Writers' Hotline

All About Dialogue

One of the most, or the most tricky part of writing stories which stumps the writers, is writing dialogue. All the nooks and crannies of dialogue grammar and punctuation can make your head spin. But, we're here to help you. 

Here we've compiled a quick and short guide to help you write the dialogue to your story without much headache.

To summarise, just keep the following points in mind:

1. Use "Quotation Marks" to indicate spoken word. 

Whatever the character is saying should be within the " ". Actions, and descriptions are all outside of it. 

Ex. "Let's go to the party!"

2. Don't forget your punctuation within the "dialogue". 

A lot of writers tend to leave out punctuation within the " ". Remember, whatever is in there is a sentence of its own, so it needs to have its comma, full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. 

Wrong: "I don't feel like it" she said.
Right: "I don't feel like it," she said. 

Very small thing, but you can instantly see the difference in how they look. 

3. Dialogue tags can come before or after the dialogue. 

It's more commonly used after, but there's nothing wrong with bringing it before if it suits. 

Ex. "The police cars were surrounding the area," Salma explained. 

Or

Salma explained, "The police cars were surrounding the area."

4. Every character has a new paragraph. No matter how short their speech is. 

Ex. "Salam," Zaid greeted.

"Wa alayk," Laith said. "How's your day going?"

Don't do something like this, "Salam," Zaid greeted. "Wa alayk," Laith said. "How's your day going?" — It can make everything very confusing and look cluttered. 

5. Try not to put the verb first in the dialogue. 

Ex. "Get down here!" screamed Zaid. 

Although this makes sense and can be used, it can disrupt the reader's flow. Especially if they're overused. 

"Get down here!" Zaid screamed. — this flows better because the reader is used to reading subject, then verb.

6. Don't be afraid to keep using 'said' as many times as you want. 

Many of you may have heard that you shouldn't use the boring, ol' said again and again and try to use more creative ones. But really, that's cap. 

Here the dialogue is the main focus, anything that takes the focus away without adding anything should be avoided. And face it, sometimes a lot of the words may not even make sense in the context of the dialogue. There's no need to go look for complicated words, stick to the ones you use daily.

Ex. "Okay?" she asked. 

"Yes," he said. "Just a bit tired."

"Oh," she mumbled. 

You can add adverbs to add detail, but don't overdo it. Ex. "Okay?" she asked quietly. 

7. Mix and match. Don't just use 'said' all the time. 

Yes, this sounds the opposite of the above, but hear me out. Try to add in actions and little details in between the dialogue — unless the dialogue is super important that reader should not lose their focus at all. 

Ex. "Cupcakes!" Asma grinned, licking her lips.

Mum shook her head. "Hands off."

Asma pouted. "Mummy!"

Here, there's no 'said' or 'mumbled' or 'screamed' but due to the way the dialogue is structured and presented, it's easy to follow and it makes the dialogue interesting when coupled with extra tidbits. 

8. Use em dashes (—) to show interruptions

Ex. "Shall we—"

"No. I don't want to."

There are other more intricate details as well, but they can be disregarded. These are the main general ones. 

It's not that we expect every person to have the best grammar and punctuation. But when the author does take the time to edit and structure their story in a way is visually pleasing to the reader, it feels nice and enjoyable to read the story. 

Sometimes, when I come across stories which are not edited in terms of basic grammar etc, it simply feels like the author doesn't care about their own story enough to present it in a beautiful way — then how can the readers care?

~ Compiled by -ScatteredPearlz-