to that dialogue.

• Don’t forget about dialogue tags: Dialogue tags are used to explain how a character said something.  Each tag has at least one noun or pronoun, and one verb indicating how the dialogue is spoken. For example, he said, she cried, they laughed and so on.

• Dialogue before tags: Dialogue before the dialogue tags should start with an uppercase. The dialogue tag itself begins with a lowercase.

• Dialogue after tags: Both the dialogue and dialogue tags start with an uppercase to signify the start of a conversation. The dialogue tags also have a comma afterwards, before the first set of quotation marks.

• Lowercase for continued dialogue: If the same character continues to speak after the dialogue tags or action, then this dialogue continues with a lowercase.

• Action after complete dialogue: Any action or narrative text after completed dialogue starts with an uppercase as a new sentence.

• Action interrupting dialogue: If the same character pauses their dialogue to do an action, then this action starts with a lowercase.

• Interruptions by other characters: If another character Interrupts a character’s dialogue, then their action starts with an uppercase on a new line. And an em dash (-) is used inside the quotation marks of the dialogue that was interrupted. 

• Use single quotes correctly: Single quotes mean that a character is quoting someone else.

• New paragraphs equal new speaker: When a new character starts speaking, it should be written in a new paragraph. 

• Use question marks correctly: If the dialogue ends with a question mark, then the part after the dialogue should begin with a lowercase.

• Exclamation marks: Similar to question marks, the next sentence should begin with a lowercase. 

• Em dashes equal being cut off: When a character has been interrupted or cut off in the middle of their speech, use an em dash (-).

• Ellipses mean trailing speech: When a character is trailing off in their speech or going on and on about something use ellipses (…). This is also good to use when a character does not know what to say.

• Spilt long dialogue into paragraphs: If a character is giving a long speech, then you can split this dialogue into multiple paragraphs. 

• Use commas appropriately: If it is not the end of the sentence then end the dialogue with a comma.

• Full stops to end dialogue: Dialogue ending with a full stop means it is the end of the entire sentence. 

• Avoid fancy dialogue tags: For example, ‘he moderated’ or ‘she articulated’. As this can distract the reader from what your characters are actually saying and the content of your story. It’s better to keep things simple, such as using he said or she said.
• No need for names: Avoid repeating your character’s name too many times. You could use pronouns or even nicknames. 
• Keep it informal: Think about how real conversations happen. Do people use technical or fancy language when speaking? Think about your character’s tone of voice and personality, what would they say in a given situation? 

Remember these rules, and you’ll be able to master dialogue writing in no time!

How to Write Dialogue in 5 Steps

Dialogue is tricky. Follow these easy steps to write effective dialogue in your stories or works of fiction:

A dialogue outline is a draft of what your characters will say before you actually write the dialogue down. This draft can be in the form of notes or any scribblings about your planned dialogue. Using your overall book outline , you can pinpoint the areas where you expect to see the most dialogue used in your story. You can then plan out the conversation between characters in these areas. 

A good thing about using a dialogue outline is that you can avoid your characters saying the same thing over and over again. You can also skim out any unnecessary dialogue scenes if you think they are unnecessary or pointless. 

Here is an example of a dialogue outline for a story:

You even use a spreadsheet to outline your story’s dialogue scenes.

In this step, you will just write down what the characters are saying in full. Don’t worry too much about punctuation and the correct formatting of dialogue. The purpose of this step is to determine what the characters will actually say in the scene and whether this provides any interesting information to your readers.

Start by writing down the full script of your character’s conversations for each major dialogue scene in your story. Here is an example of a dialogue script for a story:

Review your script from the previous step, and think about how it can be shortened or made more interesting. You might think about changing a few words that the characters use to make it sound more natural. Normally the use of slang words and informal language is a great way to make dialogue between characters sound more natural. You might also think about replacing any names with nicknames that characters in a close relationship would use. 

The script might also be too long with plenty of unnecessary details that can be removed or summarised as part of the narration in your story (or as indirect dialogue). Remember the purpose of dialogue is to give your story emotion and make your characters more realistic. At this point you might also want to refer back to your character profiles , to see if the script of each character matches their personality. 

Once your script has been perfected, you can add some actions to make your dialogue feel more believable to readers. Action or narrative is the stuff that your characters are actually doing throughout or in between dialogue. For example, a character might be packing up their suitcase, as they are talking about their holiday plans. This ‘narrative’ is a great way to break up a long piece of dialogue which otherwise could become boring and tedious for readers. 

You have now planned your dialogue for your story. The final step is to incorporate these dialogue scenes into your story. Remember to follow our formatting dialogue formatting rules explained above to create effective dialogue for your stories!

That’s all for today! We hope this post has taught you how to write dialogue in a story effectively. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Novel writing ,

Writing dialogue in fiction: 7 easy steps.

By Harry Bingham

Speech gives life to stories. It breaks up long pages of action and description, it gives us an insight into a character, and it moves the action along. But how do you write effective dialogue that will add depth to your story and not take the reader away from the action?

In this article I will be guiding you through seven simple steps for keeping your fictional chat fresh, relevant and tight. As well as discussing dialogue tags and showing you dialogue examples.

Time to talk…

7 Easy Steps For Compelling Dialogue

Getting speech right is an art but, fortunately, there are a few easy rules to follow. Those rules will make writing dialogue easy – turning it from something static, heavy and un-lifelike into something that shines off the page.

Better still, dialogue should be fun to write, so don’t worry if we talk about ‘rules’. We’re not here to kill the fun. We’re here to increase it. So let’s look at some of these rules along with dialogue examples.

“Ready?” she asked.

“You bet. Let’s dive right in.”

How To Write Dialogue In 7 Simple Steps:

• Keep it tight and avoid unnecessary words
• Hitting beats and driving momentum
• Keep it oblique, where characters never quite answer each other directly
• Reveal character dynamics and emotion
• Keep your dialogue tags simple
• Get the punctuation right
• Be careful with accents

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Dialogue Rule 1: Keep It Tight

One of the biggest rules when writing with dialogue is: no spare parts. No unnecessary words. Nothing to excess.

That’s true in all writing, of course, but it has a particular acuteness (I don’t know why) when it comes to dialogue.

Dialogue Helps The Character And The Reader

Everything your character says has to have a meaning. It should either help paint a more vivid picture of the person talking (or the one they are talking to or about), or inform the other character (or the reader) of something important, or it should move the plot forward.

If it does none of those things then cut it out! Here’s an example of excess chat:

“Good morning, Henry!”

“Good morning, Diana.”

“How are you?” she asked.

“I’m well. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” She looked up at the blue sky. “Lovely weather we’re having.”

Are you asleep yet? You should be. It’s boring, right?

Sometimes you don’t need two pages of dialogue. Sometimes a simple exchange can be part of the narrative. If you want your readers to know an interaction like this has taken place, then simply say – Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries.

If you want the reader to know that Henry finds Diana insufferably then you can easily sum that up by writing – Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries. As always she looked up at the sky before commenting on the weather, as if every day that week hadn’t been gloriously sunny. It took ten minutes to get away, by which time his cheeks were aching from all the forced smiling.

No Soliloquies Allowed (Unless You’re Shakespeare)

This rule also applies to big chunks of dialogue. Perhaps your character has a lot to say, but if you present it as one long speech it will feel to the modern reader like they’ve been transported back to Victorian England.

So don’t do it!

Keep it spare. Allow gaps in the communication (intersperse with action and leave plenty unsaid) and let the readers fill in the blanks. It’s like you’re not even giving the readers 100% of what they want. You’re giving them 80% and letting them figure out the rest.

Take this example of dialogue, for instance, from Ian Rankin’s fourteenth Rebus crime novel,  A Question of Blood . The detective, John Rebus, is phoned up at night by his colleague:

… “Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me …” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors.

“Andy?” he said. ‘Andy Callis?”

“Can you describe him?”

Rebus froze. “What’s happened?”

“Look, it might not be him …”

“Where are you?”

“Describe him for me … that way you’re not headed all the way out here for nothing.”

That’s great isn’t it? Immediate. Vivid. Edgy. Communicative.

But look at what isn’t said. Here’s the same passage again, but with my comments in square brackets alongside the text:

[Your friend: she doesn’t even give a name or give anything but the barest little hint of who she’s speaking about. And ‘on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors’. That’s two sentences rammed together with a comma. It’s so clipped you’ve even lost the period and the second ‘she’.]

[Notice that this is exactly the way we speak. He could just have said “Andy Callis”, but in fact we often take two bites at getting the full name, like this. That broken, repetitive quality mimics exactly the way we speak . . . or at least the way we think we speak!]

[Uh-oh. The way she jumps straight from getting the name to this request indicates that something bad has happened. A lesser writer would have this character say, ‘Look, something bad has happened and I’m worried. So can you describe him?’ This clipped, ultra-brief way of writing the dialogue achieves the same effect, but (a) shows the speaker’s urgency and anxiety – she’s just rushing straight to the thing on her mind, (b) uses the gap to indicate the same thing as would have been (less well) achieved by a wordier, more direct approach, and (c) by forcing the reader to fill in that gap, you’re actually making the reader engage with intensity. This is the reader as co-writer – and that means super-engaged.]

[Again: you can’t convey the same thing with fewer words. Again, the shimmering anxiety about what has still not been said has extra force precisely because of the clipped style.]

[A brilliantly oblique way of indicating, ‘But I’m frigging terrified that it is.’ Oblique is good. Clipped is good.]

[A  non-sequitur,  but totally consistent with the way people think and talk.]

[Just as he hasn’t responded to what she just said, now it’s her turn to ignore him. Again, it’s the absences that make this bit of dialogue live. Just imagine how flaccid this same bit would be if she had said, “Let’s not get into where I am right now. Look, it’s important that you describe him for me . . .”]

Gaps are good. They make the reader work, and a ton of emotion and inference swirls in the gaps.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Copy Rankin. Keep it tight. And read this .

Dialogue Rule 2: Watch Those Beats

More often than not, great story moments hinge on character exchanges with dialogue at their heart.  Even very short dialogue can help drive a plot, showing more about your characters and what’s happening than longer descriptions can.

(How come? It’s the thing we just talked about: how very spare dialogue makes the reader work hard to figure out what’s going on, and there’s an intensity of energy released as a result.)

But right now, I want to focus on the way dialogue needs to create its own emotional beats. So that the action of the scene and the dialogue being spoken becomes the one same thing.

Here’s how screenwriting guru Robert McKee puts it:

Dialogue is not [real-life] conversation. … Dialogue [in writing] … must have direction. Each exchange of dialogue  must turn the beats of the scene  … yet it must sound like talk.

This excerpt from Thomas Harris’  The Silence of the Lambs  is a beautiful example of exactly that. It’s  short as heck, but just see what happens.

As before, I’ll give you the dialogue itself, then the same thing again with my notes on it:

“The significance of the chrysalis is change. Worm into butterfly, or moth. Billy thinks he wants to change. … You’re very close, Clarice, to the way you’re going to catch him, do you realize that?”

“No, Dr Lecter.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind telling me what happened to you after your father’s death.”

Starling looked at the scarred top of the school desk.

“I don’t imagine the answer’s in your papers, Clarice.”

Here Hannibal holds power, despite being behind bars. He establishes control, and Clarice can’t push back, even as he pushes her. We see her hesitancy, Hannibal’s power. (And in such few words! Can you even imagine trying to do as much as this without the power of dialogue to aid you? I seriously doubt if you could.)

But again, here’s what’s happening in detail

[ Beat 1:  What a great line of dialogue! Invoking the chrysalis and moth here is magical language. it’s like Hannibal is the magician, the Prospero figure. Look too at the switch of tack in the middle of this snippet. First he’s talking about Billy wanting to change – then about Clarice’s ability to find him. Even that change of tack emphasises his power: he’s the one calling the shots here; she’s always running to keep up.]

[ Beat 2 : Clarice sounds controlled, formal. That’s not so interesting yet . . . but it helps define her starting point in this conversation, so we can see the gap between this and where she ends up.]

[ Beat 3 : Another whole jump in the dialogue. We weren’t expecting this, and we’re already feeling the electricity in the question. How will Clarice react? Will she stay formal and controlled?]

[ Beat 4 : Nope! She’s still controlled, just about, but we can see this question has daunted her. She can’t even answer it! Can’t even look at the person she’s talking to. Notice as well that we’re outside quotation marks here – she’s not talking, she’s just looking at something. Writing great dialogue is about those sections of silence too – the bits that happen beyond the quotation marks.]

[ Beat 5:  And Lecter immediately calls attention to her reaction, thereby emphasising that he’s observed her and knows what it means.]

Overall, you can see that not one single element of this dialogue leaves the emotional balance unaltered. Every line of dialogue alters the emotional landscape in some way. That’s why it feels so intense & engaging.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Just check your own dialogue, line by line. Do you feel that emotional movement there all the time? If not, just delete anything unnecessary until you  feel the intensity and emotional movement  increase.

Dialogue Rule 3: Keep It Oblique

One more point, which sits kind of parallel to the bits we’ve talked about already.

If you want to create some terrible dialogue, you’d probably come up with something like this (very similar to my previous bad dialogue example):

“Hey Judy.”

“Hey, Brett.”

“Yeah, not bad. What do you say? Maybe play some tennis later?”

“Tennis? I’m not sure about that. I think it’s going to rain.”

Tell me honestly: were you not just about ready to scream there? If that dialogue had continued like that for much longer, you probably would have done.

And the reason is simple. It was direct, not oblique.

So direct dialogue is where person X says something or asks a question, and person Y answers in the most logical, direct way.

We hate that! As readers, we hate it.

Oblique dialogue is where people never quite answer each other in a straight way. Where a question doesn’t get a straightforward response. Where random connections are made. Where we never quite know where things are going.

As readers, we love that. It’s dialogue to die for.

And if you want to see oblique dialogue in action, here’s a snippet from Aaron Sorkin’s  The Social Network . (Because dialogue in screenwriting should follow the same rules as a novel. Some may argue that it should be even more snipped!)

So here goes. This is the young Mark Zuckerberg talking with a lawyer:

Lawyer:  “Let me re-phrase this. You sent my clients sixteen emails. In the first fifteen, you didn’t raise any concerns.” MZ:  ‘Was that a question?’ L:  “In the sixteenth email you raised concerns about the site’s functionality. Were you leading them on for 6 weeks?” MZ:  ‘No.’ L:  “Then why didn’t you raise any of these concerns before?” MZ:  ‘It’s raining.’ L:  “I’m sorry?” MZ:  ‘It just started raining.’ L:  “Mr. Zuckerberg do I have your full attention?” MZ:  ‘No.’ L:  “Do you think I deserve it?” MZ:  ‘What?’ L:  “Do you think I deserve your full attention?”

I won’t discuss that in any detail, because the technique really leaps out at you. It’s particularly visible here, because the lawyer wants and expects to have a direct conversation. ( I ask a question about X, you give me a reply that deals with X. I ask a question about Y, and … ) Zuckerberg here is playing a totally different game, and it keeps throwing the lawyer off track – and entertaining the viewer/reader too.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Just keep your dialogue not quite joined up. People should drop in random things, go off at tangents, talk in non-sequiturs, respond to an emotional implication not the thing that’s directly on the page – or anything. Just keep it broken. Keep it exciting!

This not only moves the story forward but also says a lot about the character speaking.

Dialogue Rule 4: Reveal Character Dynamics And Emotion

Most writers use dialogue to impart information – it’s a great way of explaining things. But it’s also a perfect (and subtler) tool to describe a character, highlighting their mannerisms and personality. It can also help the reader connect with the character…or hate them.

Let’s take a look here at Stephen Chbosky’s  The Perks of Being a Wallflower  as another dialogue example.

Here we have two characters, when protagonist Charlie, a high school freshman, learns his long-time crush, Sam, may like him back, after all. Here’s how that dialogue goes:

“Okay, Charlie … I’ll make this easy. When that whole thing with Craig was over, what did you think?”

… “Well, I thought a lot of things. But mostly, I thought your being sad was much more important to me than Craig not being your boyfriend anymore. And if it meant that I would never get to think of you that way, as long as you were happy, it was okay.” …

… “I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.”

“Like what?” …

“I don’t know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date.”

The words sound human.

Sam and Charlie are tentative, exploratory – and whilst words do the job of ‘turning’ a scene, both receiving new information, driving action on – we also see their dynamic.

And so we connect to them.

We see Charlie’s reactive nature, checking with Sam what she wants him to do. Sam throws out ideas, but it’s clear she wants him to be doing this thinking, not her, subverting Charlie’s idea of passive selflessness as love.

The dialogue shows us the characters, as clearly as anything else in the whole book. Shows us their differences, their tentativeness, their longing.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Understand your characters as fully as you can. The more you can do this, the more naturally you’ll write dialogue that’s right  for them . You can get  tips on knowing your characters here .

Dialogue Rule 5: Keep Your Dialogue Tags Simple

A dialogue tag is the part that helps us know who is saying what – the he said/she said part of dialogue that helps the reader follow the conversation.

Keep it Simple

A lot of writers try to add colour to their writing by showering it with a lot of vigorous dialogue tags. Like this:

“Not so,” she spat.

“I say that it is,” he roared.

“I know a common blackbird when I see it,” she defended.

“Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?” he attacked, sarcastically.

That’s pretty feeble dialogue, no matter what. But the biggest part of the problem is simply that the dialogue tags ( spat, roared , and so on) are so highly coloured, they take away interest from the dialogue itself – and it’s the words spoken by the characters that ought to capture the reader’s interest.

Almost always, therefore, you should confine yourself to the blandest of words:

She answered

And so on. Truth is, in a two-handed dialogue where it’s obvious who’s speaking, you don’t even need the word  said .

Get Creative

As an alternative, you can have action and body language demonstrate who is saying what and their emotions behind it. The scene description can say just as much as the dialogue.

Here’s another example of the same exchange:

Joan clenched her jaw. “Not so!”

“I say that it is.”

His voice kept rising with every word he shouted, but Joan was not going to be deterred.

“I know a common blackbird when I see it.”

“Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?”

Not one dialogue tag nor adverb was used there, but we still know who said what and how it was delivered. And , if you’re really smart and develop how your characters speak (pacing, words, syntax and speech pattern), a reader can know who is talking simply by how they’re talking.

The simple rule: use dialogue tags as invisibly as you can. I’ve written about a million words of my Fiona Griffiths series, and I doubt if I’ve used words other than say / reply and other very simple tags more than a dozen or so times in the entire series.

Keep it simple!

Dialogue Rule 6: Get The Punctuation Right

Dialogue punctuation is so simple and important, and looks so bad if you get it wrong. Here are eight simple rules to know before your character starts to speak:

• Each new line of dialogue (i.e: each new speaker) needs a new paragraph – even if the dialogue is very short.
• Action sentences within dialogue get their own paragraphs too. The first paragraph of a chapter or section starts on the far left, and the next paragraph (whether it starts with dialogue or not) is indented.
• The only exception to this rule is if the sentence interrupts an otherwise continuous piece of dialogue. for example:  “Yes,” she said. She brushed away a fly that had landed on her cheek. “I do think hippos are the best animals.”
• When you are ending a line of dialogue with  he said / she said , the sentence beforehand ends with a comma not a full stop (or period), as in this for example:  “Yes,” she said.
• If the line of dialogue ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, you still don’t have a capital letter for  he said / she said .  For example:  “You like hippos?” he said .
• If the he said / she said lives in the middle of one continuous sentence of dialogue, you need to deploy those commas like a comma-deploying ninja. Like this for example:  “If you like hippos,” he said, “then you deserve to be sat on by one.”
• And use quotation marks, dummy. You know to do that, without me telling you, right? (Yes, yes, some serious writers of literary fiction have written entire novels without one speech mark – but they are the exception to the rule.)
• Use the exclamation point sparingly. Otherwise! Your! Book! Is! Going! To! Sound! Very! Hysterical!

Dialogue Rule 7: Accents And Verbal Mannerisms

Realistic dialogue is important, but writing dialogue is not the same as speaking. Remember that the reader’s experience has to be smooth and enjoyable, so even if your character has an accent, speech impediment, or talks excessively…writing it exactly as it’s spoken doesn’t always work.

If you want to show that your character is from a certain part of the UK, it often helps to add a smattering of colloquial words or

In The Last Thing To Burn by Will Dean, the antagonist, Len, has an accent (Yorkshire or Lancashire, it’s obvious but never stated). The protagonist is trapped inside this man’s home, she has no idea where she is, but by describing the endless fields and hearing his subtle accent the reader knows exactly where in the UK she’s trapped.

Len says things like:

‘Going to go feed pigs’ and ‘There’s a good lass.’

You can highlight location, a character’s age, and their social standing simply by giving a nod to their accent.

On the flip-side, if they have a foreign accent, it can sometimes be too jarring to write dialogue exactly as it sounds.

‘Amma gonna eata the pizza’ is an awful way to write an Italian accent – it’s verging on racist. Try to avoid that. Instead, simply mention they have an Italian accent and let the reader fill in the blanks.

Accents Written Well

But, of course, there’s always an exception!

Irvine Welsh writes English in his native Scottish dialect and it’s exemplary – but nothing something we would recommend for a novice writer.

Here’s an excerpt from Trainspotting:

Third time lucky.  It wis like Sick Boy telt us: you’ve got tae know what it’s like tae try tae come off it before ye can actually dae it.  You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.  He could be right.  Anywey, this time ah’ve prepared. 

Perhaps, if you have a Scottish character in your novel you may want them to speak in a strong accent. But getting it wrong can ruin an entire novel, so unless you are very skilled and very confident, stick to the odd colloquialism or word and leave it there.

Verbal Mannerisms

Whether you realise it or not, we all have speech patterns. Some of us speak slowly, others pause, people also trail off mid-sentence. Some people also use verbal mannerisms, such as adding a word to a sentence that is unnecessary but becomes a personal tic (such as ‘man’, ‘like’ or ‘innit’). Or repeat favourite words. These can be influenced by age, background, class, and the period in which the book is set.

Here’s an example of two people talking. I won’t mention their ages or backgrounds, but see if you can guess.

“Chill, Bro.”

“Chill? I’m far from chilled, you scoundrel. That’s my flower bed you’ve just dug up.”

“I found something, though. It was sticking out the ground.”

“Outrageous behaviour. So… You… One simply can’t go around digging up people’s gardens!”

“Yeah. And what?” They both stared down at the swollen white lumps pressing out of the soil like plump snowdrops.”What is it, though?”

Harold swallowed. “Fingers.”

A Few Last Dialogue Rules

If want some great examples of how to write in dialogue, read plays or screenplays for inspiration. Read Tennessee Williams or Henrik Ibsen. Anything by Elmore Leonard is great. Ditto Raymond Chandler or Donna Tartt.

Some last tips:

• Keep speeches short . If a speech runs for more than three sentences or so, it (usually) risks being too long. Break it up with some action or someone else talking.
• Ensure characters speak in their own voice . And make sure your characters don’t sound the same as each other. Remember mannerisms, speech patterns, and how age and background influences speech.
• Add intrigue . Add slang and banter. Lace character chats with foreshadowing. You needn’t be writing a thriller to do this.
• Get in late and out early.  Don’t bother with small talk. Decide the point of each interaction, begin with it as late as possible, ending as soon as your point is made.
• Interruption is good.  So are characters pursuing their own thought processes and not quite engaging with the other.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 typesetting rules of writing dialogue.

Part of the editing process is to ensure you format dialogue correctly. Formatting dialogue correctly means remembering 5 simple steps:

• Only spoken words go within quotation marks.
• Use a separate sentence for every new thing someone says or does.
• Punctuation marks stay inside quotation marks and don’t forget about closing quotation marks at the end of the sentence.
• You can use single quotation marks or double quotation marks – but you must be consistent!
• Beware of capital letters. Always at the start of a sentence and after the quotations mark.

How Can You Use Everyday Life To Perfect Your Dialogue?

Listening to people speak will really help you perfect good dialogue. Sit in a cafe and people watch. Watch their body language and how they express themselves. Their verbal mannerisms, tics, how they choose their words, the syntax, speech patterns and turns of phrase. Make notes (without being spotted) and look out for contrasting word choices and personas.

What Is A Bad Example Of Dialogue?

There are plenty to choose from above – but the worst things you can do include:

• Using too many words
• Writing an accent how it’s heard (unless you are Irvine Welsh, which most people are not)
• Writing dialogue that’s irrelevant or misleading
• Using too many dialogue tags (or none at all)
• Bad punctuation – remember dialogue formatting
• Avoid long speeches

How Do You Start Dialogue?

There are many ways to start dialogue. You can ease into it, by introducing the character to the scene. Or you can jump in median res, slap bang into the centre of the action. Much like life, sometimes we hear a person’s voice before we see them – they pop up out of nowhere – and sometimes we call them or walk into a room where they are, and we have rehearsed what we plan to say.

See what works best for your scene, your characters, and the genre you are writing in (dialogue in a crime thriller will sound very different to dialogue in a young adult novel, for instance).

That’s All I Have To Say About That

We really hope you have found this article interesting and that you have now found the confidence to tackle the dialogue in your novel.

What your characters say and how they say it can make the difference between a good book and one that everyone is talking about. So get eavesdropping, get practising, and read as many books and plays as you can to create better dialogue.

Practice makes perfect and don’t forget to enjoy yourself!

About the author

Harry has written a variety of books over the years, notching up multiple six-figure deals and relationships with each of the world’s three largest trade publishers. His work has been critically acclaimed across the globe, has been adapted for TV, and is currently the subject of a major new screen deal. He’s also written non-fiction, short stories, and has worked as ghost/editor on a number of exciting projects. Harry also self-publishes some of his work, and loves doing so. His Fiona Griffiths series in particular has done really well in the US, where it’s been self-published since 2015. View his website , his Amazon profile , his Twitter . He's been reviewed in Kirkus, the Boston Globe , USA Today , The Seattle Times , The Washington Post , Library Journal , Publishers Weekly , CulturMag (Germany), Frankfurter Allgemeine , The Daily Mail , The Sunday Times , The Daily Telegraph , The Guardian , and many other places besides. His work has appeared on TV, via Bonafide . And go take a look at what he thinks about Blick Rothenberg . You might also want to watch our " Blick Rothenberg - The Truth " video, if you want to know how badly an accountancy firm can behave.

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Home / Book Writing / How to Format Dialogue (2024 Rules): The Ultimate Guide for Authors

How to Format Dialogue (2024 Rules): The Ultimate Guide for Authors

Dialogue is one of the most ever-present components of writing, especially in fiction. Yet even experienced authors sometimes format dialogue incorrectly.

There are so many rules, standards, and recommendations to format dialogue that it can be easy to get lost and not know what to do.

Thankfully, this article will help you know exactly what to do when formatting and writing dialogue, and I’ll even mention a tool that will make the whole process a lot easier, but more on that later.

• The basic rules for good dialogue
• Grammar rules for effective dialogue
• The difference between curly and straight quotes
• Common stylistic choices
• And other recommendations

Table of contents

• Basic Dialogue Rules
• 1. The Correct Use of Quotation Marks
• 2. The Correct Use of Dialogue Tags
• 3. The Correct Use of Question and Exclamation Marks
• 4. The Correct Use Of Em-Dashes And Ellipses
• 5. Capitalization Rules
• 6. Breaking Dialogue Into Multiple Paragraphs
• 7. Using Quotation Marks With Direct Dialogue vs Indirect Dialogue 
• Using Quotation Marks With Direct Dialogue vs Reported Dialogue
• Keyboard Shortcuts for PC or Windows
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac
• Formatting Quotes with Atticus
• Best Practice: Dialogue Tags
• If dialogue is interrupted by a tag and action…
• If dialogue is interrupted by just an action…
• Best Practices: She Said vs. Said She
• Best Practice: Using Beats to Break up Your Dialogue
• 1. Italicized With a Tag
• 2. Italicized Without a Tag
• 3. Not Italicized
• 1. Make It Clear Who Is Speaking
• 2. Focus on Character Voice
• 3. Don't Overdo Your Character Voice
• 4. Don't Info-Dump with Dialogue
• 5. Avoid Repetitive Dialogue Tags
• Final Thoughts on Formatting Dialogue

Why You Should Trust Me

So I've been writing and formatting books for a long time. 10+ years as of this writing.

But I actually found formatting to be a huge pain, which is why I actually created my own formatting software that solved all my problems. I called it Atticus.

But this isn't meant to be a sales pitch. I just want to make sure it's clear that I know what I'm talking about. The amount of research that went into not only formatting my own books, but also creating a formatting software is huge.

I researched everything, from tiny margin requirements, to the specific type of quotes to use (curly or straight, it makes a difference).

And yes, of course, that includes how to format dialogue.

So if all that makes sense, hopefully you'll come along with me as show you everything I've learned.

There are some basic rules that most people are aware of, but still need to be mentioned in an article about formatting dialogue.

The following are some of the very basic instructions you will need to follow:

• New speaker, new paragraph: whenever a new person speaks, you should start a new paragraph. This is true, even if your character is alone and talking out loud, or even if all they say is one word.
• Indent each paragraph: as with any paragraph, you should indent it. There are small exceptions, such as at the beginning of a chapter or scene break.
• Quotation marks go around the dialogue: use quotation marks at the beginning and end of your character's dialogue. Any punctuation that is part of the dialogue should be kept within the quotes.

Now that you have these basics in mind, let's dive into the specific rules of grammar and punctuation for formatting dialogue.

Dialogue Punctuation

To punctuate dialogue correctly, there are a few rules you should know:

• The correct use of quotation marks
• The correct use of dialogue tags
• The correct use of question and exclamation marks
• The correct use of em-dashes and ellipses
• Capitalization rules
• Breaking dialogue into multiple paragraphs
• Using quotation marks with direct dialogue versus indirect dialogue
• Using quotation marks with direct dialogue vs reported dialogue

Let's dive into each of these one by one…

For American writing, you will use a set of quotation marks (” “). These are placed directly before and after the dialogue spoken by your character.

Furthermore, the quotation marks are placed around any punctuation, such as a comma, question mark, or exclamation mark.

Example:  

“I love writing books!” said John.

You can use the same set of quotation marks around more than one sentence.

Example: 

“I love writing books! It makes me feel so accomplished.”

Note: the double quote is used heavily in American writing and in some other parts of the world, with single quotes used to quote dialogue within a larger quote. However these roles are often reversed outside of American writing, and some cultures even use angle brackets instead (<< >>).

A dialogue tag is simply a phrase at the beginning or end of your dialogue that tells us who is speaking. Dialogue tags are optional, but should be used when there are multiple people speaking and it is not clear which dialogue belongs to whom.

Your dialogue tag should use a comma to separate itself from the dialogue. If your dialogue tag appears at the beginning of your quote, the comma should appear after the dialogue tag and before your first quotation mark. If your dialogue tag is after your quote, the comma should appear after the dialogue, but before the closing quotation mark.

John said, “I love to write books.”

“I love to write books,” said John.

If a sentence of dialogue is interrupted by the dialogue tag, then you should use two commas that follow the above rules.

“I love to write books,” said John, “every single day.”

If you are using a question or exclamation mark, those are placed within the quotation marks, just as a comma would be.

“You like to write books?”

If you are following up the dialogue with a dialogue tag, you do not need to capitalize the first word of the dialogue tag.

“You like to write books?” said Lucy.

“You like to write books?” Said Lucy.

Both em-dashes and ellipses are used to show incomplete dialogue, but their uses vary.

Em-dashes should be used when dialogue is interrupted by someone else's dialogue, or any other interruption that leads to an abrupt ending.

Note that the em-dash is contained within the quotation marks, and replaces any punctuation. If the em-dash appears at the start of the quote, the following word should not be capitalized.

“Have I ever told you—”

“Yes, yes you have.”

“—that I love writing books?”

Ellipses are used when the dialogue trails off, but there is not an obvious interruption.

“What was I saying just…

In most cases, you should capitalize the first word of your dialogue. This is true, even if the dialogue does not technically begin the sentence.

John said, “But I love to write books!”

John said, “but I love to write books!”

The exception to this is if you are starting in the middle of your character's sentence, such as after an em-dash, or anytime the first quoted word is not the first word of the character's full sentence.

Lucy rolled her eyes, ready to hear again just how much John “loved to write books.”

If you have especially long dialogue, you might want to divide that dialogue into multiple paragraphs.

When this happens, place the first quotation mark at the beginning of the dialogue, but do not place a quotation mark at the end of that first paragraph.

You also place a quotation mark at the beginning of each subsequent paragraph until the dialogue ends. The last paragraph of dialogue has a quotation mark at the beginning and the end.

John said, “I can't explain to you why I love writing books so much. Perhaps it has something to do with my childhood. I always loved writing books as a child and making up stories . My mom told me I should be playing outside, but I preferred writing.

“Or maybe it was in college when I started learning the rules of good creative writing and saw my characters come to life in a way that I had never seen in my youth. It excited me more.

“Or maybe I'm just weird.” 

Before I get into the specifics of how to use quotation marks with direct dialogue versus indirect dialogue, you have to understand what each is.

Direct dialogue is written between inverted commas or quotes. This is someone actually speaking the words you’ve written down. It looks like this:

“Hello, I like to write books,” he said.

Indirect dialogue is basically you telling someone about what another person said.

He said hello and that he liked to write books.

Note that no quotation marks are required because it’s not a direct quote — the speaker is paraphrasing.

However, most of the formatting and punctuation tips I work with in this article pertain to direct dialogue.

Besides direct dialogue and indirect dialogue, I also have reported dialogue.

Reported dialogue is when one line of dialogue is quoting something else.

With American usage of quotation marks, I place double quotation marks around the direct dialogue (a.k.a. the main quote), with single quotation marks around the reported dialogue (a.k.a. the quote within the quote).

“I was talking to John the other day, and he kept saying ‘I love writing books' all the time,” said Lucy.

Note that this is common for American writing, and is often reversed outside of North America. Check your local style guides to know exactly how to embed one quote within another.

Curly Quotes or Straight Quotes?

Some authors don't even realize this, but there is a big difference between straight quotes and curly quotes.

Straight quotes do not bend inward, but remain straight. They are identical, whether they are located at the beginning or end of your quote.

John said, “I just like to write books, okay?”

By default, most keyboards use straight quotes instead of smart quotes. It is also the standard for web-based writing, since it simplifies the HTML needed to render a webpage (notice that most quotes in this article are straight quotes).

Curly quotes (sometimes called smart quotes) curve inward toward the line of dialogue that they encapsulate.

John said, “I just like to write books, okay?”

Curly quotes are more common in publishing, fiction, and are generally considered the standard when doing dialogue.

How to Change Straight Quotes to Curly Quotes

Since most keyboards use straight quotes, and is the default for many programs, you will have to change them to smart quotes manually.

While some programs have this functionality, you can also use keyboard shortcuts. For example:

To use keyboard shortcuts for PC, hold down the alt key, then type the four-digit code using your number pad:

• Opening double quote shortcut: alt 0147
• Closing double quote shortcut: alt 0148
• Opening single quote shortcut: alt 0145 
• Closing single quote shortcut: alt 0146

Note that you must type these numbers in with your number pad, and not the top row of numbers on your keyboard. The top row will not work.

The same process applies here, but the commands are slightly different. With a Mac, hold down the different keys shown here:

• Opening double quote shortcut: Option + [
• Closing double quote shortcut: Option + Shift + [
• Opening single quote shortcut: Option + ]
• Closing single quote shortcut: Option + Shift + ]

The downside to using the short codes is that it can become extremely tedious, especially if you have to go through your entire book and replace all of the quotes.

Thankfully, there is an option to make this a lot easier…

When you use Atticus, you can automatically swap your straight quotes for curly quotes with the touch of a button.

To do this, look on the top writing toolbar, and you will see two icons on the right.

If you click the button labeled “Apply Smart Quotes”, it will give you the following pop-up:

Do this for each of your chapters, and you should see the little red warning icon change to a green icon, indicating that your entire book is free of straight quotes.

This saves you a ton of hassle, it is by far the easiest way to improve your quotes in a writing or formatting program.

We've already talked about the grammatical rules for dialogue tags above, but let's talk a little more about, because there are ways to use dialogue tags that are grammatically correct, but not great from a stylistic standpoint.

For example, should you use words other than “said” for your dialogue tag?

Technically, you can do this. You can use many words as a dialogue tag. For example:

“You like to write books?” asked Lucy.

“You like to write books?” scoffed Lucy.

“You like to write books?” snickered Lucy.

“You like to write books?” intoned Lucy.

In this case, I have used alternative dialogue tags in each example. It's common for newer writers to think that mixing up the dialogue tags like this is a good thing, but this is not the case.

In fact, most authors agree the best practice is to use just “said” and “asked”. 

You can use other words on occasion (I sometimes use “clarified”, “shouted”, or “whispered”), but these should be rare.

The reason for this is simple: readers expect to see the words “said” and “asked”. Their mind brushes right over it, taking the necessary attribution data, and nothing else. Using “said” over and over again will not seem repetitive, because it is expected.

Using unusual dialogue tags is a quick way to draw the reader out of the book.

Best Practice: Formatting Interruptions

I’ve talked, briefly, about em-dashes and ellipses above, but there are a few other considerations to make when formatting dialogue interruptions.

You can format it in two ways. First of all:

“I love writing books,” John said, rubbing his hands together, “but I don’t like editing them that much.”

In this first example, you write your starting dialogue, tag, and action as usual, but instead of finishing the sentence with a period, you place a comma, open a new quotation mark and continue the sentence with a conjunction. At the end of that sentence, you’d use a period and close the speech.

But you can also format that interruption by separating the spoken pieces into two separate sentences as follows:

“I love writing books,” John said, rubbing his hands together. “But I don’t like editing them that much.”

Here, the sentence ends after John has rubbed his hands together. Because of that, when you start your new line of dialogue, you format it with a capitalized ‘But’ and end it with a period.

Say your speaker is being erratic, or just doing something that would interrupt his speech, like taking a sip of water or coughing uncontrollably, you wouldn’t have a well-planned and inserted interruption. The text would look broken because the dialogue is being broken by the action.

You’d format that as follows:

“I love writing books”–John took a sip of water–“but I’m not a fan of editing them.”

Note: The em-dashes are outside of the dialogue for this type of formatting.

You might be surprised to learn that there is a best practice for the word order for your dialogue tags.

For example, should you say “Lucy said” or “said Lucy”?

It may be common for you to guess that “said Lucy” is an acceptable practice (at least I did), but while this is technically grammatically correct, it is actually discouraged.

The correct way to format this is “Lucy said”.

Think of it this way, would it feel more natural to say “she said” or “said she”? Since “she said” is more natural with pronouns, the logic is that “Lucy said” is the superior form of dialogue tag.

Instead of dialogue tags, one alternative that you can use are beats.

Beats are small actions to give to your characters, so it doesn't sound like the dialogue is being spoken between two talking heads in a void.

It helps to move the story along, creates a sense of realism, and gives you a chance to reduce the number of dialogue tags that you use, without confusing the reader.

“I love to write books!” John sat at the keyboard and cracked his knuckles.

You can also add a beat to your dialogue tag.

“I love to write books!” said John, then sat at the keyboard and cracked his knuckles.

Additionally, you can use a beat to interrupt the flow of dialogue. This is even encouraged at times, because it can create diversity in how you use your dialogue.

“I love to write books!” John sat at the keyboard and cracked his knuckles. “But I don't like editing them as much.”

Best Practice: Formatting Inner Dialogue

When you are formatting internal dialogue (particularly when writing from 3rd person point of view), there are three ways that you can format it.

It’s common to see inner dialogue treated the same as quoted dialogue, but with the entire inner dialogue italicized instead of using quotation marks.

I just love to write books, John thought. Why can’t Lucy understand this?

Likewise, you can often leave out the tag all together, as the reader is able to understand by the italics that this is a thought. However, you might want to accompany this with a beat.

John sat at his desk. I just love to write books. Why can’t Lucy understand this?

If you are writing from a deeper point of view, you might not need italics or a tag. This is especially common when writing in first-person point of view, where literally all of the prose represents that person’s thoughts.

I sat at my desk. I just love to write books. Why can’t Lucy understand this?

Other Tips for Formatting Dialogue

In addition to the above, there are a few miscellaneous tips that I would like to share:

When using dialogue, you never want the reader to be confused as to who is saying the dialogue. There are a couple of ways to do this.

• Use dialogue tags effectively
• Never leave out dialogue tags unless you only have two people, and it is obvious which one is speaking
• Use beats appropriately

Each character should have a unique way of speaking.

A good way to practice different voices is to record a conversation, such as around the dinner table, and transcribe it. Notice how everyone uses a different “flow” to our sentences, or have favorite words that I like to use.

Do they speak in short, choppy sentences? Or are they more prone to elegant, long-winded paragraphs?

Another great exercise is to write a conversation with two people, and don't use dialogue tags. Instead, try to make how they are speaking make it obvious who is actually talking.

Despite my recommendation above, it is possible to overdo character voice.

Examples of this include:

• Overdoing a heavy accent, where every word of their dialogue is spelled slightly different to convey the dialect.
• Including curse words in every other sentence, even if this is realistically based on someone you know.
• Including a lot of “ums” and “uhs” in your sentence. While these are common in real life, they can dramatically pull your reader out of the story.

While it is okay for the character to explain some of what is going on in their dialogue, you have to be careful with this.

Above all, make sure your dialogue naturally fits the character in the scene. Info dumping can easily lead to “Maid and Butler dialogue”, where it feels like the characters just talking for the benefit of the reader, and not for the actual situation they are in.

While it is important to use “said” and “asked” the most when doing your dialogue tags, there are other ways that you should use to diversify your tags, such as:

• Use beats instead
• Use dialogue tags before, after, and in the middle of your dialogue
• Remove dialogue tags when you have a back-and-forth conversation between two people and it is obvious who is saying what

This is not just relevant for dialogue tags, but also for your dialogue styles. If you have had three lines of dialogue in a row that all placed your dialogue tag in the middle of the dialogue, then you might want to change things up a bit.

While it is easy to get overwhelmed with all of the little tips and tricks to formatting dialogue, once you have enough practice, it becomes second nature.

Additionally, a tool like Atticus can make some of the technical bits so much easier, such as changing your street quotes to curly quotes.

In addition to formatting dialogue, Atticus is the number one software for writing and formatting a book. Plus, unlike other leading formatting software is, it is available on all platforms, and costs over $100 less than the leading alternative.

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

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Punctuating and Formatting Dialogue in Fiction

4-minute read

• 8th February 2019

Dialogue – i.e., the words spoken by characters in a story – is a vital part of fiction . And to make sure your story is easy to read, you need to present the dialogue clearly. So to make sure your writing is perfect, check out our guide to punctuating and formatting dialogue in fiction.

1. Basic Punctuation and Dialogue Tags

The most important thing about dialogue in fiction is to use quote marks . These are sometimes even known as “speech marks,” as they indicate that someone has said something. All you need to do in this respect is place spoken dialogue within quote marks:

“ That is the biggest horse I have ever seen, ” said Craig.

In American English, as shown above, we use double quotes marks for dialogue. You may also have noticed some words outside the quote marks here. This is a dialogue tag . You can use dialogue tags to show who is speaking in a passage of dialogue (in this case, someone called “Craig”).

2. Quotes within Dialogue

If a character in your story is quoting someone else in their speech, use single quotation marks to enclose the quote within the main speech marks. Take the following line of dialogue, for example:

“He called me an ‘ arrogant fool ’ when I said I’d seen bigger horses.”

Here, we have single quote marks around the words “arrogant fool.” This shows us that the speaker is quoting someone while they are speaking.

3. New Speaker, New Paragraph

A good guideline when formatting dialogue is “new speaker, new paragraph.” This means that when someone new starts speaking, you set the dialogue on a new line. For instance:

Craig stared at the massive horse. “So huge,” he muttered to himself. “What are you doing?” asked Shannon, emerging from the farmhouse. “I’m watching this massive horse,” Craig said. “I can see that,” Shannon said. “But you’ve been here for six hours, Craig.”

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In the passage above, we have dialogue from two characters. As such, we use line breaks to help the reader keep track of who is speaking, beginning a new line each time the speaker changes.

4. Formatting Long Speeches

One passage of dialogue may require multiple paragraphs. For instance, a character may be telling another character a story within a story as part of your narrative, which could involve them speaking at length. And when this happens, it may not be obvious how to punctuate the dialogue.

The answer here is to use a quotation mark at the start of each paragraph when formatting dialogue. However, you will only use a closing quotation mark when the character finally finishes speaking:

Craig sighed. “I’ve always been obsessed with horses,” he explained. “When I was a child, I spent weekends on my grandparents’ farm. But all they had were miniature ponies. And they told me that all horses were the same size. They said the ones I saw on television looked bigger because they hired tiny actors to ride them. And I believed it.

“Or, I did until I was eighteen, anyway. That’s when I met Clayton Moore, the guy who played the Lone Ranger on TV. And he was over six feet tall, so I knew that Silver couldn’t have been as small as the ponies on my grandparents’ farm! It had all been a lie! I felt so betrayed. And ever since then, I have been looking for the biggest horse I can find.”

In the passage above, for instance, we do not use a closing quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph because it is only half way through Craig’s dialogue. At the end of the second paragraph, however, we use a speech mark to show that Craig has finished speaking.

5. Ellipses and Dashes

Finally, you can use ellipses and dashes to indicate interruptions in dialogue. And while there are no strict rules about how this works, we suggest the following guidelines:

• Use ellipses to show that speech has trailed off (e.g., “I don’t know why you have a problem with…” Craig said, before falling into silence ).
• Use an en dash or em dash to indicate speech that ends suddenly (e.g., “You need to take th–” Shannon began, before the horse neighed loudly ).

This will help your reader tell the difference between dialogue that trails off and dialogue that is suddenly interrupted.

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How to Format Dialogue in a Story

Last Updated: December 23, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diya Chaudhuri, PhD . Diya Chaudhuri holds a PhD in Creative Writing (specializing in Poetry) from Georgia State University. She has over 5 years of experience as a writing tutor and instructor for both the University of Florida and Georgia State University. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 454,272 times.

Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, satire or drama, writing the dialogue may have its challenges. The parts of a story where characters speak stand out from the other elements of a story, starting with the quotation marks that are nearly universally applied. Here are some of the most common and established steps for making sure that your story looks right when you have to figure out how to properly format dialogue.

Things You Should Know

• Break and indent paragraphs involving 2 or more speakers.
• Use quotation marks around all words spoken by a character.
• Break a long speech into multiple paragraphs.

Getting the Punctuation Right

• Even if a speaker only utters half a syllable before they’re interrupted by someone else, that half-syllable still gets its own indented paragraph.
• In English, dialogue is read from the left side of the page to the right, so the first thing readers notice when looking at a block of text is the white space on the left margin. [2] X Research source

• A single set of quotation marks can include multiple sentences, as long as they are spoken in the same portion of dialogue. For example: Evgeny argued, "But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner! You always give her special treatment!"
• When a character quotes someone else, use double-quotes around what your character says, then single-quotes around the speech they’re quoting. For example: Evgeny argued, “But you never yell ‘Finish your dinner’ at Laura!”
• The reversal of roles for the single and double-quotation mark is common outside of American writing. Many European and Asian languages use angle brackets (<< >>) to mark dialogue instead.

• Use a comma to separate the dialogue tag from the dialogue.
• If the dialogue tag precedes the dialogue, the comma appears before the opening quotation mark: Evgeny argued, “But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner!”
• If the dialogue tag comes after the dialogue, the comma appears before (inside) the closing quotation mark: “But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner,” argued Evgeny.
• If the dialogue tag interrupts the flow of a sentence of dialogue, use a pair of commas that follows the previous two rules: “But Laura,” Evgeny argued, “never has to finish her dinner!”

• If the question or exclamation ends the dialogue, do not use commas to separate the dialogue from dialogue tags. For example: "Why did you order mac-and-cheese pizza for dinner?" Fatima asked in disbelief.

• For example, use a dash to indicate an abruptly ended speech: "What are y--" Joe began.
• You can also use dashes to indicate when one person's dialogue is interrupted by another's: "I just wanted to tell you--" "Don't say it!" "--that I prefer Rocky Road ice cream."
• Use ellipses when a character has lost her train of thought or can't figure out what to say: "Well, I guess I mean..."

• For example: Evgeny argued, "But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner!" The “b” of “But” does not technically begin the sentence, but it begins a sentence in the world of the dialogue, so it is capitalized.
• However, if the first quoted word isn’t the first word of a sentence, don’t capitalize it: Evgeny argued that Laura “never has to finish her dinner!”

• Use an opening quotation mark where you normally would, but don’t place one at the end of the first paragraph of the character’s speech. The speech isn’t over yet, so you don’t punctuate it like it is!
• Do, however, place another opening quotation mark at the beginning of the next paragraph of speech. This indicates that this is a continuation of the speech from the previous paragraph.
• Place your closing quotation mark wherever the character’s speech ends, as you normally would.

Making Your Dialogue Flow Naturally

• When you have a long dialogue that’s clearly being held between only two people, you can choose to leave out the dialogue tags entirely. In this case, you would rely on your paragraph breaks and indentations to let the reader know which character is speaking.
• You should leave out the dialogue tags when more than two characters are speaking only if you intend for the reader to be potentially confused about who is speaking. For example, if four characters are arguing with one another, you may want the reader to get the sense that they’re just hearing snatches of argument without being able to tell who’s speaking. The confusion of leaving out dialogue tags could help accomplish this.

• Place dialogue tags in the middle of a sentence, interrupting the sentence, to change the pacing of your sentence. Because you have to use two commas to set the dialogue tag apart (see Step 3 in the previous section), your sentence will have two pauses in the middle of the spoken sentence: “And how exactly,” Laura muttered under her breath, “do you plan on accomplishing that?”

• Some examples of pronouns include I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, someone, everybody, and so on.
• Pronouns must always agree with the number and gender of the nouns they’re referring to. [9] X Research source [10] X Research source
• For example, the only appropriate pronouns to replace “Laura” are singular, feminine ones: she, her, hers, herself.
• The only appropriate pronouns to replace “Laura and Evgeny” are plural, gender neutral ones (because English loses gender when pluralized): they, their, theirs, themselves, them.

Community Q&A

• Remember that less is often more. One common mistake that writers make when creating dialogue is to write things in longer sentences than people would actually say them. For example, most people use contractions and drop inessential words in everyday conversation. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Be very careful if you attempt to include an accent in your dialogue. Often, this will necessitate extra punctuation to show accent sounds ( danglin' instead of dangling , for example), and can end up visually overwhelming your reader. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://edhelper.com/ReadingComprehension_33_85.html
• ↑ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20space
• ↑ https://stlcc.edu/student-support/academic-success-and-tutoring/writing-center/writing-resources/quotation-marks-dialogue.aspx
• ↑ https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/how-to-write-dialogue/tags/
• ↑ http://learn.lexiconic.net/dialoguepunctuation.htm
• ↑ http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000106.htm
• ↑ http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/propernoun.htm
• ↑ http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/pronoun.asp
• ↑ http://facweb.furman.edu/~moakes/Powerwrite/pronouns.htm
• ↑ https://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/Pronouns.pdf

About This Article

To format dialogue in a story, insert a paragraph break and indent every time a new speaker starts talking. Then, put what they’re saying inside a set of double quotation marks. If you're using a dialogue tag, like "She said" or "He asked," follow it with a comma if it comes before the dialogue or a period if it comes after. Also, remember to put periods, question marks, and exclamation points inside the quotation marks. For more tips from our Creative Writing co-author, like how to write good, convincing dialogue, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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One of the earliest forms of literature was plays (often written to the end goal of being staged). As a form, it heavily depends on people speaking – characters being direct is one of the most effective ways to advance a story, plus it provides insight into human nature and behaviour. With the rise of novels, this aspect of storytelling was morphed into dialogue writing. To capture direct speech can often become difficult if you have to carefully weave it into a narration. There is an art to this, no doubt, but that’s a conversation for later. First, let us tackle the science – the mechanics – of writing dialogue in fiction. In this article, we have laid down the laws of language to address the question: how do we punctuate, structure and format dialogue in fiction writing? 

I. How to “quote” speech

The first rule of dialogue writing 101 is that you only put direct speech or things that you want to record verbatim within quotation marks. If you’re paraphrasing somebody’s speech (indirect speech), there is no need to enclose it in quotes.  For example:

“I read a wonderful book last night,” Penny was telling us excitedly. 

Penny was telling us, rather excitedly, that she had read a wonderful book the previous night. 

You might have noticed that there are two types of quotation marks on your keyboard: single quotes (‘ ‘) and double quotes (” “). We use them  in different contexts for different purposes. 

‘I read the most wonderful book last night. It’s called “A Hundred Days in Solitude”, written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.’“I read the most wonderful book last night. It’s called ‘A Hundred Days of Solitude’, written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.”

You can also enclose, in quotation marks, partial quotes.  Any of the following qualifies as a partial quote:

• Incomplete speech 
• Sentence fragment 
• a name or a title 
• explanations of terms that are foreign or unnatural to the flow of the sentence

Now, although these two systems seem definite, there are many instances of authors trying to switch things up. With international collaboration as a norm, who’s to say what’s truly right? Irrespective of what system of punctuation you use, the bottom line is this: be consistent. 

Punctuation across multiple paragraphs:

If you are punctuating dialogue across multiple paragraphs, the conventions remain the same, provided there are two or more people in the conversation. For example, look at this excerpt from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women : 

‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. ‘It’s so dreadful to be poor!’ sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. ‘I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,’ added little Amy, with an injured sniff. ‘We’ve got Father and Mother, and each other,’ said Beth contentedly from her corner.

However, if only one of your characters is speaking through multiple paragraphs of your writing, this is what you do:(The following example was originally a dramatic monologue from the 1987  film Wall Street by Oliver Stone.)

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. “Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. “Thank you very much.”  

All the paragraphs of quoted text have opening quotation marks. Only the last paragraph has closing quotation marks. Despite the speech being demarcated into multiple paragraphs, the lack of a closing quotation mark shows an extension of the same person’s speech. 

II. Dialogue tags

A dialogue tag is the part of the sentence that points you to the person speaking. For example, take the sentence:  ‘I read a wonderful book last night,’ Penny told us excitedly. 

“Penny told us excitedly” is the dialogue tag in the sentence. 

You can place a dialogue tag either in the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence. But, there are also specific rules about where you should place commas: 

A comma immediately follows an introductory dialogue tag.

Penny was telling us, excitedly, ‘I read a wonderful book last night.’

A comma precedes a concluding dialogue tag.

‘I read a wonderful book last night’, Penny was telling us excitedly.

A comma precedes and follows an interrupting dialogue tag.

‘I read a wonderful book last night,’ Penny told us excitedly, ‘it’s called “A Hundred Days of Solitude”.’ 

III. Punctuation in dialogue

Full stops/periods .

In American English full stops – or periods – always appear before the closing quotation mark, irrespective of whether the quotation in question is full or partial. 

In British English, on the other hand, it varies by context.

For partial quotations, full stops never go before the closing quotation mark.

Harry would not give the textbook to Hermione because “the binding was fragile”.

For full quotations, full stops go before the closing quotation mark only if they are viewed as part of the quoted text

When Hermione asked him for the mysterious textbook, Harry was desperate to stall her any way he could think of, “No. You’ll tear it. The binding is fragile.”

Can you tell how this changes the sentence?

Commas 

If your sentence continues after your dialogue, replace the full stop in the sentence with a comma.

The rest of the rules about using commas in dialogue writing are usually the same that apply for full stops.

“I don’t think I can make it to dinner tonight,” Liz was fiddling with her fingers as she confessed to me she’d already made other plans.

Again, these rules are just preferential; just be consistent. 

Question marks and exclamation points 

Irrespective of what system you’re following, question marks and exclamation points are placed within your dialogue only if they are a part of quoted speech. Look at these two examples to understand the difference:

Amanda was furious, “You can’t just cancel plans whenever you please, Liz!”

To think Harry got away with keeping the book a secret by just saying that “the binding was fragile”!

Do you see how the placement of the punctuation changes the tone of the entire sentence? In the first sentence, it makes sense to keep the exclamation point within the sentence, since it shows that Amanda is furious and indignant.

The rest (semicolons, colons, hyphens, etc.)

Okay, don’t worry. We’re not going to do this for all the 14 types of punctuation one by one. You’ve got the drift. So, we’ll let you go do your own thing.

Long story short, the rule for every other kind of punctuation is this: we place them before the closing quotations only if they are a part of the quoted text. Look at these sentences to see how you can use them:

Before the study, participants described their attention span as ‘low to medium’; after, this changed to ‘medium to high’.

Hermione was tired of Harry taking credit for someone else’s hard work. When she finally confronted him about the contraband textbook, she was blunt, “Look, I’m going to be straight with you: you need to tell someone about this book.”

IV. Formatting and structure

Grammar and punctuation are only a part of the mechanics of dialogue writing. There are also formatting and structure related concerns to think about.

Since dialogue is a device to make the narration more engaging, it is important to not forget how to blend the two elements. There is a way to structure the rest of your sentence around the dialogue. Look at this sentence: 

  Cecelia said, “The sky is blue today,” she coughed, “I wish it looked like this every day.”

This is incorrect. A sentence cannot have multiple dialogue tags. A better way to reconstruct the same sentence, would be: 

Cecelia said, “The sky is blue today.” She coughed. “I wish it looked like this every day.”

V. Bonus round: How the right punctuation impacts writing

Knowing the rules of standardized language makes your book reader-friendly only to some extent. You can use or subvert rules to make your writing impactful. You can use punctuation to enhance the tone and intent of your dialogue:

“I’m sorry… I’m late… to the meeting,” Paul apologized, as he approached his seat. He had to climb 11 flights of stairs after a series of disasters with the building’s elevator. “I didn’t know that the elevator wasn’t working -“ “We know, we got your text,” Mr. Keating replied curtly, as he gestured for the meeting to continue. 

As shown in this example, an ellipsis ( … ) is used to show that Paul is tired. A hyphen is included at the end of the dialogue to show that Mr. Keating has interrupted him.

Phew! This is a lot of information, isn’t it? While you mull over the mechanics of dialogue writing, just remember this: the dialogue of dialogue writing is not over just yet. You can quote us on that!

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Last updated on Jul 24, 2023

15 Examples of Great Dialogue (And Why They Work So Well)

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Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Martin Cavannagh

Head of Content at Reedsy, Martin has spent over eight years helping writers turn their ambitions into reality. As a voice in the indie publishing space, he has written for a number of outlets and spoken at conferences, including the 2024 Writers Summit at the London Book Fair.

Great dialogue is hard to pin down, but you know it when you hear or see it. In the earlier parts of this guide, we showed you some well-known tips and rules for writing dialogue. In this section, we'll show you those rules in action with 15 examples of great dialogue, breaking down exactly why they work so well.

1. Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered 

In the opening of Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, we meet Willa Knox, a middle-aged and newly unemployed writer who has just inherited a ramshackle house. 

     “The simplest thing would be to tear it down,” the man said. “The house is a shambles.”      She took this news as a blood-rush to the ears: a roar of peasant ancestors with rocks in their fists, facing the evictor. But this man was a contractor. Willa had called him here and she could send him away. She waited out her panic while he stood looking at her shambles, appearing to nurse some satisfaction from his diagnosis. She picked out words.      “It’s not a living thing. You can’t just pronounce it dead. Anything that goes wrong with a structure can be replaced with another structure. Am I right?”      “Correct. What I am saying is that the structure needing to be replaced is all of it. I’m sorry. Your foundation is nonexistent.”

Alfred Hitchcock once described drama as "life with the boring bits cut out." In this passage, Kingsolver cuts out the boring parts of Willa's conversation with her contractor and brings us right to the tensest, most interesting part of the conversation.

By entering their conversation late , the reader is spared every tedious detail of their interaction.

Instead of a blow-by-blow account of their negotiations (what she needs done, when he’s free, how she’ll be paying), we’re dropped right into the emotional heart of the discussion. The novel opens with the narrator learning that the home she cherishes can’t be salvaged. 

By starting off in the middle of (relatively obscure) dialogue, it takes a moment for the reader to orient themselves in the story and figure out who is speaking, and what they’re speaking about. This disorientation almost mirrors Willa’s own reaction to the bad news, as her expectations for a new life in her new home are swiftly undermined.

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2. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice  

In the first piece of dialogue in Pride and Prejudice , we meet Mr and Mrs Bennet, as Mrs Bennet attempts to draw her husband into a conversation about neighborhood gossip.

     “My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”      Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.      “But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”      Mr. Bennet made no answer.      “Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.      “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”      This was invitation enough.      “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

Austen’s dialogue is always witty, subtle, and packed with character. This extract from Pride and Prejudice is a great example of dialogue being used to develop character relationships . 

We instantly learn everything we need to know about the dynamic between Mr and Mrs Bennet’s from their first interaction: she’s chatty, and he’s the beleaguered listener who has learned to entertain her idle gossip, if only for his own sake (hence “you want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it”).

There is even a clear difference between the two characters visually on the page: Mr Bennet responds in short sentences, in simple indirect speech, or not at all, but this is “invitation enough” for Mrs Bennet to launch into a rambling and extended response, dominating the conversation in text just as she does audibly.

The fact that Austen manages to imbue her dialogue with so much character-building realism means we hardly notice the amount of crucial plot exposition she has packed in here. This heavily expository dialogue could be a drag to get through, but Austen’s colorful characterization means she slips it under the radar with ease, forwarding both our understanding of these people and the world they live in simultaneously.

3. Naomi Alderman, The Power

In The Power , young women around the world suddenly find themselves capable of generating and controlling electricity. In this passage, between two boys and a girl who just used those powers to light her cigarette.

     Kyle gestures with his chin and says, “Heard a bunch of guys killed a girl in Nebraska last week for doing that.”      “For smoking? Harsh.”      Hunter says, “Half the kids in school know you can do it.”      “So what?”      Hunter says, “Your dad could use you in his factory. Save money on electricity.”      “He’s not my dad.”      She makes the silver flicker at the ends of her fingers again. The boys watch.

Alderman here uses a show, don’t tell approach to expositional dialogue . Within this short exchange, we discover a lot about Allie, her personal circumstances, and the developing situation elsewhere. We learn that women are being punished harshly for their powers; that Allie is expected to be ashamed of those powers and keep them a secret, but doesn’t seem to care to do so; that her father is successful in industry; and that she has a difficult relationship with him. Using dialogue in this way prevents info-dumping backstory all at once, and instead helps us learn about the novel’s world in a natural way.

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4. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Here, friends Tommy and Kathy have a conversation after Tommy has had a meltdown. After being bullied by a group of boys, he has been stomping around in the mud, the precise reaction they were hoping to evoke from him.

     “Tommy,” I said, quite sternly. “There’s mud all over your shirt.”      “So what?” he mumbled. But even as he said this, he looked down and noticed the brown specks, and only just stopped himself crying out in alarm. Then I saw the surprise register on his face that I should know about his feelings for the polo shirt.      “It’s nothing to worry about.” I said, before the silence got humiliating for him. “It’ll come off. If you can’t get it off yourself, just take it to Miss Jody.”      He went on examining his shirt, then said grumpily, “It’s nothing to do with you anyway.”

This episode from Never Let Me Go highlights the power of interspersing action beats within dialogue . These action beats work in several ways to add depth to what would otherwise be a very simple and fairly nondescript exchange.  Firstly, they draw attention to the polo shirt, and highlight its potential significance in the plot. Secondly, they help to further define Kathy’s relationship with Tommy. 

We learn through Tommy’s surprised reaction that he didn’t think Kathy knew how much he loved his seemingly generic polo shirt. This moment of recognition allows us to see that she cares for him and understands him more deeply than even he realized. Kathy breaking the silence before it can “humiliate” Tommy further emphasizes her consideration for him. While the dialogue alone might make us think Kathy is downplaying his concerns with pragmatic advice, it is the action beats that tell the true story here.

5. J R R Tolkien, The Hobbit  

The eponymous hobbit Bilbo is engaged in a game of riddles with the strange creature Gollum.

     "What have I got in my pocket?" he said aloud. He was talking to himself, but Gollum thought it was a riddle, and he was frightfully upset.       "Not fair! not fair!" he hissed. "It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in its nassty little pocketses?"      Bilbo seeing what had happened and having nothing better to ask stuck to his question. "What have I got in my pocket?" he said louder. "S-s-s-s-s," hissed Gollum. "It must give us three guesseses, my precious, three guesseses."      "Very well! Guess away!" said Bilbo.      "Handses!" said Gollum.      "Wrong," said Bilbo, who had luckily just taken his hand out again. "Guess again!"      "S-s-s-s-s," said Gollum, more upset than ever. 

Tolkein’s dialogue for Gollum is a masterclass in creating distinct character voices . By using a repeated catchphrase (“my precious”) and unconventional spelling and grammar to reflect his unusual speech pattern, Tolkien creates an idiosyncratic, unique (and iconic) speech for Gollum. This vivid approach to formatting dialogue, which is almost a transliteration of Gollum's sounds, allows readers to imagine his speech pattern and practically hear it aloud.

We wouldn’t recommend using this extreme level of idiosyncrasy too often in your writing — it can get wearing for readers after a while, and Tolkien deploys it sparingly, as Gollum’s appearances are limited to a handful of scenes. However, you can use Tolkien’s approach as inspiration to create (slightly more subtle) quirks of speech for your own characters.

6. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The narrator, Nick has just done his new neighbour Gatsby a favor by inviting his beloved Daisy over to tea. Perhaps in return, Gatsby then attempts to make a shady business proposition.

     “There’s another little thing,” he said uncertainly, and hesitated.      “Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I asked.      “Oh, it isn’t about that. At least —” He fumbled with a series of beginnings. “Why, I thought — why, look here, old sport, you don’t make much money, do you?”      “Not very much.”      This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.       “I thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my — you see, I carry on a little business on the side, a little side line, if you understand. And I thought that if you don’t make very much — You’re selling bonds, aren’t you, old sport?”      “Trying to.” 

This dialogue from The Great Gatsby is a great example of how to make dialogue sound natural. Gatsby tripping over his own words (even interrupting himself , as marked by the em-dashes) not only makes his nerves and awkwardness palpable but also mimics real speech. Just as real people often falter and make false starts when they’re speaking off the cuff, Gatsby too flounders, giving us insight into his self-doubt; his speech isn’t polished and perfect, and neither is he despite all his efforts to appear so.

Fitzgerald also creates a distinctive voice for Gatsby by littering his speech with the character's signature term of endearment, “old sport”. We don’t even really need dialogue markers to know who’s speaking here — a sign of very strong characterization through dialogue.

7. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet  

In this first meeting between the two heroes of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, John is introduced to Sherlock while the latter is hard at work in the lab.

      “How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”      “How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment.      “Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself. “The question now is about hemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?”     “It is interesting, chemically, no doubt,” I answered, “but practically— ”      “Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood stains. Come over here now!” He seized me by the coat-sleeve in his eagerness, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working. “Let us have some fresh blood,” he said, digging a long bodkin into his finger, and drawing off the resulting drop of blood in a chemical pipette. “Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a litre of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water. The proportion of blood cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however, that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction.” As he spoke, he threw into the vessel a few white crystals, and then added some drops of a transparent fluid. In an instant the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour, and a brownish dust was precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar.      “Ha! ha!” he cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy. “What do you think of that?”

This passage uses a number of the key techniques for writing naturalistic and exciting dialogue, including characters speaking over one another and the interspersal of action beats. 

Sherlock cutting off Watson to launch into a monologue about his blood experiment shows immediately where Sherlock’s interest lies — not in small talk, or the person he is speaking to, but in his own pursuits, just like earlier in the conversation when he refuses to explain anything to John and is instead self-absorbedly “chuckling to himself”. This helps establish their initial rapport (or lack thereof) very quickly.

Breaking up that monologue with snippets of him undertaking the forensic tests allows us to experience the full force of his enthusiasm over it without having to read an uninterrupted speech about the ins and outs of a science experiment.

Starting to think you might like to read some Sherlock? Check out our guide to the Sherlock Holmes canon !

8. Brandon Taylor, Real Life

Here, our protagonist Wallace is questioned by Ramon, a friend-of-a-friend, over the fact that he is considering leaving his PhD program.

     Wallace hums. “I mean, I wouldn’t say that I want to leave, but I’ve thought about it, sure.”     “Why would you do that? I mean, the prospects for… black people, you know?”        “What are the prospects for black people?” Wallace asks, though he knows he will be considered the aggressor for this question.

Brandon Taylor’s Real Life is drawn from the author’s own experiences as a queer Black man, attempting to navigate the unwelcoming world of academia, navigating the world of academia, and so it’s no surprise that his dialogue rings so true to life — it’s one of the reasons the novel is one of our picks for must-read books by Black authors . 

This episode is part of a pattern where Wallace is casually cornered and questioned by people who never question for a moment whether they have the right to ambush him or criticize his choices. The use of indirect dialogue at the end shows us this is a well-trodden path for Wallace: he has had this same conversation several times, and can pre-empt the exact outcome.

This scene is also a great example of the dramatic significance of people choosing not to speak. The exchange happens in front of a big group, but — despite their apparent discomfort —  nobody speaks up to defend Wallace, or to criticize Ramon’s patronizing microaggressions. Their silence is deafening, and we get a glimpse of Ramon’s isolation due to the complacency of others, all due to what is not said in this dialogue example.

9. Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

In this short story, an unnamed man and a young woman discuss whether or not they should terminate a pregnancy while sitting on a train platform.

     “Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”      “And you really want to?”      “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you really don’t want to.”      “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”      “I love you now. You know I love you.”      “I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”      “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”      “If I do it you won’t ever worry?”      “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”

This example of dialogue from Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants moves at quite a clip. The conversation quickly bounces back and forth between the speakers, and the call-and-response format of the woman asking and the man answering is effective because it establishes a clear dynamic between the two speakers: the woman is the one seeking reassurance and trying to understand the man’s feelings, while he is the one who is ultimately in control of the situation.

Note the sparing use of dialogue markers: this minimalist approach keeps the dialogue brisk, and we can still easily understand who is who due to the use of a new paragraph when the speaker changes .

Like this classic author’s style? Head over to our selection of the 11 best Ernest Hemingway books .

10. Madeline Miller, Circe

In Madeline Miller’s retelling of Greek myth, we witness a conversation between the mythical enchantress Circe and Telemachus (son of Odysseus).

     “You do not grieve for your father?”        “I do. I grieve that I never met the father everyone told me I had.”           I narrowed my eyes. “Explain.”      “I am no storyteller.”      “I am not asking for a story. You have come to my island. You owe me truth.”       A moment passed, and then he nodded. “You will have it.” 

This short and punchy exchange hits on a lot of the stylistic points we’ve covered so far. The conversation is a taut tennis match between the two speakers as they volley back and forth with short but impactful sentences, and unnecessary dialogue tags have been shaved off . It also highlights Circe’s imperious attitude, a result of her divine status. Her use of short, snappy declaratives and imperatives demonstrates that she’s used to getting her own way and feels no need to mince her words.

11. Andre Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

This is an early conversation between seventeen-year-old Elio and his family’s handsome new student lodger, Oliver.

     What did one do around here? Nothing. Wait for summer to end. What did one do in the winter, then?      I smiled at the answer I was about to give. He got the gist and said, “Don’t tell me: wait for summer to come, right?”      I liked having my mind read. He’d pick up on dinner drudgery sooner than those before him.      “Actually, in the winter the place gets very gray and dark. We come for Christmas. Otherwise it’s a ghost town.”      “And what else do you do here at Christmas besides roast chestnuts and drink eggnog?”      He was teasing. I offered the same smile as before. He understood, said nothing, we laughed.      He asked what I did. I played tennis. Swam. Went out at night. Jogged. Transcribed music. Read.      He said he jogged too. Early in the morning. Where did one jog around here? Along the promenade, mostly. I could show him if he wanted.      It hit me in the face just when I was starting to like him again: “Later, maybe.”

Dialogue is one of the most crucial aspects of writing romance — what’s a literary relationship without some flirty lines? Here, however, Aciman gives us a great example of efficient dialogue. By removing unnecessary dialogue and instead summarizing with narration, he’s able to confer the gist of the conversation without slowing down the pace unnecessarily. Instead, the emphasis is left on what’s unsaid, the developing romantic subtext. 

Furthermore, the fact that we receive this scene in half-reported snippets rather than as an uninterrupted transcript emphasizes the fact that this is Elio’s own recollection of the story, as the manipulation of the dialogue in this way serves to mimic the nostalgic haziness of memory.

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12. George Eliot, Middlemarch

Two of Eliot’s characters, Mary and Rosamond, are out shopping,

     When she and Rosamond happened both to be reflected in the glass, she said laughingly —      “What a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy! You are the most unbecoming companion.”      “Oh no! No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little consequence in reality,” said Rosamond, turning her head towards Mary, but with eyes swerving towards the new view of her neck in the glass.      “You mean my beauty,” said Mary, rather sardonically.       Rosamond thought, “Poor Mary, she takes the kindest things ill.” Aloud she said, “What have you been doing lately?”      “I? Oh, minding the house — pouring out syrup — pretending to be amiable and contented — learning to have a bad opinion of everybody.”

This excerpt, a conversation between the level-headed Mary and vain Rosamond, is an example of dialogue that develops character relationships naturally. Action descriptors allow us to understand what is really happening in the conversation. 

Whilst the speech alone might lead us to believe Rosamond is honestly (if clumsily) engaging with her friend, the description of her simultaneously gazing at herself in a mirror gives us insight not only into her vanity, but also into the fact that she is not really engaged in her conversation with Mary at all.

The use of internal dialogue cut into the conversation (here formatted with quotation marks rather than the usual italics ) lets us know what Rosamond is actually thinking, and the contrast between this and what she says aloud is telling. The fact that we know she privately realizes she has offended Mary, but quickly continues the conversation rather than apologizing, is emphatic of her character. We get to know Rosamond very well within this short passage, which is a hallmark of effective character-driven dialogue.

13. John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent

Here, Mary (speaking first) reacts to her husband Ethan’s attempts to discuss his previous experiences as a disciplined soldier, his struggles in subsequent life, and his feeling of impending change.

     “You’re trying to tell me something.”      “Sadly enough, I am. And it sounds in my ears like an apology. I hope it is not.”      “I’m going to set out lunch.”

Steinbeck’s Winter of our Discontent is an acute study of alienation and miscommunication, and this exchange exemplifies the ways in which characters can fail to communicate, even when they’re speaking. The pair speaking here are trapped in a dysfunctional marriage which leaves Ethan feeling isolated, and part of his loneliness comes from the accumulation of exchanges such as this one. Whenever he tries to communicate meaningfully with his wife, she shuts the conversation down with a complete non sequitur. 

We expect Mary’s “you’re trying to tell me something” to be followed by a revelation, but Ethan is not forthcoming in his response, and Mary then exits the conversation entirely. Nothing is communicated, and the jarring and frustrating effect of having our expectations subverted goes a long way in mirroring Ethan’s own frustration.

Just like Ethan and Mary, we receive no emotional pay-off, and this passage of characters talking past one another doesn’t further the plot as we hope it might, but instead gives us insight into the extent of these characters’ estrangement.

14. Bret Easton Ellis , Less Than Zero

The disillusioned main character of Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel, Clay, here catches up with a college friend, Daniel, whom he hasn’t seen in a while. 

     He keeps rubbing his mouth and when I realize that he’s not going to answer me, I ask him what he’s been doing.      “Been doing?”      “Yeah.”      “Hanging out.”      “Hanging out where?”      “Where? Around.”

Less Than Zero is an elegy to conversation, and this dialogue is an example of the many vacuous exchanges the protagonist engages in, seemingly just to fill time. The whole book is deliberately unpoetic and flat, and depicts the lives of disaffected youths in 1980s LA. Their misguided attempts to fill the emptiness within them with drink and drugs are ultimately fruitless, and it shows in their conversations: in truth, they have nothing to say to one another at all.

This utterly meaningless exchange would elsewhere be considered dead weight to a story. Here, rather than being fat in need of trimming, the empty conversation is instead thematically resonant.

15. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

The young narrator of du Maurier’s classic gothic novel here has a strained conversation with Robert, one of the young staff members at her new husband’s home, the unwelcoming Manderley.

     “Has Mr. de Winter been in?” I said.      “Yes, Madam,” said Robert; “he came in just after two, and had a quick lunch, and then went out again. He asked for you and Frith said he thought you must have gone down to see the ship.”      “Did he say when he would be back again?” I asked.      “No, Madam.”      “Perhaps he went to the beach another way,” I said; “I may have missed him.”      “Yes, Madam,” said Robert.      I looked at the cold meat and the salad. I felt empty but not hungry. I did not want cold meat now. “Will you be taking lunch?” said Robert.      “No,” I said, “No, you might bring me some tea, Robert, in the library. Nothing like cakes or scones. Just tea and bread and butter.”      “Yes, Madam.”

We’re including this one in our dialogue examples list to show you the power of everything Du Maurier doesn’t do: rather than cycling through a ton of fancy synonyms for “said”, she opts for spare dialogue and tags. 

This interaction's cold, sparse tone complements the lack of warmth the protagonist feels in the moment depicted here. By keeping the dialogue tags simple , the author ratchets up the tension —  without any distracting flourishes taking the reader out of the scene. The subtext of the conversation is able to simmer under the surface, and we aren’t beaten over the head with any stage direction extras.

The inclusion of three sentences of internal dialogue in the middle of the dialogue (“I looked at the cold meat and the salad. I felt empty but not hungry. I did not want cold meat now.”) is also a masterful touch. What could have been a single sentence is stretched into three, creating a massive pregnant pause before Robert continues speaking, without having to explicitly signpost one. Manipulating the pace of dialogue in this way and manufacturing meaningful silence is a great way of adding depth to a scene.

Phew! We've been through a lot of dialogue, from first meetings to idle chit-chat to confrontations, and we hope these dialogue examples have been helpful in illustrating some of the most common techniques.

If you’re looking for more pointers on creating believable and effective dialogue, be sure to check out our course on writing dialogue. Or, if you find you learn better through examples, you can look at our list of 100 books to read before you die — it’s packed full of expert storytellers who’ve honed the art of dialogue.

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Everything you need to know about how to write dialogue in a story

Latest posts.

How do you write convincing dialogue and structure it correctly in your story? We show you how!

Fiction needs characters, and characters in fiction need to talk to each other. It’s one of the vital ways readers get to know the people in your story, and find out about them and the world you’ve created round them. This means that anyone who wants their fiction to read well needs to know how to write dialogue in a story.

What does dialogue do?

Good dialogue engages the reader. Conversation between characters brings stories to life. Dialogue breaks up blocks of text and allows writers to change the pace of their narrative. Well-written dialogue informs readers about the character of the people speaking it, and knowing how to use dialogue in a story allows the writer to progress the narrative.

What dialogue should be

Good dialogue is an exchange between characters that adds to the reader’s enjoyment, tells them something about the characters and in some way progresses the narrative. Good dialogue drives a plot but it also allows readers to connect emotionally with the characters speaking it, which deepens their understanding and enjoyment of the fictional world you have created for them. Similarly to the way we get to know people by talking to them, readers get to know characters by engaging with their dialogue. Knowing how to write dialogue in a story is a way for you, the writer, to show readers who your characters are without telling them through lengthy blocks of description.

What dialogue should not be

Bad dialogue is clunky, unrealistic and used by the author as a vehicle for infodumping:

‘Hello Arthur, how nice it is to see you after all these years. After spending such a long time in prison you must be pleased to be out. It was terrible how you got stitched up for a crime you didn’t commit.’ If that was in a book no-one would blame you for not reading any further. You want to read (and write!) dialogue that sparkles, not that feels heavy and weighs the story down.

Dialogue should never be used as ‘filler’ content, which is why it’s really useful to know how to structure dialogue in your story. Writers love writing dialogue because it’s fun and it fills pages. That’s all great – but if it’s there as padding or for self-indulgent reasons it will detract from the forward motion of your story and readers will lose interest.

Read these four short stories by some of the most famous short story writers. Do you think the dialogue works well?

How to write dialogue that feels realistic

Note that we said ‘feels’. There is an art to writing dialogue and a lot of it is more about knowing what to take out that what to put in.

Think of film scripts. You don’t want any unnecessary words. You only want the words that really matter.

• No-one in real life talks in speeches, unless they’re exceptionally boring. Characters in fiction don’t have to hold forth and explain themselves at length. Your dialogue needs to contain only what is really necessary.

• Don’t spell things out. Be oblique. Implication works brilliantly in dialogue. ‘He did it with?’ ‘Yeah right?’ ‘Does she know you’ve seen his Insta?’ ‘But I don’t follow him so how could she?’ Using dialogue as a way of dropping hints about what’s going on is more effective in fiction than using dialogue as a way of stating the obvious. ‘Little sods. Our Carly got a VO. Dumped them on me this morning’ is more intriguing for readers than, ‘My grandchildren have been behaving like absolute horrors ever since their mother, my daughter Carly, went to visit her husband Arthur who is in prison.’

• Don’t write speech in full sentences. Who talks in actual sentences?

• Keep spare, keep it succinct. The art of writing tight dialogue that feels real is about stripping it down to the bare minimum. In dialogue, less is always more.

• Think about what’s not being said. Leaving a space for the reader’s imagination to intrude is always effective. ‘He went off.’ ‘Like he?’ ‘No, not like that time.’ ‘Yeah, well.’ Very little is spelled out but a lot is implied, and readers will be keen to find out what’s going on. Readers love puzzles and clues, and enjoy piecing seemingly random snippets together and making connections – done well, this kind of dialogue can tantalise readers and keep them turning pages.

• Keep it colloquial. With dialogue, you’re giving a flavour of the person at the same time as revealing something that moves the plot along. Give your dialogue the flavour of everyday speech by including words and phrases that people say in real life. ‘Pranged the Jag’ sounds much more conversationally effective than ‘I crashed my upmarket car into a bollard and damaged its front bumper.’ But unless you’re Irvine Welsh, be careful not to overdo it. No-one in 21 st century Yorkshire would ever say, ‘Eeh bah gum tha’s a reet daft ha’porth so shut yer cake-hole.’ Make sure your character’s dialogue gives a flavour of everyday speech rather than descends into clichés or stereotypes.

• Use language that is appropriate for whichever of your characters is speaking. The character who ‘pranged the Jag’ is obviously either a toff or fancies himself as one. The window cleaner is more likely to greet a regular client with ‘Alright Linda!’or ‘Morning’ than ‘Good morning.’

• Remember that speech is individual. Your dialogue will come to life when each character in your fiction has their own manner of speaking. You could also bear in mind that in a conversation between two characters, your dialogue can reveal differing intents, personalities and motives. ‘Your dinner’s ready.’ ‘Amy Poppleton’s mum saw Dad in Tescos.’ ‘Mac and cheese. Let’s eat it in front of the telly.’ ‘Is it true he’s not coming back? Mum?’ ‘I got the orange cheese cos it’s your favourite.’

• Omit the qualifiers, or at least most of them. In real life, our speech is peppered with ums, errs and likes. In written dialogue, remove almost all of them or readers will very quickly be irritated. Give a suggestion of each person’s speaking voice rather than trying to mimic actual speech.

• The same with swearing, again unless you’re actually Irvine Welsh.

Make sure you give your characters the right names for their speaking voices! Here’s a quick creative writing exercise to get you thinking about names

Remember the beats

In a story or screenplay, a beat is an occurrence that changes something or moves your story along. Each piece of dialogue your characters deliver should in some way add to your reader’s knowledge and progress your narrative. You want the dialogue between your characters to propel the story forward. Even if Arthur and Maeve are just having a conversation about the weather it needs to work in a way that moves the story along.

‘It’s chucking it down.’ Arthur glanced out of the window.

‘That wasn’t on BBC Weather.’ Maeve glared at her tablet.

‘At least it’ll have softened the ground up.’

‘That’s handy.’

‘Too right. What do you reckon about footprints though?’

‘Bigger wellies? Couple of pairs of football socks?’

What does this exchange imply about Arthur and Maeve? What might they be up to? How does this impression build over each of the six lines of dialogue? Can you ‘see’ the beats?

How to structure dialogue in a story

Now we’ve looked at how to write dialogue in a story and what good dialogue does, let’s look at how to set it out. There are stylistic conventions to writing dialogue and although you don’t have to follow them – and many writers don’t, particularly if they’re writing literary fiction and experimenting with voices and form – it’s always good to be aware of what the general rules are before you break them.

• Quotation marks.

Put direct dialogue inside quotation marks, also known as inverted commas. In the UK it’s more common to use single inverted commas than double.

‘Do it like this.’

If you want to include an attribution after the spoken words, use a comma after the speech and before the second inverted comma:

‘Do it like this,’ she said.

If you want to put the attribution first, the comma comes after the dialogue tag.

She said, ‘Do it like this.’

The full stop goes inside the second inverted comma as it is part of the direct speech. All the direct speech is inside the inverted commas/quotation marks.

Interrupted dialogue is set out like this in a single sentence.

‘Do it like this,’ she said, ‘or it will look wrong.’

You can also split the sentence, so:

‘Do it like this,’ she said. ‘Or it will look wrong.’

In both cases, all the speech is within the inverted commas.

If you want to write interrupted speech, do it like this:

‘Do it like this’ – she paused to think – ‘or else.’

If the last punctuation point in a line of dialogue is a question, set it out with the question mark replacing the comma or full stop.

‘Do it like this?’

All the speech is still within the inverted commas. The same with an exclamation mark:

I said, ‘Do it like this!’

• Dialogue tags.

Speech attribution tags are always lower case.

If you want to put a full stop at the end of the speech don’t follow it with a new sentence consisting of the dialogue tag.

Do it like this.’ She said.

You don’t always need to use dialogue tags. Every line of dialogue does not need to be attributed.

‘Do it like this,’ she said. ‘Like what?’ he replied. ‘Like this.’ ‘I see.’

As long as the reader knows who is speaking and when, you don’t need to hammer home the point by continually repeating ‘said Emma’, ‘said Peter’, ‘she mentioned’, ‘he explained’. Your dialogue will quickly feel clunky if you do that. It reinforces the presence of a writer directing operations and detracts from the impression that people are talking, which is what you want to achieve with your dialogue.

Unless there’s a very good reason for it, keep dialogue tags simple. ‘He said’ or ‘said Emma’ will do just fine. That way, if you need to use ‘mentioned,’ ‘described,’ ‘explained’ or anything else that directs a reader’s attention to the way a character speaks, it will have impact. Otherwise, the most effective written dialogue is where what the characters are saying speaks for itself.

Imagine two characters, Luke and Jodie. They are having a conversation that starts with this line: Now write 20 lines of dialogue that take them from this starting point to the final line: Through the dialogue you’ve written, what sort of characters are Luke and Jodie turning out to be? What sort of conflict is the dialogue revealing? And what might happen? If you’re inspired by this exercise to carry on writing their story, follow these seven steps to writing a new short story ! Learning how to write and structure dialogue in a story will help bring your writing to life and enable readers to really get to know your characters. If you want to progress your novel-writing further and add to your writer’s toolkit, why not dedicate a few hours each week to a novel writing course that you can do at your own pace ? Improve your writing in one of the largest and most successful writing groups online Join our writing group! He Said, She Said: How to Use Speech Tags & Dialogue Tags Effectively by Fija Callaghan What is dialogue? Dialogue is the spoken interaction between two or more characters. Usually, dialogue is spoken out loud, but it can also be things like sign language or telekinesis — it’s any form of expression, as long as the characters can understand each other. Dialogue can be used to develop characters, convey exposition about your story’s world, or move the plot forward. Ultimately, learning how to write dialogue in a story is one of the most important skills in a writer’s toolbox. In order to write clear, concise dialogue that will elevate your story and engage your readers, you’ll need to understand how to use dialogue tags. Also called speech tags, these unassuming words can make or break an otherwise well-written scene. But what is a dialogue tag, exactly, and how do we use it to take our story to the next level? By following a few basic principles, you’ll be writing compelling dialogue in no time. Let’s dive in. What are dialogue tags? Dialogue tags (or speech tags) are short phrases that identify the speaker of a line of dialogue. They can occur before, during, or after a character’s spoken dialogue. They’re used to make it clear who’s speaking and help the reader follow the conversation. The most common dialogue tag in writing is “he said” or “she said.” There are a few different ways to write dialogue tags, and we’ll look at them all in more detail below. Here’s a quick example: “I made some coffee,” said Julie. Here, “‘I made some coffee’” is the dialogue, and “said Julie” is the dialogue tag. They both appear on the same line in the story. Why do we use dialogue tags in fiction writing? We use dialogue tags and speech tags in a story to clarify who’s talking so that the reader doesn’t get confused, as well as to give more depth and context to the words that are being said. If your on-page conversation goes too long without a dialogue tag, your reader can lose track of who’s saying what. When this happens, they need to stop reading, go back to the top of the conversation, and count each line to try and remember whose turn it is to talk. At this point, you’ve broken their connection to the story. However, be mindful of using repetitive dialogue tags. Punctuating dialogue with too many tags is one of the common mistakes new writers often make. Using too many can weigh down the actual dialogue and distract from the story. Instead, use tags only when needed or when they add another layer to the characters speaking. Dialogue tags also give us a way to break up long stretches of story dialogue, to add movement to the scene, and to reveal something new about the character. Here are a few examples of effective dialogue tags: “So you’re finally done with that jerk?” he said, leaning forward. She took a sip of her drink. “Looks that way.” The first speaker has an action attached to his speech tag that gives us a hint about how he’s feeling. The second speaker has an action preceding her dialogue that also gives a hint about how she’s feeling. With just these two simple lines, we can already imagine the story building up around them. Sometimes, a speech tag can change the inflection of a line of story dialogue. For example, “Look at that!” he said, spreading his cards out on the table. “A full house.” “You’ve had a lot of luck this evening,” said John irritably. What if we changed the dialogue tag? “You’ve had a lot of luck this evening,” said John, grinning. The dialogue stays exactly the same, but the context and the relationship between the two characters shifts because we’ve used a different dialogue tag. If you were to just use “said John” as your dialogue tag, the reader could imagine several different scenarios. You’d have to find other places to sneak in the background information they needed to understand the dialogue’s subtext. Used in this way, a well-placed dialogue tag can communicate something a lot bigger about your story. We’ll look at different ways to say “said” in writing and other words for “said” when writing story dialogue later on in this article. You may also notice that the capitalization changes when the line ends in an exclamation mark. We’ll take a closer look at placing dialogue tags and the rules of appropriate punctuation below. When to use speech tags in writing You’ll notice from the examples above that the placement of the dialogue tags can shift from one line to another; they don’t always stay in the same place. Let’s look at how to format dialogue when using dialogue tags before, during, and after a line of speech. How to use speech tags before dialogue In some older novels, you’ll see speech tags being used before the dialogue: Shane said, “I didn’t think you’d mind.” This sentence structure has generally fallen out of favor in contemporary writing. The exception? If your character is quoting someone else: “And then what happened?” “Well, then Shane said, ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’” Usually, the best way to use a dialogue tag before a line of speech is to choose an action for your character: Sheila gasped. “He really said that?” Here, the action tag identifies Sheila as the speaker. We’ll look closer at using action tags further below. How to use speech tags in the middle of dialogue Using dialogue tags can be a good way to break up long lines of dialogue, to imply a natural pause in the line, or to convey a shift in tone. For example: “I just feel so tired all the time,” she said. “Like nothing matters anymore.” Compare with the dialogue tag used at the end: “I just feel so tired all the time. Like nothing matters anymore,” she said. In the latter, the line of dialogue feels faster, like a singular thought. In the former, we feel like the speaker has paused for breath, or paused to add a new idea. Neither one of these is right or wrong; it’s up to you to decide which one is the best fit for that particular moment of your story. Here’s another example: “I just feel so tired all the time. Like nothing matters anymore,” she said. “But after tomorrow, things will be different.” Here, the dialogue tag serves as an axis between one tone and another. The line begins feeling despondent, hinges on the dialogue tag, and ends feeling hopeful. How to use tags at the end of the dialogue Many contemporary writers favor placing speech tags after a line of dialogue. For example: “It smells wonderful in here,” said Kate. This structure puts the emphasis on the dialogue, rather than the dialogue tag. The reader’s attention focuses on what the character is saying, and the speech tag works on a near-subconscious level to make sure they don’t get confused about who’s saying what. You can also give the character an action after their dialogue: “It smells wonderful in here.” Kate opened the oven and peeked inside. This gives the reader a bit more context about what’s happening and makes the scene come alive. How to punctuate dialogue tags You may have noticed in some of these examples that the punctuation in a dialogue tag can change. Let’s take a closer look at how to format dialogue tags, as well as some alternative speech tag formats you might come across in literature. Using double and single quotation marks In North American literature, lines of dialogue are enclosed in double quotation marks, like this: “I love this song.” In European English, however, you’ll often see single quotation marks used instead, like this: ‘I love this song.’ For this article we’ll be focusing on using standard North American grammar. If your dialogue stands alone without any speech tag (like just above), you’ll end the line in a period. If you’re adding a speech tag in the form of a verb that describes the dialogue—said, whispered, shouted, etc—you’ll end the line of dialogue in a comma just before the closing quotation mark, and start the dialogue tag with a lowercase letter: “I love this song,” she said. (Unless your dialogue tag begins with a proper noun, such as “Charlotte said”—always capitalize these!) However , if you follow the line of dialogue with an action that is separate from the speech, you’ll end the dialogue with a period and begin the next bit with a capital letter, the same as if you didn’t use any tag at all: “I love this song.” She reached over and turned up the volume. Always include your dialogue’s punctuation inside quotation marks. So far so good? Now things are about to get a little weird. What happens if your dialogue ends in a question mark or an exclamation point? Strangely enough, the rules for capitalization actually stay the same: “I love this song!” she said. “I love this song!” She reached over and turned up the volume. North American English does use single quotation marks too. As we saw in one of our earlier examples, single quotes are used for dialogue within dialogue. This is called “nested dialogue.” “In the words of Shakespeare, ‘To thine self be true.’” “I was on my way out when I overheard him say, ‘I’ll meet you at our old spot.’ What old spot was he talking about?” In European English, the rules for nested dialogue is reversed, like this: ‘I was on my way out when I overheard him say, “I’ll meet you at our old spot.” What old spot was he talking about?’ Sometimes you’ll see dialogue being set off from the rest of the text with em-dashes. This can create a vivid, cinematic effect in your writing; however, you’ll have to be very careful that your dialogue doesn’t blur into your narrative. Here’s an example from Roddy Doyle’s Oh, Play That Thing : —I want an American suit, I told him. —Suit? I had the rest of the anarchist’s cash burning a hole in the pocket of my old one. —American, I told him.—A good one. You can see how the dialogue tags—“I told him”—are kept deliberately simple, and the longer action is set apart on its own line. The em-dashes show us when the speech starts up again. However, this type of dialogue punctuation is very rare and experimental; the safest option is always to use standard quotation marks, like we looked at above. No punctuation Sometimes authors will experiment with using no distinguishing punctuation at all. This makes the story read very smoothly and intimately, like the reader is really there in person. However, just like using em-dashes, care must be taken to keep the dialogue and the narrative very distinct from each other so that the reader understands what’s being said and what’s being thought or described. Here’s an example from The Houseboat , by Dane Bahr: This have something to do with that grave robbery? No sir, Clinton said. I don’t believe so. That was down in Cedar Rapids. I see. Well. Ness leaned back and closed his eyes again. What can I do for you, Deputy? Yeh get the mornin paper up there? The Tribune I think it is? Looking at it right now, Ness said. He leaned forward in his chair and looked at the picture on the front page. Even though this is written in third person narrative, you can see how each dialogue tag begins with a name—“Clinton said,” rather than “said Clinton.” This gives the reader a subconscious cue that the words are shifting from dialogue to description. Stripping away the punctuation of your dialogue like this gives the reader a feeling like they’re listening in on a private conversation in the next room. Experimenting with alternative dialogue tag punctuation can be a great way to stretch your comfort zone as a writer. However, clarity for the reader should always be at the forefront of your mind. These two alternative punctuation methods are fun to work with, but they are very experimental and an unusual choice in modern literature. In professional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, quotation marks are the universal standard. Other words for “said” when writing dialogue Writers are big fans of using “said” for their dialogue tags, because it doesn’t draw attention away from what really matters: your story. But sometimes you might want to enhance your dialogue tag with another word to give it some more emphasis. Let’s look at different ways to say “said” in writing. How to use verbs as dialogue tags You may remember your primary school teacher telling you to look for other words for “said” in dialogue: whispered, shouted, chastised, sulked, muttered, screeched, sobbed… you can have a lot of fun digging up synonyms for “said” in story dialogue, but most of the time, less is more. You want your reader’s attention to be on the words that your characters are saying and the story surrounding them, rather than the mechanics of your dialogue tags. However, there are times when using a different verb for your speech tag can enhance the narrative or convey new information. For example, compare the following: “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you!” she shouted. “I hate you,” she whispered. Each dialogue tag gives the line a slightly different feel. Because the words are so simple, “said” feels a bit empty and non-committal; using a different word gives the reader context for the words that are being spoken. Now compare these two lines: “Look at the state of your clothes! People are going to think you’ve been sleeping in a barn,” she chastised. “Look at the state of your clothes! People are going to think you’ve been sleeping in a barn,” she said. In this instance, the verb “chastised” is redundant because we can already tell that she’s chastising from what she’s saying. It doesn’t give the reader any new information. In this case, it’s better to fall back on “said” and allow the dialogue to do the (literal and figurative) talking. When you’re considering using other verbs for your speech tag, ask yourself if it reveals something new about what the person is saying. If not, simpler is always better. How to use dialogue tags with adverbs Adverbial dialogue tags are where you use a modifying word to enhance your dialogue tag, such as “said angrily,” or “whispered venomously.” As with using other verbs instead of “said,” most of the time, less is more. However, sometimes using adverbial tags can contribute surprising new information about the scene. Consider these examples: “I hate you,” she said scathingly. “I hate you,” she said gleefully. “I hate you,” she said nervously. Each adverb tells us something different about what’s being said. But do you need them? Telling someone you hate them is already pretty scathing, so you probably don’t need to show it a second time with your dialogue tag. Saying it gleefully is very different in tone, and makes us wonder: what’s this person so happy about? What makes this moment special to her? Saying it nervously is different again, and raises questions about the scene—is this the first time it’s been said? What are the consequences for saying it? “Gleefully” is probably the strongest adverb choice in these examples, because it’s at odds with what’s being spoken; it gives the line a whole new context. “Nervously” is nicely specific too, but you can also find other ways to show nervousness in the character’s actions, which might feel more natural and organic to the reader. “Scathingly” doesn’t really tell us anything new about what’s being said. When considering adverbs for your dialogue tag, again ask yourself if they communicate something new to the reader that the dialogue doesn’t show on its own. If it does, then ask yourself if it communicates that something in the most natural, efficient way possible. You can explore different ways of conveying these emotions or details in your scene to find which one works best for your dialogue. Dialogue tags vs. actions tags Dialogue tags, as we’ve seen, begin with a speech verb—usually “said,” but sometimes other words like “whispered,” “yelled,” or “mumbled.” They work to identify the person who is speaking. Action tags, on the other hand, work like a dialogue tag but aren’t directly connected to the line of dialogue. They can be related, but they stand independently. Just like dialogue tags, action tags work to identify the person speaking. These are especially helpful if you’re writing a scene with three or more people, where things can get confusing pretty quickly. Additional speech tags examples Here’s an example of action tags and dialogue tags working together: “So here’s how it’s going to go down,” said Donny. “We’ll meet at midnight, after the cinema closes.” Mark took a sip of his drink. “What about the night patrol?” “The night patrol is a sixteen-year-old kid on minimum wage.” Roger leaned back in his chair. “You worry too much.” “I’m not getting rough with a kid, Donny.” “Then let’s hope he’s smart enough to stay out of the way.” He took a sip of his drink too, then stood up. “I’ll see you both tonight. Get the car ready.” Let’s break down what we’ve done here. We have dialogue with a few variations: one dialogue tag, three action tags, and one freestanding line with no tag at all. The first dialogue tag, “said Donny,” establishes who the first speaker is. Then a new action tag introduces a second speaker, Mark. This works well because then we don’t have two “saids” in a row and it flows naturally for the reader. In the next line, a third speaker comes in, so we give him an action to make sure the reader knows who’s speaking. As we get to the fourth line, the reader already understands enough about the scene to know who is speaking, so we can leave this one on its own. The next line doesn’t identify the speaker by name—we use “he”—but it’s a direct response to the line before it, so we know who it is. The action tag breaks up an otherwise long and unwieldy line of dialogue, and turns the scene in a new direction: the group is breaking up until later. Each speech tag gives the reader little clues that make the dialogue and the scene come alive. “Said she” vs. “she said”—what’s the difference? When you’re writing a dialogue tag, is it better to write “Jane said,” or “said Jane?” This is something that a lot of new writers get caught up on, and technically, either one can be correct. Most contemporary literature favors the subject followed by the verb—that is, “Jane” (the subject) “said” (the verb). If you’re using a pronoun—he, she, they—this is the only way it works grammatically. However, using a proper noun after the verb—“said Jane”—is more common in older literature and is still in use. In general, “she said” is a better fit for modern stories. If you’re writing historical fiction or something influenced by archaic myth and fantasy, either one is acceptable. You can play around with both in your writing to see which one feels more natural in that moment of your scene. When to use he said/she said vs. he says/she says The distinction between when to use he said/she said vs. he says/she says often confuses newer writers. The answer to when to use one or the other goes back to the tense your story is written in. Stories written in the present tense will use present tense speech tags like “he says” and “she says,” while stories written in the past tense will use past tense speech tags like “he said” and “she said.” You might use other tenses throughout your story, so always keep an eye out for the tense you’re currently using and adapt your speech tags accordingly. Dialogue tags: Examples Here are a few more examples of ways to use a descriptive dialogue tag to inspire your writing. 1. Hotel Magnifique , by Emily J. Taylor One of the older girls shoved a lock of greasy blonde hair behind her pink ear. “That advertisement is a tease. It would be a miracle if any of us got a job.” I straightened. “That’s not true.” She shrugged as she turned away. “Do what you want. I wouldn’t waste my time.” “Think she’s right?” Zosa asked, her delicate mouth turning down. “Absolutely not,” I said, perhaps too quickly. When Zosa’s frown deepened, I cursed silently. In this example, three girls are talking about a job advertisement. In the first three lines, action tags are used rather than dialogue tags, showing not only the action but the personality and feelings of the people speaking. After the first three lines, which all begin with action tags, the next two lines lead with the dialogue instead and use simple dialogue tags to identify who’s talking. 2. The Paris Library , by Janet Skeslien Charles “A fourth of the Library’s subscribers are Parisian,” I countered. “They need French-speaking staff.” “What will people think?” Maman fretted. “They’ll say Papa isn’t providing for you.” “Many girls have jobs these days,” Remy said. “Odile doesn’t need to work,” Papa said. “But she wants to,” I said softly. “Let’s not argue.” Maman scooped the mousse au chocolat into small crystal bowls. Here, a family argues about a young woman’s desire to work at the library. The first two lines use descriptive tags in place of “said.” These enhance our understanding of the particular character, but because this can get cumbersome quickly if overused, the next three lines use “said” to let the spoken words shine through. Finally, the writer drops the dialogue tags in favor of an action tag which turns the scene in a new direction. 3. The League of Gentlewomen Witches , by India Holton “Several people have been killed,” Mrs. Pettifer reported. “It’s quite shocking.” Miss Plim pecked irritably at her tea. “Something more shocking happened yesterday.” “Indeed?” Mrs. Pettifer flicked over another page. “You smiled at someone?” “No. I was in Twinings and that Darlington woman walked in. She acknowledged me politely with a nod.” At this, Mrs. Pettifer finally looked up, her velvety eyes growing wide. “Not Miss Darlington, the pirate?” Here, two women gossip over a newspaper. The first line uses a speech tag, then two lines use action tags to identify the speaker before the next line stands alone; the reader has grown comfortable enough with the back-and-forth dialogue to recognize the speaker of the next line. Then, the following line begins with an action tag that marks a turning point in their conversation. You’ll notice in all of these dialogue tag examples above that writers favor patterns of three. Three uses of “said” in a row, three action tags, three similar speech tags before shifting into another method of identifying the speaker. Three is a comfortable number for a reader, but if you go on using the same devices for more than that the reader will begin to notice how repetitive they are, which will pull them away from your story. This is a good trick to keep in mind when formatting your dialogue. 5 rules for using dialogue tags To wrap up, let’s review some dialogue rules and best practices for use of dialogue tags in your story. 1. Limit overuse of dialogue tags How often should dialogue tags be used? As with many aspects of the writer’s craft, when working with dialogue tags in your story, less is more. See how often you can get away with not using any dialogue tags at all (keep in mind sets of three, as we looked at above). Space out your dialogue tags so that they don’t take up too much real estate on your page. Your reader should be focusing on your story, not your story mechanics. 2. Use a dialogue tag when it’s unclear who’s speaking Dialogue tags are used first and foremost for clarity. Use them when you need to remind the reader of who’s saying which line. You won’t need to use them as often when your dialogue is only happening between two people; if you have a group of people all talking together, you’ll need to use them a bit more to keep everybody straight. 3. Vary the positioning of dialogue tags In our examples above, you’ll see that sometimes the dialogue tag comes at the beginning of a line of dialogue, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes at the end. If you always put your dialogue tag in the same place, it can get monotonous for the reader. Experiment with different placements for your speech tags to keep the dialogue fluid and fresh. 4. Vary the type of dialogue tags Although we love the classic “she said” and “said she” dialogue tags, relying on these all the time can start to weigh down your story. Try alternating between dialogue tags, descriptive action tags, and a few alternate verb dialogue tags here and there to keep your story from feeling too routine. These can illustrate your characters’ body language and help reveal their underlying motivations. It will make your story feel more present and immersive than if you used “said” in every single line. 5. Avoid using adverbs too frequently in dialogue tags That being said, using adverbs as part of your dialogue tag should be done with a very light hand. Used sparingly, they can give dimension to many characters and their experiences; however, too many can make your story feel overburdened and sluggish. Use adverbs and alternative verbs for your dialogue tags only when they enhance the dialogue. Wherever possible, allow the words of the dialogue to speak for themselves. One last question—is there a difference between “dialog” vs. “dialogue”? It’s common to be confused when it comes to the differences between dialog vs. dialogue. The two are homonyms, and they’re interchangeable depending on which country you’re in! In the United States, the word “dialogue” is the preferred word for referencing a conversation or exchange of communication like what you’d find in a story, while the word “dialog,” at least in American English, is used more specifically when referring to computing—like a “dialog box” that appears on your computer to communicate something to you. So remember to use “dialogue tags” rather than “dialog tags”! Hopefully that clears up any dialog vs. dialogue confusion! Effective dialogue tags will elevate your story So small and easily overlooked, yet such an essential part of any story, dialogue tags and speech tags are one of the most basic tools a writer has at their disposal. By mastering the use of dialogue tags and the rules of dialogue in a story, your story will take on new dimension and feel that much more real to your readers. Get feedback on your writing today! Scribophile is a community of hundreds of thousands of writers from all over the world. Meet beta readers, get feedback on your writing, and become a better writer! Join now for free Related articles What is Alliteration? Definition, examples and tips What is Dialect in Literature? Definition and Examples Show, Don’t Tell: Meaning, Examples & Differences What is Foreshadowing? Definition, Types, Examples, and Tips How to Write Dialogue: Rules, Examples, and 8 Tips for Engaging Dialogue Writing Effective Dialogue: Advanced Techniques How to write great dialogue in fiction Related courses, dialogue – the deep dive, write to the end of your novel, by anna davis, 24th aug 2018. Well-handled dialogue is one of THE essential ingredients of a good novel. And yet it’s something that many writers struggle with and even shy away from. The trick to writing great dialogue in fiction is to make your characters’ speech carry the ring and rhythm of real-life conversations without actually trying to recreate them verbatim, complete with all the er’s, um’s, repetition and waffle … Here are just some of the things that really great dialogue can accomplish in your novel: It brings the reader right into a specific moment of your story. It gives the reader direct access to the voices of your characters. It gives direct access to the events of your story as they unfold. It’s a means of showing your reader more about who your characters are. It’s a means of conveying information to the reader. You can use it to misdirect the reader. You can use it to carry the story – moving your plot along snappily, and showing rather than telling as you go. It’s a very direct way of showing conflict between your characters. It enriches the texture of your story, breaking through the narrative voice. It’s an agent for humour, drama, heartbreak and more. It carries tone and emotional content. Here are some tips on how to write great dialogue in fiction – and what to avoid doing: 1. Don't use any verbs other than 'says' or 'said' – and don't use lots of adverbs This is the writing tip EVERYONE gives when it comes to writing dialogue – but there's a reason for it. It's the moment to unlearn everything you were taught as a kid at school. Basically you don't want a lot of 'he expostulated', 'she contradicted' etc. Neither do you need people exclaiming 'enthusiastically', 'vociferously' etc. Dialogue is best when it's purest – see if you can make it stand without too much supporting furniture. Give the reader the bare minimum of 'he saids' – just enough so we know who's speaking. And sometimes try using a physical gesture or movement instead of a 'Mother says' to show us who's speaking and what's going on. E.g.: 'Why are you treating me like this?' Mother turned away. Above all, keep it simple. 2. Don’t show people always talking in complete sentences In real life, we often don’t say things in full, carefully, and in the correct words. Make your characters say things abruptly, or speak only a part or a fragment of what they’re trying to communicate. Also, we don’t always wait for each other to finish speaking. Have your characters cut across each other in ways that are true to them and their situation. 3. Make the language work with the emotion of the situation The way we talk depends on what’s happening to us and who we’re talking to. If you’re talking to your scary boss, you would be measured, polite, respectful. If you’re talking to your naughty child, you’d be clear, authoritative – or perhaps irritable and desperate. Consider the situation and emotions of your character when choosing the words and the extent to which your character can articulate clearly. 4. Give your characters distinct and different voices Make sure you differentiate clearly between the voices of your characters so that a reader would know who is speaking without a ‘he said/she said’. Giving voice to your characters through dialogue is a vital part of characterisation. If you choose words which are  your  voice rather than your character’s, the reader will know straight away and the magic will be broken. 5. Informality in speech When we’re talking, most of us run words together rather than speaking correctly. ‘I had not known I would like it’ becomes ‘I hadn’t known I’d like it’. I’d recommend you run your words together in this way when writing dialogue – otherwise it sounds stilted and unreal. And always read your dialogue aloud after you’ve written it so you can check whether it’s flowing in a naturalistic way. So much of the interesting stuff in dialogue is what’s not said – and sometimes that’s where the story is. Have your characters conceal their real thoughts and motives and let the reader figure out what’s really going on. You can even make your characters say the opposite of what they are actually feeling – play with this for dramatic effect and to give your scene some edge. 7. Avoiding answering direct questions It’s quite dull when a character responds readily, immediately and completely to questions he or she is asked. In life we often ignore questions – and for reasons which could be dramatically engaging. And now here are some things to definitely AVOID in dialogue: 1. Exclamation marks and italics In an attempt to emphasise important points and heighten the drama, we often litter our dialogue with exclamation marks and italics. Frankly that all just gets a bit much. Go through your dialogue to weed these out and make it less ‘shouty’. 2. Overstatement Watch out for those moments when your characters state the obvious – labouring a point or building to a shouty crescendo which feels dramatic in the moment of writing, but which, when you read over it, is clumsy, unnatural and perhaps cliched. Use the editing stage of your writing process to pull back on all this. Less is more. 3. Big blocks of dialogue/characters ‘banging on’ It’s offputting to readers when they encounter big blocks of speech. If you find yourself writing a piece of direct speech that goes on for more than a few lines without interruption, you could think about cutting it back – or you could break it up by interrupting it with interjections from another character. Potentially you may even want to show this material in a different way – e.g. by dramatising it rather than telling it through dialogue. 4. Too much information Although it’s good to use dialogue to convey information, you should avoid info-dumping – this will weigh it down, breaking the illusion of reality and making your reader want to throw the book at the wall. Don’t have your characters dishing up information when it doesn’t feel like a natural part of what they’d be saying. 5. Repeatedly addressing characters by name When you’re talking to people in real life, how often do you speak their name aloud? We might speak someone’s name to attract their attention or to emphasise a point – but not continually throughout a conversation – unless the speaker is a salesman. I’ll finish by saying – as I often do – that great dialogue is your friend. It can do amazing things for your novel and really bring it to life. It just takes a bit of work to get it working well for you. Finally, if you want to learn more about the craft of writing convincing dialogue that flows naturally and serves your story – join our four-week online course Dialogue – The Deep Dive . For more writing advice from Anna, join our six-week online Write to the End of Your Novel course, including a full module on writing dialogue. RELATED ARTICLES Jo cunningham: 'approach your novel through scenes rather than chapters', 6 tips for writing crime and thrillers. AJC Publishing - Manuscript Editing Services Blog - resource for writers, blog - resources for writers, how to punctuate dialogue. Share this to: Advice based on Australian Style Manual (ASM) Dialogue punctuation is an area of fiction writing that often baffles new and experienced authors alike. Here you will find simple explanations on how to punctuate and lay out your dialogue, plus the difference between direct dialogue, indirect dialogue and internal dialogue. ‘Single’ or “double” quote marks? Single and double quotes (quotation marks) vary from country to country and publishers usually have the final decision to fit their in-house styles. Up until now, Australian and UK publishers have preferred single quotes, whereas US publishers prefer double; however, Australian publishers are becoming more aware that single quote marks can provide difficulties for people who use screen readers, and there is a movement towards double quotes. Whichever you decide to use, the main thing is to be consistent in your choice. It’s easy enough to complete a Find/Replace in Word if you eventually decide to switch. I have used double quote marks in these examples, as this is now my in-house style. What goes inside dialogue quote marks? Only two things should be placed within dialogue quote marks: A. What a character says out loud (direct speech) “Don’t sit there. The paint’s still wet,” he said. B. Dialogue punctuation  (e.g. comma, full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, ellipses) “I’m not sure if I like this,” Ruth said. “It’s scary.” “Haven’t you done this before?” John asked, looking amused. “No. Wait!” Ruth took a step back. “It’s … a lot higher than I thought.” What goes outside dialogue quote marks? Dialogue tags  (said, asked, called, murmured, yelled etc.) Dialogue tags are used to flag which character is speaking and often help the reader understand the tone of the character’s dialogue. “Will you be joining us for dinner?” he asked. The waiter called out, “Sir, you left your jacket.” She leaned in and whispered, “Don’t forget to lock your door.” “Well, if you’d told me,” David mumbled, “we could have worked it out.” “Don’t be so hasty to decide,” Verity said. “You still have plenty of time.” Dialogue tags are always punctuated with a comma, unless the speech is interrupted and a new sentence begins with a capital letter (see example 5). Dialogue always starts with a capital letter, unless a sentence is interrupted by a tag or action and the same sentence then continues. In this case, use lower case to continue the dialogue. (See example 4). Dialogue tags are also known as attributions. Action tags  (an action the character does) Action tags are used to flag which character is speaking, and sometimes to aid characterisation. They can also provide an alternative to repetitive dialogue tags. She shook her head. “It’s not the same.” “It’s over here.” Tom pointed to the shelf. but when using both an action and a dialogue tag: She shook her head and said, “It’s not the same.” Action tags are always punctuated with a full stop.  Action tags are sometimes called action beats. Dialogue without tags If it’s clear which character is speaking, it’s not necessary to use a tag at all. David and his brother stood looking at the broken window while their father glowered. “Which one of you kids did this?” Direct Speech – Indirect Speech – Internal Dialogue Direct speech is dialogue spoken aloud and is enclosed in quote marks: “Good job, David,” she said. Indirect speech is reported speech and does not require quote marks. Jason said he would be there, but Susan had her doubts. Internal Dialogue  is the equivalent of thought and requires no quote marks. Mark wondered if this was such a good idea. What if it all went wrong? Interrupted Dialogue When dialogue is interrupted by either an action or thought, use em dashes to set off the interruption, but do not use commas. Interruption by action “When I applied for this job”—she pursed her lips to calm herself—”you said you would support me.” The same technique applies to action interrupted by dialogue: Ben picked up the water container—”It’s empty”—and shook it as evidence. Interruption by indirect thought “Take three drops of rose oil”—he wondered if he had the amounts right—”and blend it with the other ingredients.” Interruption by direct thought I should have eaten when Mum offered—now that my stomach is grumbling—but I hadn’t been hungry then. Interruption by another character’s dialogue Gerry grabbed his satchel and turned to Kathy, who was balancing the cash register. “So when you’ve finished doing that, you’ll—” “Yes, yes. Bank the takings, and lock up the shop,” she said. “Get going or you’ll miss your train.” Trailing off dialogue When a character trails off their speech, use an ellipses with one space prior. Mary’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe if I …” She bent to pick up the broken plate, then sat on the kitchen stool weeping. Quotes within dialogue, which form (a syntatical) part of the sentence Jeff dropped his backpack and turned to Sally. “There’s rain due in an hour. The ranger said it would be ‘a bucket load’. We should find shelter.” Wendy pushed Jim aside. “Not like that. Mum said ‘cover it with both hands’.” Quotes that form part of the narrative, rather than dialogue. Saraya sat in a huff, telling Eddie she was as “exhausted as a snail going up hill” and wouldn’t take another step. Every time Gran yelled “get out of the lolly jar”, I honestly thought she had supernatural hearing. Flouting conventions Of course, there are several well-known authors who like to do things their own way and use alternative dialogue punctuation. For example, none of these authors use dialogue quote marks: Tim Winton Ali Smith Cormac McCarthy Maaza Mengiste Sally Rooney Virginia Woolf Jacqueline Woodson You’ll notice these are mainly literary authors, with enough skill to present their dialogue without quote marks and not confuse readers. However, some tend to use dialogue tags (instead of quote marks) on EVERY. SINGLE. LINE. which becomes laborious. Some use italics instead, or a dash, or just a new line. Love dialogue punctuation or hate it – the majority of writers use it because it’s standard practice and what their readers expect see. So much so that quote marks, like other punctuation marks, are skimmed over by the eye. If you leave them out, you risk tripping up the reader. Ultimately, most editors and writers will agree you need to learn the rules before you break them. Recent Posts How to conquer procrastination Types of editing explained Show, don’t tell Authenticity in World Building How to use an Em or En dash Character gestures and physical descriptions How to introduce character descriptions within a narrative Who or whom Lay laid or lie Quickly sort your chapters in Word My Own Beta Read How to market your book Publishing Offers Omniscient point of view What are filter words? How to find a publisher or agent The Girl with the Gold Bikini 30 days of flash fiction Dangling, misplaced and squinting modifiers How to use a semicolon Competitions & opportunities Ouch! Negative reviews Pitch perfect Stories from conflict The sound of proofreading Testimonials., useful links. Writers Centres ACT Writers Centre Australian Writers’ Centre NSW Writers Centre NT Writers Centre Queensland Writers Centre SA Writers Centre Tasmanian Writers Centre Varuna, The Writers’ House Writers Victoria Organisations Australian Booksellers Association Australian Publishers Association Australian Society of Authors Copyright Agency Need some help with your writing? To have your manuscript edited by a professional editor,  visit my Services page @ AJC Publishing. All rights reserved. Licences held for all images. Search Search Search … Search Search … How To Punctuate Character Speech And Dialogue In Fiction As an author, are you often confused about how to punctuate character speech and dialogue in fiction? Are you unclear about the difference between a dialogue tag and an action tag? Do you sometimes get stuck, wondering where the comma(s) need to go? If so, this blog will help! Read on to learn how to punctuate character speech and dialogue in fiction, and why it matters to your readers. Why Does Character Speech And Dialogue Need To Be Punctuated? Character speech and dialogue needs to be punctuated to make it clear that a character is speaking, or that two (or more) characters are having a conversation or talking aloud. If it’s not clear, your readers will end up confused, and no author wants that, especially as the consequences of confusing readers may include them: Discarding your book Leaving a negative review online Choosing not to read any of your other books Developing a negative impression of you as an author Being negative about your book on social media or in ‘real life’ So, it’s important to get the basics right, including punctuating character speech and dialogue correctly! Where Does The Punctuation Need To Go? As The Copyeditor’s Handbook explains: ‘At the end of a quotation, the terminal punctuation mark is placed inside the closing quotation mark.’ Jones asked, “Where is everyone?” In this complete sentence, the reader understands that: Jones is speaking Jones is asking a question The words “Where is everyone?” are being said aloud, which is clear because of the speech marks around them A comma should always be used directly after ‘asked’ and before the speech begins. Flipping the sentence to lead with the dialogue makes the comma redundant due to the question mark. However, a full stop would then be needed at the end: “Where is everyone?” Jones asked. If a character’s speech is more than one sentence and their following words don’t need a question mark or an exclamation mark, a comma should always be used directly before the closing speech mark(s). In that case, a dialogue tag would be needed: Where is everyone? I need them here,” Jones said. (‘Jones said’ is the dialogue tag.) Without the question the sentence would be: “I need them here,” Jones said. (‘Jones said’ is the dialogue tag.) Here, the character’s speech plus the dialogue tag creates one full sentence altogether, so the full stop goes at the end. Therefore, a full stop is not used within the character’s speech when a dialogue tag is added, but a comma is needed. Without a dialogue tag, the sentence would simply be: “I need them here.” In which case, a full stop would be added at the end as it’s a full sentence. When Should Dialogue Tags Be Used? Use a dialogue tag when a character has spoken. “I think it’s time we had a chat,” she said. Using ‘said’ or ‘asked’ (or sometimes ‘replied’) with a character’s name (or a pronoun e.g. he/she/they) is plenty. Be careful of: Using ‘they’ if you’ve only used ‘he’ or ‘she’ previously, unless your characters are speaking (or perhaps singing) in unison (but always use ‘they’ if that is your character’s designated pronoun) Including a wide variety of synonyms for ‘said’. It’s just not necessary to use ‘uttered’, ‘verbalised’ or ‘commented’ instead ‘Said’ / ‘asked’ or ‘says’ / ‘asks’ (depending on the tense you are writing in) is clear enough, unless you are describing how a character is speaking e.g. ‘shouted’ / ‘shouts’ or ‘whispered’ / ‘whispers’ When Aren’t Dialogue Tags Needed? A dialogue tag is not necessarily needed if a character performs an action as well as/just after speaking. Instead, use an action tag. “Would you recognise the man again?” DCI Smith asked, looking up from her notepad and waiting for a response. This could be condensed into: “Would you recognise the man again?” DCI Smith looked up from her notepad. Similarly, verbs should never  be used as dialogue tags. “I don’t think so,” she sighed. A character can’t say something at the exact same time as smiling or sighing or yawning or coughing. Therefore, the dialogue tag needs to reflect exactly what the character is saying and doing. If your character sighs, it needs to be added on to the ‘said’ tag, like this: “I don’t think so,” she said, sighing. Or else the action of ‘sighing’ needs to be in a separate sentence completely, as an action tag: “I don’t think so.” She sighed. It is also effective to show how the character is speaking through their dialogue, negating the need for a dialogue tag at all. Instead of: “I’m not sure,” she stammered. “I–I’m not sure…” She cast her eyes towards the floor and pressed her lips together, trapping her words inside. The second example helps the reader understand that the character is stammering without it being stated, as well as how she feels, much more than the first example. Should Single Or Double Speech Marks Be Used? Generally, the UK convention is to use double speech marks while the US convention is to use one. Sometimes it’s vice versa. As an indie author it is completely your preference, whereas publishing houses will have their own in-house style choice. Either way, at the first draft stage, it is important to consider reported speech within direct speech. “What did he say?” she asked, twisting her hair around her fingers. “He said ‘over my dead body’ and stalked off!” Annie replied. If the reported speech – ‘over my dead body’ – also used double speech marks, the same as the direct speech, it might confuse readers: “He said “over my dead body” and stalked off!” Annie replied. Therefore, it is often better (although not essential) to differentiate between the two for clarity. However, as long as who is saying what is obvious to your readers, there are no hard and fast rules about speech/quotation marks, except one – be consistent throughout the entire manuscript! How Should A Conversation Between Two (Or More) Characters Be Set Out? Beginning a new line for each character within a conversation is good practice and helps the reader immensely: “Cheers!” she said. “So, what made you want to go on the show?” he asked “Exposure and money,” she said. “Me too. I’m an actor slash model but times are hard,” he said. “My mate Rex bet me I wouldn’t apply, so I did. So, what are you going to do with the money?” “Plastic surgery,” she said. However, rather than a back and forth volley, adding descriptive action tags embellishes the writing: “Cheers!” She clinked his glass with hers and laughed, the sound taking her by surprise. “So what made you want to go on the show?” He took a sip of his drink. “Exposure and money.” He nodded. “Me too. I’m an actor slash model.” He made a karate chop gesture on the word ‘slash’. “But times are hard. Or they were, anyway. Better now, though. In fact, my mate Rex bet me I wouldn’t apply, so I did. Won a tenner. So, what are you going to do with the prize money?” “Plastic surgery,” she said, without a trace of humour. Note that each new line can begin with an action or dialogue, as long as the action and dialogue belongs to that particular character. When Should A Vocative Comma Be Used? Masterclass states: ‘A vocative comma is a punctuation mark used to indicate a direct address in the context of a larger sentence. When you speak directly to another person, you use the vocative case.’ The vocative comma should be placed before the name when the name is used at the end of the sentence. “What do you think, Lydia?” Whereas when the name is used in the middle of the sentence, the vocative comma should be placed before and after the name. “I know what you said, Lydia, but things have changed.” The vocative comma(s) clarify to the reader who is being directly addressed, so should never be left out. Check out my other writing related posts if you have found ‘How to punctuate character speech and dialogue in fiction’ useful: 6 Simple Steps To Working With a Freelance Editor 15 Essential Checks to Make Before Sending Your Manuscript to Your Editor Discover more from c. l. jennison editorial. Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… C. L. Jennison Editorial You may also like. 6 Simple Steps To Working With A Freelance Editor How do authors work with a freelance manuscript editor? ‘6 Simple Steps To Working With a Freelance Editor’ explains how to work […] This blog lists 15 essential checks to make before sending your manuscript to your editor. Each check features the most common errors […] Leave your comments here! Cancel reply This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed . Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive. Continue reading Member-only story How to Write Good Dialogue in Fiction Stories People talk too much. for a writer trying to figure out how to write good dialogue in fiction, that’s a good thing.. Sean P. Durham The Startup Here are a few short points to think about as a fiction writer. Listen to other people’s conversations. Listen with intent; What are they trying to tell each other? Is it an instructional conversation where one person is being guided by the other’s words? Especially, listen to the very last words spoken. The words that sum it all up. The last words could break a conversation. Can you hear a tone of voice that indicates that the words are being used as camouflage for another sentiment that isn’t being spoken? “Write hard and clear about what hurts” Ernest Hemingway Listening to people speaking, on the train, bus, when you are walking along the street and standing in a shop, are all good places to eavesdrop on people’s patterns of speech. Written by Sean P. Durham Berlin Notes — Creative Writing about art, Life & cats. https://seandurham.eu Text to speech INNOVATION FESTIVAL Capital One 08-09-2024 HOW TO BE A SUCCESS AT EVERYTHING How I wrote a book in 15 minutes a day Every first novel started as an unpublished writer’s wild idea. Here’s how to make yours a reality. [Photo: Stas Knop /Pexels] BY  Julia Dahl 4 minute read The first time I tried to write a novel I was 23. I had all the time in the world. I was a full-time graduate student. I lived alone, I had no children, and it took me three years to finish a draft. Five years later, I tried again. I was working full-time as a reporter and I lived with my boyfriend, but we had no kids. This time, it took me five years. All that time, my technique, if you could call it that, was the same: set up my laptop at a coffee shop or a library or at my desk at home, and “write.” But, as New York Times best-selling author Meghan O’Rourke recently tweeted : “It’s really important to have at least three hours to write every day so you can spend the first two hours squirming and checking the internet and daydreaming before getting down to it.” Touché. I thought I needed hours with nothing to do but write. But even with all those hours, I didn’t produce much. So I started applying for retreats and residencies , thinking maybe I needed long stretches—days, weeks—to do nothing but write. I wrote three novels that way. Fits of progress followed by long lulls of nothing. And then I had a child. Suddenly, there were no long stretches. I struggled. I had to figure out a way to fold my writing back into my life, but my life had changed so dramatically I wasn’t sure how. I turned in my fourth novel two years past the deadline. I had an idea for another, but no idea how I’d actually get it gone. And then, my friend, author Laura McHugh, told me she’d started doing “writing sprints.” I don’t have all day, she told me, but I can commit to one hour. Frankly, an hour felt impossible, but I liked the idea of a sprint. I turned off my Wi-Fi, silenced my ringer, put on some noise-canceling headphones, and for 15 minutes, I wrote. I didn’t produce a lot, but it was more than I’d done the day before. More than I’d done in a month. I did the same thing the next day, and the next. And less than two years later, I had a solid draft. Words add up There is nothing magic about 15 minutes—and yet there is. We all waste 15 minutes every day scrolling on our phones. Probably more, but definitely 15. And in 15 minutes, if you can write 100 words, you can have a full-length draft of a novel in two years. (One hundred words times 365 days times two years is 73,000 words, which most editors will tell you is on the shorter end of average novel length.) You’ll also probably start enjoying those 15 minutes; what you accomplished will help carry you through the day. And sometimes those 15 minutes will turn into longer sessions. Will what you write be ready to publish? No. First drafts never are. Part of the 15 minute technique is to give yourself permission to write badly. You’ll fix it later. But here’s the key: There is no published novel without a finished first draft. What if two years ago you’d decided to write 15 minutes a day? You’d have hundreds of pages to polish into something publishable. Training your brain But more than the words on the page—which add up!—the genius of the 15 daily minutes is that the real secret to writing a novel, or achieving any long-term artistic goal, is time spent thinking about the thing you’re creating. You can’t write a novel without hours and hours spent considering the world you’re building, the people you’re creating, the problems they’ll encounter, and the route it will take for them to get to the end of their journey. To do all that, you need to spend a lot of time walking around with the novel in your brain. Spending even just 15 minutes each day “with” your novel means that it will always be present in your mind. Nurture that presence when you aren’t writing. Cut down on podcasts when you’re walking or driving. Give yourself quiet. Tell yourself: I’m going to think about the next scene I need to write while I go through this car wash, or walk to the grocery store, or wait for my son’s lacrosse practice to end.  Keep a notebook with you to jot down plot ideas and snippets of dialogue. Or, use your phone to dictate messages to yourself, though your phone can be very dangerous as a distraction, so beware.  How to find your 15 minutes It’ll be different for everyone. You can’t get me out of bed one minute before I need to be awake, so mornings are out for me. And once I’ve put my son to bed, I’m pretty wiped. It’s certainly not my most creative time. So I do my 15 minutes in the middle of the day.  I coach novelists who do their 15 minutes after their morning workout, or after they’ve dropped their kids off from school, or right before bed. I know writers who write at work on their lunch break. All that matters is the time; the where and when can change as your life does. Give yourself permission Let me tell you a secret: Most writers—even those with books in your favorite bookstore, reviewed by the big papers—don’t make enough money off their writing to pay all their bills. The same is true of all other artists: musicians, painters, actors, dancers. Does that make their work less legitimate? If you write, you’re a writer. Own it. Another thing to remember is that every novel you pick up (and every song you listen to, every performance you attend) started as somebody’s wild idea. It exists only because its creator decided to spend unpaid time working on it. Little by little, the wild idea turns into something real. Apply to the Most Innovative Companies Awards and be recognized as an organization driving the world forward through innovation. Early-rate deadline: Friday, August 23. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Julia Dahl is the author of five novels including I Dreamed of Falling , out this September from Minotaur Books. She teaches journalism at NYU and provides private coaching and creative writing classes online .   More Explore Topics Tech Write better, faster with these 6 free AI tools Tech How did Walmart’s drone delivery service grow so big, so fast? 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Cognitive experts have theories about why By Olivia Goldhill Aug. 7, 2024 I n a speech earlier this year, former President Trump was mocking President Biden’s ability to walk through sand when he suddenly switched to talking about the old Hollywood icon Cary Grant. “Somebody said he [Biden] looks great in a bathing suit, right? When he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know, sand is heavy. They figure three solid ounces per foot. But sand is a little heavy. And he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant — he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today,” he said at a March rally in Georgia. Trump went on to talk about contemporary actors, Michael Jackson, and border policies before returning to the theme of how Biden looks on the beach. advertisement This shifting from topic to topic, with few connections — a pattern of speech called tangentiality — is one of several disjointed and occasionally incoherent verbal habits that seem to have increased in Trump’s speech in recent years, according to interviews with experts in memory, psychology, and linguistics. STAT+ Exclusive Story Already have an account? Log in This article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers Unlock this article — plus daily intelligence on capitol hill and the life sciences industry — by subscribing to stat+.. Totals $468 per year for 3 months, then $39/month Then $39/month Savings start at 25%! Annually per user $300 Annually per user Get unlimited access to award-winning journalism and exclusive events. About the Author Reprints Olivia goldhill. Investigative Reporter Olivia Goldhill works to hold corporations and public bodies to account, with a particular interest in reproductive health, mental health, and psychedelics. STAT encourages you to share your voice. We welcome your commentary, criticism, and expertise on our subscriber-only platform, STAT+ Connect To submit a correction request, please visit our Contact Us page . Recommended Recommended Stories 5 health issues to watch for at the Democratic National Convention STAT Plus: Physicians weigh in on potential impact of Trump’s ear wound: ‘It’s a matter of inches’ STAT Plus: Meet the billionaire media mogul who’s taking on the food industry STAT Plus: Boston’s lab market is in rough shape STAT Plus: Health Care's Colossus: How UnitedHealth turned a questionable artery-screening program into a gold mine NewsMatch Challenge: Support investigative reporting from LPM, and your gift is doubled. 'Hillbilly Elegy' is back in the spotlight. These Appalachians write a different tale NPR spoke with Appalachian fiction and nonfiction writers about this moment and how they are building a tapestry of what they know as home. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis , the 2016 memoir from Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, once again began flying off the shelves after former President Donald Trump named Vance as his running mate. Many have turned to the memoir to find out the story of Vance’s upbringing, a core part of why he’s on the Republican ticket to begin with. But the book also brings along a host of assumptions that many authors still find not to be true. Pulitzer-winning author Barbara Kingsolver said she felt that it was her duty to tell a different story of Appalachian life than the one that Vance presented in the book. “It used the same old victim-blaming trope. It was like a hero story: ‘I got out of here, I went to Yale,’” Kingsolver said of Vance. “‘But those lazy people, you know, just don't have ambitions. They don’t have brains. That’s why they’re stuck where they are.’ I disagree. And that’s my job, to tell a different story.” Vance’s has been mired in controversy since its 2016 publication, especially by authors who cover the region. Vance, who writes that Appalachian culture “encourages social decay instead of counteracting it,” says this upbringing is central to his political ideology and thinking. Many Appalachian authors, like Kingsolver, have worked tirelessly to combat what they feel is a misleading and even harmful depiction of the region. Her novel Demon Copperhead , a fictional window into the same communities, was named one of the New York Times ’ best books of the century just days ahead of the Republican National Convention. Last year, it won a Pulitzer Prize. As hundreds of thousands more read about the plights of the Appalachian region, these authors are fighting back against what they describe as Vance’s assumed norms. Overcoming “Hillbilly Elegy” Vance writes in Hillbilly Elegy that he grew up most of his life in Middletown, Ohio, but spent summers and his free time until the age of 12 in Jackson, Ky. Vance adds that Jackson “was the one place that belonged to me.” Vance’s first stop after the RNC was to a rally in Middletown, where he declared, “I love every one of you, and I love this town, and I'm so grateful to have been formed by it, because I wouldn't be who I was without it.” But Vance’s claim to the area has created a cultural rift between him and those from Appalachia. Kingsolver said that when she saw Vance’s recently resurfaced interview calling several Democrats “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made,” it reaffirmed her disappointments with Hillbilly Elegy . “When I read JD Vance’s memoir, I resented it all the way through. There was just something about it that kept telling me, he’s not from here, he doesn’t get us,” Kingsolver told NPR. “I thought, OK, you are not from here because when I think about my childhood, many of the most important women in my life who saved me, who took care of me, were childless women. It’s not just blood that defines community here.” It’s not just Kingsolver who has an alternate narrative. Meredith McCarroll and Anthony Harkins co-edited Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, a blend of scholarly, poetic and narrative rebuttals to Vance’s tale published in 2019. Harkins, an assistant professor in history at Western Kentucky University, said that Hillbilly Elegy loses its footing by generalizing one person’s narrative into a definitive account of the entire region. “It’s totally legitimate for anybody to tell their own story and how they see it,” Harkins told NPR. “But to then present it as the story of Appalachia, to speak of a memoir of a culture, is problematic particularly because that region has so often been stereotyped and misrepresented through recent history.” McCarroll, director of writing and rhetoric at Bowdoin College and an Appalachian native of Waynesville, N.C., said that the duo’s goal with the book was to spotlight a chorus of Appalachian voices in response to Elegy’s immense popularity, both existing on their own and in opposition to the text. “My inclination was to gather a lot of different voices, both that are challenging him but not speaking to him at all,” McCarroll told NPR. “It’s this weaving together of a lot of different authentic perspectives that can give a sense of how layered and complex this 13 state region is.” McCarroll added that beyond Hillbilly Elegy, she wanted Appalachian Reckoning to counter the idea of Appalachia as a monolithic place. “The back half of the book moved beyond Hillbilly Elegy, and really is just a collection of narratives from the region that you can’t read and come away thinking you understand Appalachia,” McCarroll said. “No one should say, ‘I read one book, and so I understand this region.’” Writing the full truth For these writers, telling the honest story of Appalachia is tantamount–even if they start difficult conversations. Elizabeth Catte, historian and author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, published in 2018, said that books about Appalachia fall short for her when authors lean on inauthentic stereotypes in pursuit of authenticity. “Sometimes people try to make up for personal knowledge or experience or study of a region by laying a bunch of tropes on a book and calling it authentic,” Catte told NPR. “Sometimes you don’t get a sense that Appalachia has a history, that it’s just a place full of problems, but none of those problems have an origin, or the origin is uninteresting to the author.” Vance’s story has resonated with conservatives and non-Appalachians alike. In the wake of the 2016 election, the book became an explanation of sorts for some liberals as to who Trump’s supporters were and how he managed to win the presidency. One op-ed described Bostonians as “ lapping up ” the tale. The book became a best-seller and later was adapted into a movie. But for those from the region, crucial pieces of the puzzle that Vance painted are missing. Harkins said that when discussing Appalachian history, texts must keep economic context in mind, like Appalachia’s political and cultural history with coal , when thinking about how the past has turned into the present. “You can’t speak about the experience of Appalachia in the last hundred years without thinking about the massive effects that economic change have brought to it, in a place that is often the product of extractive industry, whether it’s lumbering or coal or fracking,” Harkins said. “One of the concerns I have with seeing it through the prism of Hillbilly Elegy is often that most of that stuff is not part of the story.” Vance’s politics might not land with all readers, but he focused much of his Republican National Convention speech, which he gave just two days after being named to the ticket, on his relationship with his mom and grandma. These relationships are where these authors have found a common ground. For Kingsolver’s fictional quest, it was similarly important to keep Demon’s humanity front and center, both for the reader and for herself. “I was kind of scared to write this novel for several years because you can’t bludgeon people with sadness or with truths that are hard to bear,” Kingsolver said. “Unless you give it a really delicious package. You have to give people a reason to turn the page. You have to give people characters that they love and believe in, that they honestly start to care about as their friend.” The power of representation Kingsolver said that when Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize last year, Appalachia rejoiced like Appalachia does. “It was like fireworks all up and down the mountain,” Kingsolver said. “So many people from here, even my mail carrier and the cashier at the grocery store, said, ‘This is amazing. We won.’” The novel has appealed to more than Appalachians: It unanimously won the 2023’s Women Prize, and more recently, it ranked No. 1 on the New York Times ’ readers’ “Best Books of the Century” list–and No. 61 on the critics’ list. McCarroll said that with novels coming out today like Demon Copperhead, it is hard to stay upset at the negative aspects of Hillbilly Elegy.  “What’s so exciting is that there are so many really diverse, beautiful stories that are really offering complicated perspectives, and so it’s like I don’t feel like I have to stay mad at Hillbilly Elegy ,” McCarroll said. “There’s a long history of Appalachian literature, too.” McCarroll added that a variety of stories is important because they add texture to a region too often boxed into one corner. “What a Black Appalachian coal miner in Pennsylvania is experiencing might be very different from a Mexican migrant worker in Western North Carolina is experiencing, which might be really different than what a third- or fourth-generation farmer who is white in Kentucky is experiencing,” McCarroll said. Kingsolver said that when writing Demon Copperhead, it was important to combat assumptions made by mainstream media outlets about Appalachia. “I think they miss our diversity. They think we’re all white, and we’re not. It was important for me to reflect that in this novel,” Kingsolver said. “I wanted it to be the great Appalachian novel that kind of puts our whole region in a context. We didn’t choose to have poverty and [high] unemployment. We didn’t ask for that. This came to us.” Kingsolver added that it has been especially gratifying hearing from people whose perspective on Appalachia changed after reading her novel. “I have heard from lots and lots and lots of people in other parts of the country who said, ‘This book asked me to evaluate my prejudices, and I thank you for that,’ ” Kingsolver said. “It’s amazing.” When Kingsolver received news that she was at the top of the Times’ readers’ list last month, she said she had to “lie down on the floor” and think about its weight. Kingsolver said that a less obvious reward, though, was readers celebrating a story of an imperfect, wholly Appalachian character. “I can’t even tell you how many people have written to tell me I’m still worried about Demon, I wake up at night worrying about him,” Kingsolver said. “As if he’s become their kid. He’s the world’s kid. That’s how you navigate it, that’s how you have to.” Though Hillbilly Elegy might loom large once again, Appalachian authors, whether through fictional tales like Demon Copperhead or nonfiction deep dives like What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, are finding strength in their resistance and dissent. Reacting to news of being on the New York Times' list, Kingsolver wrote in an Instagram post: “With a certain other ‘hillbilly’ book suddenly ascendant, my duty. No elegies here. Thank you.” Copyright 2024 NPR Can we count on your support? Louisville Public Media depends on donations from members – generous people like you – for the majority of our funding. You can help make the next story possible with a donation of $10 or $20. We'll put your gift to work providing news and music for our diverse community. Join our mailing list and receive your free eBook. You'll also receive great tips on story editing, our best blogs, and learn how to use Fictionary software to make your story unforgettable. Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. [{"term_id":2430,"name":"Writing Tips","slug":"writing-tips","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2430,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":2424,"count":67,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":2430,"category_count":67,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Writing Tips","category_nicename":"writing-tips","category_parent":2424}] Blogs / Writing Tips / 6 Word Memoir: How to Write a Mini Memoir Write a Novel Readers Love 6 word memoir: how to write a mini memoir. Ah, the 6-word memoir. You’ve probably heard of it before, maybe even thought about writing one yourself. It’s a tiny challenge with a tremendous impact, a way to distill your life, experiences, or a moment into just six words. But how do you do it? How do you capture something so significant in such a small space? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll have all the tools and tips you need to craft your own 6-word memoir that’ll stick in readers’ minds long after they’ve read it. What Is a 6 Word Memoir So, what exactly is a 6-word memoir? In its simplest form, a 6-word memoir is a personal story told in just six words. It’s a concept that traces its roots back to the legend of Ernest Hemingway, who supposedly wrote the first one: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Whether Hemingway actually penned those words, the idea has taken off, inspiring countless people to try their hand at this ultra-concise form of storytelling. Imagine taking a lifetime of experiences, emotions, and memories and boiling them down to just six words. It’s like trying to fit a complete novel into a single tweet. Challenging, yes, but also incredibly rewarding. The 6-word memoir forces you to distill your thoughts and feelings to their essence, capturing the heart of your story with no fluff. This format has gained popularity for its accessibility and the creative challenge it presents. It’s not just about writing; it’s about finding the core of your story and expressing it in the most impactful way possible. The brevity makes it powerful, requiring you to choose your words carefully and thoughtfully. Why Write a 6 Word Memoir? Why should you bother writing a 6-word memoir? Well, there are plenty of reasons. First off, it’s a fantastic creative exercise. It forces you to think deeply about your experiences and how to convey them succinctly. It’s also a great way to practice your writing skills, especially if you struggle with being concise. Brevity, as they say, is the soul of wit, and mastering the art of brevity can significantly enhance your overall writing prowess. But beyond that, a 6-word memoir can be incredibly powerful. Those six words can capture an emotion, a turning point, or a defining characteristic in a way that’s immediately relatable to others. It’s a way to connect, to share a piece of your life, and to reflect on what matters most to you. When you convey something profound in such a limited space, it resonates deeply with readers, often leaving a lasting impression. Writing a 6-word memoir can be cathartic. It allows you to process your thoughts and emotions, distilling them into a concise format that conveys their essence. This can be especially therapeutic, helping you gain clarity and perspective on your own experiences. The act of writing itself can be a form of self-reflection, encouraging you to look inward and explore the deeper meanings behind life events. Let’s be honest, it’s also a lot of fun. There’s something deeply satisfying about finding just the right words to tell your story. It’s a bit like solving a puzzle, where each word must fit perfectly to reveal the bigger picture. And once you nail it, the sense of accomplishment is immense. Finally, sharing your 6-word memoir with others can create a sense of connection. It’s a way to open up conversations, share experiences, and find common ground with others who have similar stories. Whether you share your memoir online, in a writing group, or with friends and family, it can be a powerful way to connect and communicate. 6 Word Memoir Ideas Stuck for ideas? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Coming up with an interesting 6-word memoir can be tough, but here are some prompts to get you started:   Life Lessons : Think about the biggest lesson you’ve learned in life. How can you capture that in six words?   Defining Moments : What moment changed everything for you? How can you sum it up?   Hopes and Dreams : What do you aspire to? What keeps you going?   Regrets and Mistakes : What’s a mistake you’ve made that taught you something important?   Love and Relationships : Reflect on your relationships. What’s a moment or feeling that stands out?   Identity and Self : Who are you? What defines you? Remember, the key is to dig deep and find the essence of what you want to say. It’s not about covering everything, but about finding one nugget of truth. Sometimes, the simplest moments can hold the most meaning when you look at them from a new perspective. Another approach is to think about your daily life and the small moments that make it unique. Consider the routines, habits, and quirks that define you. For example, a coffee lover might write, “Morning ritual: coffee, quiet, and contemplation.” These everyday moments can be just as powerful and revealing as the big, dramatic events. You can also draw inspiration from your passions and hobbies. What do you love to do, and how does it shape your life? A musician might write, “Strings strummed, melodies linger in air,” while a traveler might pen, “Wanderlust heart, always seeking new horizons.” These memoirs can capture the joy and fulfillment that come from pursuing what you love. 6 Word Memoir Examples To help spark your creativity, let’s look at some examples. These will show you the range of emotions and stories you can convey in just six words. A good 6-word memoir can evoke laughter, tears, or deep thought with equal potency. Funny 6 Word Memoirs Humor is a great way to connect with your readers. Here are some funny 6-word memoirs that might inspire you:   “Ate cake, gym later. Maybe not.”   “Lost keys, found them in fridge.”   “Tried some adulting. Need more practice.”   “Procrastinator. Tomorrow’s problem, today’s plan.”   “Grammar nerd: Eats, shoots, leaves differently.” Humor can break the ice and make your memoir relatable. It shows even in the brevity of six words, you can capture the quirks and idiosyncrasies of life. These memoirs often highlight the minor mishaps that make life amusing and endearing. For instance, a parent might write, “Parenthood: survived tantrums, bedtime, repeat daily,” capturing the humorous yet exhausting reality of raising children. Or someone struggling with technology might pen, “Tech woes: rebooted, still not working,” a relatable scenario for many in today’s digital age. Thought-Provoking 6 Word Memoirs Sometimes, a 6-word memoir can make you think. These examples pack a punch:   “Born curious. Never stopped asking why.”   “Broken heart, still beats with hope.”   “Lost everything, found myself in process.”   “Silence speaks louder than any words.”   “Invisible scars tell the deepest stories.” These memoirs often leave the reader pondering the deeper meanings behind the words, inviting them to explore their own interpretations and reflections. They touch on universal themes of curiosity, resilience, loss, and introspection, encouraging readers to reflect on their own experiences and emotions. For example, “Lost everything, found myself in process” speaks to the idea of personal growth and self-discovery that can come from hardship. It suggests even in the face of loss, there is the potential for finding something meaningful and transformative. Serious 6 Word Memoirs For a more serious tone, consider these examples:   “Cancer survivor. Living life to fullest.”   “War veteran. Memories haunt every night.”   “Adopted child. Searching for birth parents.”   “Lost my way, found fresh paths.”   “Grief-stricken, healing slowly, and finding peace.” Serious memoirs can provide a powerful glimpse into personal struggles and triumphs, often resonating deeply with readers who have faced similar experiences. They offer a window into the challenges and hardships that shape our lives, as well as the strength and resilience that help us overcome them. For instance, “Grief-stricken, healing slowly, and finding peace” captures the complex and often lengthy process of dealing with loss. It acknowledges the pain of grief while also highlighting the gradual journey toward healing and acceptance. These memoirs can serve as a source of inspiration and hope for others facing similar struggles. They remind us even in the darkest times, there is potential for growth, recovery, and finding new paths forward. Tips For Writing a 6 Word Memoir Ready to write your 6-word memoir? Here are some tips to help you craft mini-masterpieces: Focus on a Single Moment or Idea : Don’t capture your entire life. Instead, zero in on a single moment, emotion, or idea that stands out to you. Think about what’s most significant or impactful in your story. This focus will help you create a more powerful and resonant memoir. Be Honest : The best 6-word memoirs are authentic. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable or to share something personal. Authenticity resonates with readers and can make your memoir more relatable and impactful. Your truth, no matter how raw or simple, is what makes your story unique. Use Strong, Evocative Words : With only six words to work with, every word counts. Choose words that carry weight and meaning. Think about words that evoke images, emotions, and senses. Powerful verbs and descriptive nouns can make a big difference. Play with Structure : You don’t have to stick to a traditional sentence structure. Play around with fragments, lists, or even dialogue. For example, “Born crying, lived laughing, died content” uses a list structure that effectively conveys a life story. Edit Ruthlessly : Once you have a draft, cut any unnecessary words. Make sure each word serves a purpose. Editing is crucial in a 6-word memoir because it ensures that your message is clear and concise. Each word must contribute to the overall impact. Get Feedback : Share your 6-word memoir with someone you trust. They might offer insights or suggestions you hadn’t considered. Sometimes, an outside perspective can help you see your words in a new light and refine your message. Once you’ve practiced the 6-word memoir, honed your storytelling skills, and you’re ready to write a full-length memoir, focus on: Creating engaging characters Penning interesting plots Structuring solid settings A tool like Fictionary helps you turn your draft into an interesting story readers love. So, with a strong narrative foundation, your writing can truly shine. Americans love free speech, survey finds − until they realize everyone else has it, too Senior Advisor to the Chancellor, Head of Vanderbilt's Project on Unity and American Democracy, and Co-Director of Vanderbilt Poll, Vanderbilt University Research Professor of Political Science and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech, Vanderbilt University Disclosure statement The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Vanderbilt University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. View all partners Americans’ views on free speech change directions every so often. One of those times was during the protests at U.S. universities about the Israel-Hamas war. As scholars of free speech and public opinion , we set out to find out what happened and why. The Supreme Court itself, as recently as 1989, has declared that the “bedrock principle” of the First Amendment is that “ the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” For years, conservative politicians and commentators have warned that college campuses are not strong enough protectors of free speech. But as demonstrations erupted, these same people complained that the protests were filled with antisemitic hate speech . Leading conservatives declared the demonstrations should be banned and halted, by force if necessary. Liberals executed a similar reversal. Many of them have supported increased regulation of hate speech against minority groups. But during the campus protests, liberals cautioned that crackdowns by university administrators, state officials and the police violated protestors’ free speech rights. As researchers at Vanderbilt University’s Project on Unity and American Democracy and The Future of Free Speech , respectively, we sought to determine where Americans stand. We drew inspiration from a poll done in November 1939 in which 3,500 Americans answered questions about free speech. In June 2024, we asked 1,000 Americans the identical questions. When an abstract concept gets more concrete We found that the vast majority of Americans – both then and now – agree that democracy requires freedom of speech. That’s in the abstract. When the questions get more concrete, though, their support wanes. Only about half of the respondents in both the 1939 and 2024 polls agreed that anybody in America should be allowed to speak on any subject at any time. The rest believed some speech – or certain subjects or speakers – should be prohibited. This pattern is not unique to Americans. A 2021 survey in 33 countries by The Future of Free Speech , a nonpartisan think tank based at Vanderbilt, similarly found high levels of support for free speech in the abstract across all countries but lower support across the board for specific speech that was offensive to minority groups or religious beliefs. We dug deeper in surveys in March and June 2024, asking which subjects or speakers should be banned. We thought the public’s appetite for free speech might have weakened amid the campus turmoil. We found the opposite. When asked whether seven people with widely varied viewpoints should be allowed to speak, the share of people who said “Yes” rose for each one between March and June. Some of the differences were within the surveys’ margins of error, but it’s nevertheless noteworthy that all of them shifted in the same direction. While showing a slightly increased appetite for free speech, these polls still fit with the overall contradiction: Large majorities of Americans passionately uphold free speech as a cornerstone of democracy. But fewer of them are supportive of free speech when faced with specific controversial speakers or topics. The First Amendment is not an a la carte menu Our surveys found that the public has a nuanced view of free speech. For instance, in our June 2024 survey we added some additional categories of potential speakers to the list we had asked about in March. More respondents were comfortable with a pro-Palestinian speaker than a leader of Hamas and with a scientist who believes that IQ varies by race rather than an outright white supremacist. This pattern suggests that the public distinguishes between extreme and more moderate positions and is less tolerant of the rights of those with more extreme views. This shift runs against the purpose of the First Amendment, which was intended to protect unpopular speech . The amendment very specifically was not intended to apply only to certain speakers or viewpoints. Ours is not the only survey to find that many people don’t fully appreciate the logic and principles behind free speech. In 2020, a Knight Foundation poll found that members of both political parties oppose speech that goes against their values or beliefs . Later polls, including those conducted by other organizations, found more specifics: For instance, Democrats were more likely to support censorship of racist hate speech or vaccine misinformation. And Republicans opposed drag shows and kneeling during the playing of the national anthem . A February 2022 national poll commissioned by The New York Times and Siena College found that 30% of Americans believed that “ sometimes you have to shut down speech that is anti-democratic, bigoted, or simply untrue.” A return to fundamentals With the 2024 election looming and polarization increasing among Americans, some people may want only those who agree with them to be allowed to speak. But a true commitment to the fundamental principles of free speech requires people to allow space for controversial and even offensive viewpoints to be aired. History reveals that censorship of hateful ideas is often a cure that is worse than the disease , deepening social divides. James Madison, a key drafter of both the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment, wrote in 1800: “ Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of every thing … it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches, to their luxuriant growth, than by pruning them away, to injure the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits.” As the founders knew, a respect for diverse viewpoints and the ability to express those views – good, bad and harmful alike – in the public sphere are essential to a healthy democracy. Freedom of speech Antisemitism Hate speech First Amendment US Constitution US Founding Fathers Free expression The politics of freedom of speech freedom of speech on campus James Madison Vaccine misinformation Pro-Palestine protest Controversial ideas anti-Israeli sentiment Israel-Hamas war Campus debate Pro-Palestinian protest Pro-Palestinian protesters Microsoft and Citrix Technical Consultant Casual Facilitator: GERRIC Student Programs - Arts, Design and Architecture Senior Lecturer, Digital Advertising Manager, Centre Policy and Translation Newsletter and Deputy Social Media Producer Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player 'Hillbilly Elegy' is back in the spotlight. These Appalachians write a different tale Clayton Kincade A photograph of Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance. Bill Tompkins/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives hide caption Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis , the 2016 memoir from Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, once again began flying off the shelves after former President Donald Trump named Vance as his running mate. Many have turned to the memoir to find out the story of Vance’s upbringing, a core part of why he’s on the Republican ticket to begin with. But the book also brings along a host of assumptions that many authors still find not to be true. Pulitzer-winning author Barbara Kingsolver said she felt that it was her duty to tell a different story of Appalachian life than the one that Vance presented in the book. “It used the same old victim-blaming trope. It was like a hero story: ‘I got out of here, I went to Yale,’” Kingsolver said of Vance. “‘But those lazy people, you know, just don't have ambitions. They don’t have brains. That’s why they’re stuck where they are.’ I disagree. And that’s my job, to tell a different story.” 29 days: how Democrats had to overhaul their convention in a hurry for Harris Vance’s has been mired in controversy since its 2016 publication, especially by authors who cover the region. Vance, who writes that Appalachian culture “encourages social decay instead of counteracting it,” says this upbringing is central to his political ideology and thinking. Many Appalachian authors, like Kingsolver, have worked tirelessly to combat what they feel is a misleading and even harmful depiction of the region. Her novel Demon Copperhead , a fictional window into the same communities, was named one of the New York Times ’ best books of the century just days ahead of the Republican National Convention. Last year, it won a Pulitzer Prize. As hundreds of thousands more read about the plights of the Appalachian region, these authors are fighting back against what they describe as Vance’s assumed norms. Overcoming “Hillbilly Elegy” Vance writes in Hillbilly Elegy that he grew up most of his life in Middletown, Ohio, but spent summers and his free time until the age of 12 in Jackson, Ky. Vance adds that Jackson “was the one place that belonged to me.” Vance’s first stop after the RNC was to a rally in Middletown, where he declared, “I love every one of you, and I love this town, and I'm so grateful to have been formed by it, because I wouldn't be who I was without it.” Trump team responds after 'Republicans for Harris' call Trump 'unfit' to be president But Vance’s claim to the area has created a cultural rift between him and those from Appalachia. Kingsolver said that when she saw Vance’s recently resurfaced interview calling several Democrats “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made,” it reaffirmed her disappointments with Hillbilly Elegy . “When I read JD Vance’s memoir, I resented it all the way through. There was just something about it that kept telling me, he’s not from here, he doesn’t get us,” Kingsolver told NPR. “I thought, OK, you are not from here because when I think about my childhood, many of the most important women in my life who saved me, who took care of me, were childless women. It’s not just blood that defines community here.” Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) speaks at a campaign rally at VFW Post 92 on August 15, 2024 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images hide caption It’s not just Kingsolver who has an alternate narrative. Meredith McCarroll and Anthony Harkins co-edited Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, a blend of scholarly, poetic and narrative rebuttals to Vance’s tale published in 2019. Harkins, a professor of history at Western Kentucky University, said that Hillbilly Elegy loses its footing by generalizing one person’s narrative into a definitive account of the entire region. “It’s totally legitimate for anybody to tell their own story and how they see it,” Harkins told NPR. “But to then present it as the story of Appalachia, to speak of a memoir of a culture, is problematic particularly because that region has so often been stereotyped and misrepresented through recent history.” McCarroll, director of writing and rhetoric at Bowdoin College and an Appalachian native of Waynesville, N.C., said that the duo’s goal with the book was to spotlight a chorus of Appalachian voices in response to Elegy’s immense popularity, both existing on their own and in opposition to the text. Books We Love Npr staffers pick their favorite fiction reads of 2024. “My inclination was to gather a lot of different voices, both that are challenging him but not speaking to him at all,” McCarroll told NPR. “It’s this weaving together of a lot of different authentic perspectives that can give a sense of how layered and complex this 13 state region is.” McCarroll added that beyond Hillbilly Elegy, she wanted Appalachian Reckoning to counter the idea of Appalachia as a monolithic place. “The back half of the book moved beyond Hillbilly Elegy, and really is just a collection of narratives from the region that you can’t read and come away thinking you understand Appalachia,” McCarroll said. “No one should say, ‘I read one book, and so I understand this region.’” Writing the full truth For these writers, telling the honest story of Appalachia is tantamount–even if they start difficult conversations. Elizabeth Catte, historian and author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, published in 2018, said that books about Appalachia fall short for her when authors lean on inauthentic stereotypes in pursuit of authenticity. “Sometimes people try to make up for personal knowledge or experience or study of a region by laying a bunch of tropes on a book and calling it authentic,” Catte told NPR. “Sometimes you don’t get a sense that Appalachia has a history, that it’s just a place full of problems, but none of those problems have an origin, or the origin is uninteresting to the author.” Vance’s story has resonated with conservatives and non-Appalachians alike. In the wake of the 2016 election, the book became an explanation of sorts for some liberals as to who Trump’s supporters were and how he managed to win the presidency. One op-ed described Bostonians as “ lapping up ” the tale. J.D. Vance autographs a book after a rally Thursday, July 1, 2021, in Middletown, Ohio. Jeffrey Dean/AP hide caption The book became a best-seller and later was adapted into a movie. But for those from the region, crucial pieces of the puzzle that Vance painted are missing. Harkins said that when discussing Appalachian history, texts must keep economic context in mind, like Appalachia’s political and cultural history with coal , when thinking about how the past has turned into the present. “You can’t speak about the experience of Appalachia in the last hundred years without thinking about the massive effects that economic change have brought to it, in a place that is often the product of extractive industry, whether it’s lumbering or coal or fracking,” Harkins said. “One of the concerns I have with seeing it through the prism of Hillbilly Elegy is often that most of that stuff is not part of the story.” Vance’s politics might not land with all readers, but he focused much of his Republican National Convention speech, which he gave just two days after being named to the ticket, on his relationship with his mom and grandma. These relationships are where these authors have found a common ground. For Kingsolver’s fictional quest, it was similarly important to keep Demon’s humanity front and center, both for the reader and for herself. “I was kind of scared to write this novel for several years because you can’t bludgeon people with sadness or with truths that are hard to bear,” Kingsolver said. “Unless you give it a really delicious package. You have to give people a reason to turn the page. You have to give people characters that they love and believe in, that they honestly start to care about as their friend.” The power of representation Kingsolver said that when Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize last year, Appalachia rejoiced like Appalachia does. “It was like fireworks all up and down the mountain,” Kingsolver said. “So many people from here, even my mail carrier and the cashier at the grocery store, said, ‘This is amazing. We won.’” The novel has appealed to more than Appalachians: It unanimously won the 2023’s Women Prize, and more recently, it ranked No. 1 on the New York Times ’ readers’ “Best Books of the Century” list–and No. 61 on the critics’ list. McCarroll said that with novels coming out today like Demon Copperhead, it is hard to stay upset at the negative aspects of Hillbilly Elegy.  “What’s so exciting is that there are so many really diverse, beautiful stories that are really offering complicated perspectives, and so it’s like I don’t feel like I have to stay mad at Hillbilly Elegy ,” McCarroll said. “There’s a long history of Appalachian literature, too.” McCarroll added that a variety of stories is important because they add texture to a region too often boxed into one corner. “What a Black Appalachian coal miner in Pennsylvania is experiencing might be very different from a Mexican migrant worker in Western North Carolina is experiencing, which might be really different than what a third- or fourth-generation farmer who is white in Kentucky is experiencing,” McCarroll said. Kingsolver said that when writing Demon Copperhead, it was important to combat assumptions made by mainstream media outlets about Appalachia. “I think they miss our diversity. They think we’re all white, and we’re not. It was important for me to reflect that in this novel,” Kingsolver said. “I wanted it to be the great Appalachian novel that kind of puts our whole region in a context. We didn’t choose to have poverty and [high] unemployment. We didn’t ask for that. This came to us.” Kingsolver added that it has been especially gratifying hearing from people whose perspective on Appalachia changed after reading her novel. “I have heard from lots and lots and lots of people in other parts of the country who said, ‘This book asked me to evaluate my prejudices, and I thank you for that,’ ” Kingsolver said. “It’s amazing.” When Kingsolver received news that she was at the top of the Times’ readers’ list last month, she said she had to “lie down on the floor” and think about its weight. Kingsolver said that a less obvious reward, though, was readers celebrating a story of an imperfect, wholly Appalachian character. “I can’t even tell you how many people have written to tell me I’m still worried about Demon, I wake up at night worrying about him,” Kingsolver said. “As if he’s become their kid. He’s the world’s kid. That’s how you navigate it, that’s how you have to.” Though Hillbilly Elegy might loom large once again, Appalachian authors, whether through fictional tales like Demon Copperhead or nonfiction deep dives like What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, are finding strength in their resistance and dissent. Reacting to news of being on the New York Times' list, Kingsolver wrote in an Instagram post: “With a certain other ‘hillbilly’ book suddenly ascendant, my duty. No elegies here. Thank you.” Correction Aug. 18, 2024 A previous version of this story mistakenly identified Anthony Harkins as an assistant professor in history at Western Kentucky University. Harkins is a professor of history. Additionally, an earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Bowdoin College as Bowdoin University. Barbara Kingsolver 312 IMAGES Learn How to Punctuate Dialogue in Fiction Writing Writing Speech Science Fiction FREE 20+ Speech Writing Samples & Templates in PDF Basics of how to Write a Speech Speech Writing Outline and Format for Students How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples) COMMENTS How to Format Dialogue in Your Novel or Short Story Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Aug 30, 2021 • 4 min read. Whether you're working on a novel or short story, writing dialogue can be a challenge. If you're concerned about how to punctuate dialogue or how to format your quotation marks, fear not; the rules of dialogue in fiction and nonfiction can be mastered by following a few ... How to Punctuate Dialogue in Fiction Use a comma to separate quoted speech from the speaker. Examples. "This vacation is boring, " said Lulu. "I knew that, " Maya said. She yelled, "Dragon!". Farley said, "I can't find my shoes.". Such clauses ("Maya said," "she yelled") identify the speaker and are called speech tags. Use commas both before and after a ... How to Write Fabulous Dialogue [9 Tips + Examples] Well-written dialogue can take your story to a new level — you just have to unlock it. In this article, I'll break down the major steps of writing great dialogue, and provide exercises for you to practice your own dialogue on. Here's how to write great dialogue in 9 steps: 1. Use quotation marks to signal speech. 2. Pace dialogue lines by ... How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples) Internal vs External Dialogue. Direct vs Indirect Dialogue. 20 Tips For Formatting Dialogue in Stories. How to Write Dialogue in 5 Steps. Step 1: Use a Dialogue Outline. Step 2: Write down a script. Step 3: Edit & review your script. Step 4: Sprinkle in some narrative. Step 5: Format your dialogue. Writing Dialogue In Fiction: 7 Easy Steps How To Write Dialogue In 7 Simple Steps: Keep it tight and avoid unnecessary words. Hitting beats and driving momentum. Keep it oblique, where characters never quite answer each other directly. Reveal character dynamics and emotion. Keep your dialogue tags simple. Get the punctuation right. How to Format Dialogue (2024 Rules): The Ultimate Guide for Authors To punctuate dialogue correctly, there are a few rules you should know: The correct use of quotation marks. The correct use of dialogue tags. The correct use of question and exclamation marks. The correct use of em-dashes and ellipses. Capitalization rules. Breaking dialogue into multiple paragraphs. 6 Unbreakable Dialogue Punctuation Rules All Writers Must Know 6 essential dialogue punctuation rules: 1. Always put commas and periods inside the quote. 2. Use double quote marks for dialogue (if you're in America) 3. Start a new paragraph every time the speaker changes. 4. Use dashes and ellipses to cut sentences off. How to Write Dialogue: 8 Tips for Letting Your Characters Speak Flat speech can completely cripple your characters and drain drama from a scene. Here are eight tips for how to write dialogue. 1. Flout expected patterns. It's important to keep your dialogue fresh, interesting and unpredictable, and a good way to do that is to avoid falling into expected and conventional patterns. How to Write Dialogue in a Story Writing dialogue in a story requires us to step into the minds of our characters. When our characters speak, they should speak as fully developed human beings, complete with their own linguistic quirks and unique pronunciations. Indeed, dialogue writing is essential to the art of storytelling. In real life, we learn about other people through ... How to Write and Format Dialogue in a Novel / Fiction Join my Story Theory newsletter:https://storytheory.substack.com/aboutWondering how to write and format dialogue in fiction? Need help formatting your dialog... Punctuating and Formatting Dialogue in Fiction Basic Punctuation and Dialogue Tags. The most important thing about dialogue in fiction is to use quote marks. These are sometimes even known as "speech marks," as they indicate that someone has said something. All you need to do in this respect is place spoken dialogue within quote marks: "That is the biggest horse I have ever seen ... How to Format Dialogue in a Story: 15 Steps (with Pictures) 3. Vary the placement of your dialogue tags. Instead of starting every dialogue sentence with "Evgeny said," "Laura said," or "Sujata said," try placing some dialogue tags at the end of sentences. Place dialogue tags in the middle of a sentence, interrupting the sentence, to change the pacing of your sentence. Because you have to ... How to Punctuate Dialogue in Fiction Dialogue tags. A dialogue tag is the part of the sentence that points you to the person speaking. For example, take the sentence: 'I read a wonderful book last night,' Penny told us excitedly. "Penny told us excitedly" is the dialogue tag in the sentence. You can place a dialogue tag either in the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence. 15 Examples of Great Dialogue (And Why They Work So Well) Odd couple: Austen's colorful dialogue gives immediate insight into the dynamic between Mr and Mrs Bennet. (Image: BBC) There is even a clear difference between the two characters visually on the page: Mr Bennet responds in short sentences, in simple indirect speech, or not at all, but this is "invitation enough" for Mrs Bennet to launch into a rambling and extended response, dominating ... Dialogue tags and how to use them in fiction writing A dialogue tag can come before, between or after direct speech: Dave said, 'That's the last thing I expected you to say.' 'That,' said Dave, 'is the last thing I expected you to say.' 'That's the last thing I expected you to say,' Dave said. Placed in between direct speech, tags can moderate the pace by forcing the reader to pause, and improve the rhythm by breaking up ... Everything you need to know about how to write dialogue in a story Put direct dialogue inside quotation marks, also known as inverted commas. In the UK it's more common to use single inverted commas than double. 'Do it like this.'. If you want to include an attribution after the spoken words, use a comma after the speech and before the second inverted comma: 'Do it like this,' she said. Dialogue Tag Format: What are Speech Tags? With Examples The most common dialogue tag in writing is "he said" or "she said.". There are a few different ways to write dialogue tags, and we'll look at them all in more detail below. Here's a quick example: "I made some coffee," said Julie. Here, "'I made some coffee'" is the dialogue, and "said Julie" is the dialogue tag. How to write great dialogue in fiction Here are some tips on how to write great dialogue in fiction - and what to avoid doing: 1. Don't use any verbs other than 'says' or 'said' - and don't use lots of adverbs. This is the writing tip EVERYONE gives when it comes to writing dialogue - but there's a reason for it. It's the moment to unlearn everything you were taught as a kid ... How to punctuate dialogue Only two things should be placed within dialogue quote marks: A. What a character says out loud (direct speech) "Don't sit there. The paint's still wet," he said. B. Dialogue punctuation (e.g. comma, full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, ellipses) "I'm not sure if I like this," Ruth said. "It's scary.". How To Punctuate Character Speech And Dialogue In Fiction It is also effective to show how the character is speaking through their dialogue, negating the need for a dialogue tag at all. Instead of: "I'm not sure," she stammered. Try: "I-I'm not sure…". She cast her eyes towards the floor and pressed her lips together, trapping her words inside. How to Write Good Dialogue in Fiction Stories Writing good dialogue in fiction is about hitting the right notes in the patterns of speech. There is a lot to think about, a lot to disclude from the conversation. Readers need and expect to be ... How to Write Characters' Thoughts: 6 Ways to Format ... In short story or novel writing, the protagonist's inner thoughts can reveal deeper insight into who they are and what motivates them. If you're writing fiction and want to include your character's internal thoughts, find a way to differentiate them from the rest of the text so the reader knows they're reading a character's thoughts. There are different techniques for doing so ... How to write a novel in 15 minutes a day The first time I tried to write a novel I was 23. I had all the time in the world. I was a full-time graduate student. I lived alone, I had no children, and it took me three years to finish a ... What Is Third Person Point of View in Literature? Learn how to write in third POV. Third person point of view is a narrative perspective where the narrator tells the story using third-person pronouns. Learn how to write in third POV. ... Third person narration can be useful in genres such as fantasy and science fiction, where the author needs to build a complex world with its own rules and logic. Experts: Trump speech patterns hint of potential cognitive decline I n a speech earlier this year, former President Trump was mocking President Biden's ability to walk through sand when he suddenly switched to talking about the old Hollywood icon Cary Grant. ... 'Hillbilly Elegy' is back in the spotlight. These Appalachians write a Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the 2016 memoir from Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, once again began flying off the shelves after former President Donald Trump named Vance as his running mate. Many have turned to the memoir to find out the story of Vance's upbringing, a core part of why he's on the Republican ticket to begin with. 6 Word Memoir: How to Write a Mini Memoir Tips For Writing a 6 Word Memoir. Ready to write your 6-word memoir? Here are some tips to help you craft mini-masterpieces: Focus on a Single Moment or Idea: Don't capture your entire life. Instead, zero in on a single moment, emotion, or idea that stands out to you. Think about what's most significant or impactful in your story. Ann Cleeves: We can't write off struggling working-class people as Cleeves was inspired to write it after hearing a File on Four report on Radio 4 into the deplorable standards in Britain's private children's home sector, and it examines the impact on those ... Americans love free speech, survey finds − until they realize everyone Americans agree that democracy requires freedom of speech. But a large minority also thinks it's acceptable to bar certain subjects or speakers from public debate. 'Hillbilly Elegy' is back in the spotlight. These Appalachians write a Vance's politics might not land with all readers, but he focused much of his Republican National Convention speech, which he gave just two days after being named to the ticket, on his ... essay homework paper phd project resume review speech study thesis