How to Write Dialogue, Part 2: Formatting and Dialogue Tags, or Being Clear About Who’s Talking
So, we’ve all struggled with dialogue tags. In short, they’re a headache. We need them to tell our readers who the hell is talking, but it’s easy to get bogged down in exactly what verb you want, where to put the tag, etc. Do you use ‘said’ over and over? Do you vary it up with ‘exclaimed’ and ‘shouted’ and ‘inquired’? Do you just say fuck it and leave them out altogether?
I’m going to write a second post about how to effectively make decisions about your dialogue tags, but for this post, let’s just tackle formatting.
1. Placement and punctuation of tags
Dialogue tags can go before or after the spoken text; it’s largely a matter of preference and style. They can also go in the middle of a longer quote.
If the tag comes at the beginning, it should be separated from the quote by a comma.
If the tag comes at the end, it should be separated from the quote by a comma unless the quote ends with something other than a period, like a question mark or an exclamation point.
If the tag is in the middle of a single spoken sentence, there should be commas before and after it. The first letter of the resumed quote should be lowercase.
If the tag is between two spoken sentences, there should be a comma before it and a period after it. The first letter of the resumed quote should be capitalized.
So, some examples of correctly formatted tags:
Shanti said, “I can’t wait for school tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait for school tomorrow,” Shanti said.
“I can’t wait for school tomorrow!” Shanti said.
“I can’t wait for school tomorrow,” Shanti said, “but I know you’re nervous.”
“I can’t wait for school tomorrow!” Shanti said. “My presentation will be awesome.”
Remember that you should only put a tag in the middle of a quote if the character is taking a beat there, because it will break up the speech for your reader. Take a look at these two examples:
“Do you want to join the staff baseball team?” Fred asked. “I think you’d like it.”
“Do you want,” Fred asked, “to join the staff baseball team? I think you’d like it.”
In the first example, the dialogue tag is placed correctly. It falls in the gap between the two sentences, where Fred would naturally take a breath. In the second example, we’ve got an unnatural pause in the middle of Fred’s first sentence, and it makes the line feel clunky. That doesn’t mean there’s a hard and fast rule about breaking in an unusual place, but you should do it deliberately, when your character is actually pausing for emphasis.
At that moment, Sonya came running into the room. In her arms, she held the biggest, hairiest, ugliest cat her friends had ever seen.
“What,” Simon said, “do you call that?”
In this case, Simon is actually pausing after just one word. Putting the dialogue tag where it is helps convey his tone.
2. You can use actions as dialogue tags
One of the ways to avoid the dreaded “I feel like I’ve used ‘said’ a million times” problems is to use actions as dialogue tags. Basically, this means that instead of specifically saying the character said/asked/exclaimed/etc. the text, you simply place their action next to the dialogue. This can also happen before, after, or in the middle of their spoken text, but unlike an actual dialogue tag, it should always be treated as its own sentence. Where you put it depends on both your style and on whether your character acts before speaking, after speaking, or while speaking.
Pedro grinned and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Oh, this is gonna be awesome. I cannot wait.”
“Oh, this is gonna be awesome. I cannot wait.” Pedro grinned and slung his backpack over his shoulder.
“Oh, this is gonna be awesome.” Pedro grinned and slung his backpack over this shoulder. “I cannot wait.”
3. Each new speaker/actor gets a new paragraph
This is one you probably vaguely remember learning in elementary school, but it’s a lot simpler when your characters all speak one at a time in basic [subject-verb-object] sentences.When you’re writing complex conversations, it’s easy to get muddied up.
Basically, every time we switch focus to a new character, they get a new paragraph. Mostly this means when they speak, but it also includes nonverbal forms of communication. For example:
“Are you coming to the movie?” David asked.
“I think so,” Shaun said, “but I have to double check with my dad.”
David frowned and said, “He can’t still be mad about your math grade, can he?”
“Whatever, man,” David continued. “We’ll help you figure it out somehow.”
Notice that Shaun gets his own paragraph even when he’s just shrugging. If we put that action in the middle of David’s speech, our reader has a hard time keeping track of who they’re “watching” at any given moment. With more complicated actions, they might even get confused about who’s acting and/or talking.
So what happens if a more complex action comes from a character who’s also talking? Well, it kind of depends. If the speech and action are pretty interspersed, you can put them all together:
“I don’t know why you listen to her,” Naomi said. She put the phone on speaker and set it on the counter as she began to unpack her groceries. “It’s not like it’s any of her business.”
“I know, but she just won’t quit calling,” Tina answered.
This works, because Naomi is talking while moving around, so we want to experience both together. If she pauses, however, or if the action gets too unwieldy in our paragraph, we can give it its own paragraph.
“I don’t know why you listen to her,” Naomi said. “It’s not like it’s any of her business.”
She put the phone on speaker and set it on the counter as she began to unpack her groceries.
“I know, but she just won’t quit calling,” Tina answered.
When written this way, Naomi speaks to Tina and then moves on to unpacking the groceries, rather than doing both at the same time.
One thing to be wary of: your reader will expect focus to shift back and forth with each paragraph. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule–you can see above that Naomi gets two paragraphs in a row–but it does mean you have to be careful about splitting up a single character’s actions. A character can have two or more consecutive paragraphs if they’re carrying most of the conversation, but one character should never speak in two consecutive paragraphs. Dialogue in separate paragraphs must always be split by action. Consider this example, and note the confusion we run into:
Kiara bounced the basketball a few times and then tossed it to her sister. “I just don’t know if I want to be the editor, you know? I mean, I’ve liked writing for the newspaper, but editor’s a big responsibility.”
“You’d get to work with Alexa, though,” Alicia argued. She shot at the hoop, missed, and passed the ball back to Kiara.
“Yeah, I mean, I guess,” Kiara said. She raised her eyebrows at her sister in a challenge. Dodging Alicia easily, Kiara dribbled up to the hoop and sunk the ball through it.
“I guess I could say yes,” Kiara decided.
Alicia shrugged. “Just think about it is all I’m saying.”
See how after Kiara sinks the basketball, we expect the next statement to come from Alicia? It’s jarring when Kiara speaks again, because we’ve used the format to indicate we’re shifting perspective, but then we don’t actually shift away from her. Instead, we should either put it all in one paragraph, or give the action between her two statements its own paragraph.
Next time, I’ll get into how to choose your dialogue tags and what your different options do for you. Full series of these can be found here. I hope people find them helpful!
