70 Deadly Wattpad Sins (The Book Of Evil Advice!)

Sin #08: Setting Up Dialogue (Who said that? I'm lost already!)

"She didn't do anything!" She said. "It's true, she wasn't even there!" Margaret glanced at Chelsea, who was also glancing at Rebecca as she, in turn, glanced at the girl opposite Tamara. "What do you think, hun?" "I'm sick of hearing about this! Leave her alone," She said, glancing away. "Me too, she doesn't know if it was even her talking behind her back!" Upon hearing this, she glanced at the girl to the left of the last one who spoke. She glanced derisively. "Well, what do you think? This is classic 'that girl' behaviour, am I right?"

I think my ears are bleeding.

You and me both. We're diving straight back into the technical side of writing now, so hold onto your hard hats! It's going to be a bumpy ride, what with all of these unassigned speech marks flapping around...

Let me guess. This one's about dialogue and stuff, right?

I'm impressed that you can read the title, yes! More specifically, this one will be heavy with examples of what to avoid in your typical character exchanges, and showcasing the best techniques to manipulate your plot exposition around these interactions.

Wow, someone's been pulling out the thesaurus... What the heck is an 'expowhatsa'?

All in good time. Firstly, it's important that we discuss the elephant in the room... The abomination above is a quick 'scene' that I mocked upon deciding to tackle this topic, but it represents some very real issues that run rampant throughout many new writer's stories. Can you name them all?

Uhhh...

No, this isn't an episode of Dora The Friggin' Explorer... I'm just going to tell you outright what they are and why, okay?

1. There are no line breaks. This is a major problem, for two reasons. For one, it is nearly impossible to tell who the current speaker is when three or four people are fighting for control over the same paragraph. It also concentrates all of that punctuation into one messy block, making it harder to tell when one speaker stops talking and the other begins.

The first lesson they teach you in English class is to start a new line whenever a new character talks. I'll admit, I used to think that forcing that much space was hogwash as well... but if there was ever a universal rulebook for writing, this should be near the top of the list. It's coherent, it's sensible and just looks much more professional than the alternative.

Example:

"Tamara, you can't go to Prom looking like that! That dress shows off your bingo wings!" Chelsea shook her head with a grimace.

"Really, Chels? This, coming from the ankle-fat Queen of Detroit?" Tamara retorted.

Of course Tamara and her trashy friends would live in Detroit.

Hey, don't judge.

But yeah.

2. There is no indication of who is currently speaking. This one's a biggie, and if you really want your readers to follow complex dialogue twists and turns, you need to stop playing the pronoun game. Overuse of 'she' and 'he' when there's more than two characters present is unnecessarily poor, when you could just as easily substitute their name instead to show who is speaking.

Sometimes even the names can get a little heavy though, and so it might be better to draw things back to the character's features, such as 'the blonde whispered' or 'the rebellious teen muttered before flipping the bird'. If you come up with a 'narrative nickname' for your character though, be sure to stick to it for continuity!

If you're more experienced, you can also toy with using action and inaction to point fingers at who is speaking. For instance, if you describe Rebecca's expression as she's about to hulk out and the adjacent piece of dialogue is filled with cuss words, you can bet it your bottom dollar that she's the one speaking. This is also a useful way to avoid stating 'he said, she said' after every single line.