Tips are welcome

Hi YWS,
I'm Dee, i'm 16 and I've been slowly coming back into writing after a...bit of a hiatus. However, I need some help with a problem i've always had. So I'm hoping that someoone can give me some tips on character dialogue. I need help with structure (should the dialogue be part of the sentences or seperate) and how to better write a dialouge between characters. Because it always annoys me when I say "Jill said, Jerry said, then Jill said, said Jerry" etc.

So please offer any advice or tips!! and Thank You

Hey Dee, nice to meet you! I'll try to help you as best I can. I'll address your second question first if you don't mind. It's good to know your character's personality, how they would act in different situations, when writing dialogue. Make a list (in your mind or on paper) of what kind of words they would say and how they would say them in various emotional states, like anger, happiness, sadness, annoyance, love etc. Then say the dialogue out loud to yourself or to someone else if you're comfortable with others seeing it. If the dialogue sounds like what someone would actually say, then it probably works. This also helps the dialogue read more smoothly. With "dialogue tags" like 'He said', 'She said', 'Bob said', you generally want to use them at the start of dialogue to introduce each character that is speaking, but after each has been you can drop them. Now to your first question, about the structure of dialogue. Here's an example:

The description part of the story goes here, indented 5 spaces, or using the tab button once. This is what generally makes up most of a story. It goes on for however long it takes to set up a scene, introduce characters, and move the plot along. Then comes the dialogue. When you start dialogue, enter twice, but don't indent.

"Like this," Jill explained.

"I see," said Bob.

"Also this."

"What happened to your dialogue tag?"

"Your tag is gone too. We're the only characters, so tags aren't needed anymore."

------------------------------------

I know that's kind of corny, but I hope it helped a little bit.

"Like this," Jill explained.

"I see," said Bob.

"Also this."

"What happened to your dialogue tag?"

"Your tag is gone too. We're the only characters, so tags aren't needed anymore."

I'm not sure what this says about my personality, but I found that really amusing. No idea why.

Anyway, a tip I got once about this same problem is try to have physical action interject with the dialogue. I guess I'll just show what I mean:

"I'm going to take a sip of my drink now," said Jill. She took a sip of her drink with her full, luscious lips.

"That sounds like a good idea, but I'd rather fiddle with the hair on my chin," said Jerry, as he fiddled with the hair on his chin.

There are a few reason why I think this is effective. First of all, it gives the reader a more vivid mental image of the characters, which obviously makes them more realistic (which is why I gave Jill those lips). Secondly, you avoid developing 'talking heads', which is basically the problem you're describing, because you get something beyond dialogue, like surroundings, character traits, nearby objects and whatever else you can work into it. Also, you can advance the action faster if you don't have a 'dialogue' scene and an 'action' scene afterwards. If you combine the two you'll engage the reader better and get a better flow going. At least if you do it properly.

Anyway, hope that helps.

-O

I learned something from David Feintuch, a science-fiction writer. Sometimes you can get away with using the "tags" as a separate sentence. For example:

Jack, low: "That's enough, Jill."

It's almost like in a script. Only you don't set the speaker's name off with italics and capitals.

Oh gosh, please don't go using "said tags" everywhere. What I advise is to use "Action tags" instead. They make the word "said" almost completely unnecessary.

Becky put her hand on the doorknob. "I'm going for a walk!"

See? No "said" needed. We can imagine how she's saying things because of dialogue itself and the action tag before it.

~~

Now, if she's not announcing it, then sometimes "said tags" are better.

"I'm going for a walk," Becky growled, putting her hand on the doorknob.

Also, noticed that I used a comma to split off the dialogue. That's normal. Unless it's a proper name, you don't capitalize the word after dialogue.

~~

Third example:

"Bye Jack!" Becky put her hand on the doorknob. "I'm going for a walk!"

This time, action was used to show a pause. When it's used to show a pause (and does not have "said" in it) then you capitalize the word after the dialogue.

~~

I hope that made some sense. If you have any questions, PM me.

Hey Dee! Pleased to meet you! I'm Gahks by the way. *handshake* Put up a post in the Welcome forum so we can get to know more about you!

Anyway, onto the tips. I agree with Rosey about the use of action tags. What you need to do is make the dialogue VISUAL. Think of it as a film or play, with the characters interacting with the space around them; this gives the conversation context and helps to keep the plot rolling. See examples above!

The occasional use of 'said' is useful, however. Authors like Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway use it everywhere, and it doesn't intrude at all into their writing, unless you're specifically looking out for it, primarily because they mix 'said' with action tags too.

Hope this helps!

Gahks

I have to say that I'm in love with action tags, I just can't help fiddling with my characters while they are talking. I hate floating head syndrome and I rarely have just two characters talking for long. But, action tags are a good compromise from using speech tags all of the time and it can be better than using a different speech word in every tag.

Basically, I think the only real rules for dialogue is a new paragraph for each new speaker and follow the grammar for dialogue. Snoink has an awesome article for that, here.

And I'm going to have to respectfully offer advice that goes against Manny's. When I do dialogue, I don't change from my regular formatting. Of course, that all depends on the writer and the formatting that they do use.

Really, just say what your characters have to say and just write dialogue to get used to it. The best way to get the characters really going is to get two or more characters to banter. I love banter.

"Are we being used as an example, Geoffrey?" Jack asked as he peered around the room.

"I think we are." Geoffrey frowned slightly, looking around as well.

"Well, that stinks. We haven't even finished out novel and we're already being farmed out by the writer." Jack pouted as he crossed his arms.

Geoffrey slouched for a moment before springing out of his seat. "Let's go get ice cream."

"I like ice cream." The two of them took no time in leaving the room and the example to go find ice cream.

No "Dialogue" Character-X dialogued-tagged adverbly.

That is, anything along the lines of:

"I love writing!" cried Bickazer joyfully

or

"Don't standardized tests suck?" lamented Bickazer miserably.

or

"Procrastination nation is a free nation," exposited Bickazer helpfully.

Yeah, I think you get the point. Character-X dialogue-tagged adverbly is a construction that should be used rarely, if not at all. It's an extreme example of telling as opposed to showing, and is simply lazy and doesn't put in the reader's head a clear picture of what's going on. As the posters aboved said, you should try for action dialogue tags as often as possible.

And when you do use a dialogue tag, it's best to just use "said", not those fancy "explained", "articulated", "declared", "bellowed", "interjected", "wailed", etc. etc. Again, it's much better to just say "said" and then have action explaining the characters' mood/the delivery of the dialogue.

Yeah, that wasn't very lucid...but I'm not thinking very clearly at the mo'. Hopefully this helps, though.