Carol Rose
Basic
DIALOGUE – PART TWO
Please see DIALOGUE – PART ONE for a basic overview of how to punctuate dialogue, and for a discussion of how to write dialogue that isn’t chit chat, and that accomplishes the Big Three: moves the story forward, gives the reader new/important information, and shows characterization.
Today, we’ll expand on both those points.
First, the punctuation…
I’m concentrating on what will help you prepare your manuscript for submission to a US or UK market, since those are the two regions where the majority of publishers exist.
Below are the links I posted in DIALOGUE – PART ONE. They will answer 99% of your questions on how to punctuate dialogue with one exception.
8 Essential Rules for Punctuating Dialogue - article
7 Rules of Punctuating Dialogue: How to Punctuate Dialogue Easily
Punctuation in Dialogue
How to Punctuate Dialogue
In the UK, single quotes are used around the main bodies of dialogue. If you’re using quotes within the quotes, those are double quotes. The rest of the punctuation rules remain the same. THIS LINK provides examples.
Now let’s talk about dialogue tags…
I know. I’d rather not either, but this is an important point so stick with me. Awkward tags, or tags used to do the work of show are two of the things that trip me up most when reading a story where the author hasn't mastered this concept.
What is a dialogue tag? It identifies the speaker to the reader. She said. He said. Sally said. John said.
Said is invisible to our brains. Meaning, we are so used to seeing it, our brains skip it. However, any overused tag becomes so repetitive as we read that it will no longer be invisible, if we aren’t careful.
Consider the following exchange…
“Hi Sally,” said John. “How are you today?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” said Sally. “How are you?”
“I’m having a bad day, “ said John. “I think my dog is going to die soon.”
“Oh no!” said Sally. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
While the dialogue itself moves the story forward and gives the reader new and likely important information, do we really need those tags after every single line of dialogue? No. It’s overkill, and it gives the story an echo quality we aren’t trying to produce.
Let’s rewrite that…
John slid into the seat across from Sally. “Hi. How are you today?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” Sally took a sip of coffee. “How are you?”
“Not great. I think my dog is going to die soon.”
“Oh no! I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Not a dialogue tag in sight. Instead, we’ve used action – sometimes called action tags – to establish who is speaking. Because there are only two people in this conversation, we don’t need additional cues to let the reader know who is saying what. They can easily follow it from the action around that dialogue. It’s cleaner, and there isn’t an echo with said being repeated in every line.
What about other tags, such as asked, demanded, etc.?
I’m not a fan of anything other than said and asked. Why? Because you run the risk of letting the tags do your showing for you. You also can easily slip into giving dialogue powers it can’t possibly have. First, let’s talk about letting those tags do the work of showing…
Below is an example of using action tags to do the work of showing. We can usually identify these by the use of adverbs that define how the dialogue is spoken…
“Hi, Sally,” said John gloomily, sliding into the seat across from her. “How are you today?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” Sally took a sip of coffee. “How are you?” she asked cautiously.
“Not great,” he mumbled. “I think my dog is going to die soon.”
“Oh no!” she said excitedly. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Even without the highlighted adverbs, can you see how awkward this exchange is compared to the same lines of dialogue above, under Let’s rewrite that…where we used no tags or adverbs? We can clean this up and still show the emotion without the awkward phrasing. I purposefully didn’t do that earlier so we could work through the progression here…
John slid into the seat across from Sally. “Hi. How are you today?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” Sally took a sip of coffee, frowning at the look on John’s face. “But how are you?”
John clasped his hands together on the table. “Not great. I think my dog is going to die soon.”
“Oh no!” Sally put down her cup. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
No adverbs, no awkward tags, and now we’ve layered in some emotion. But we’ve done it through action that shows instead of tells.
Resist the urge to let adverbs in dialogue tags do the work for you. When you read about the evils of adverbs, this is usually what the person is talking about. Using adverbs this way coupled with dialogue ends up telling the reader what emotion you want them to feel, instead of showing them through the characters’ words and actions.
Putting just enough action in and around the dialogue gives the scene character and perspective. It gives your readers something to see in their minds, as well as listen to. This in turn allows you to explore deeper meanings in the conversation. Remember, dialogue should do three things: move the story forward, give new or important information, and show characterization.
The second point I want to make about dialogue tags goes along with the point above. Just as you want to avoid using adverbs to do the work of showing for you, you also want to avoid using a dialogue tag that gives speech a character it can’t possess in a human.
I’m talking about all the chortling, chuckling, laughing, snorting, and smiling speech tags I see. UGH. Think about it. Yes, we may make all those sounds in conversation, but not at the same time we speak. We make them afterward. We make them beforehand. We make them instead of a spoken response. But humans beings can’t literally laugh a word. They can’t chortle a word. They can’t snort a word. They SPEAK words. Those other sounds are separate, so don’t be afraid to write them that way. It will give your dialogue better clarity.
Consider this…
“You know I don’t like your friends!” he snorted.
Really? He snorted the words? Must have been terribly uncomfortable.

“You know I don’t like your friends!”
She frowned as he shook his head and snorted. This was an old conversation, and she was tired of it.
This gives your exchange a lot more character, not to mention authenticity. You don’t need to tell your readers what an ass he’s being, or that she’s ready to dump his sorry ass right now. You’ve shown it. You have also avoided using a dialogue tag describing a sound that literally cannot happen in a human being – snorting and speaking at the same time.
All of the above points, and the points in Dialogue Part One, start with one important concept: Dialogue starts with your characters.
I know some of you are about as fond of outlining or character profiling as you are of root canal work. I resisted the outlining part for years, and my writing suffered for it. But I’ve always been behind the character profiling, likely because I write character driven stories. Even if you aren’t writing in a genre that’s character driven, you might want to consider doing a character profile, at least for your main characters.
One of the huge benefits is that you will not have to worry about all your characters sounding the same. Let’s be honest. We don’t all sound the same when we speak. We don’t use the same phrasing and syntax. Spend time listening to people talk in real life. Not TV shows or movies. That’s manufactured dialogue and won’t give you a true example of what I’m talking about. People in real life have their own unique way of speaking. It might be subtle, but it’s there if you really listen.
You want your characters to be that unique. At least the main ones in your story. You want your readers to know who’s speaking from the way they speak. You want them so unique that in reality, you don’t need tags at all.
So it stands to reason that if you want that kind of uniqueness, you need to know your characters as people first. Because otherwise, how can you know what they will say in any given situation, or how they will say it? You don’t. That’s why it’s important to spend time getting to know them.
This is for you. Your readers may never know all the background information you’ve given a character, but it will come out in the way they speak and interact with other characters. It will come out subtly, without you having to hit readers over the head with telling and backstory. And that’s the best way to learn about it, from a reader’s point of view.
All right! Your turn. Let’s discuss…