Young Writers Society

I'm having trouble with how to write out dialogue.
I mean format wise.

When the same person is talking does that mean it should
be in the same paragraph?
I don't like that format cause it hurts
my eyes, but my opinion doesn't
matter much in this case.

Can i just get some examples of how
to format dialogue?

"Here I am," Jared said, "showing Derek how to do dialog formatting. It's not that hard, really, once you know the basic things. But, like always, there are different paragraphs when you switch subjects.

"To do that, you leave the last paragraph not closed. You see? I didn't put quotation marks at the end of that last paragraph. I'm going to close this for you, so you can see how I do it." Jared takes a deep breath and continues:

"I hope you don't have any more questions. If you do, just ask. I'm always here for you," Jared concluded.

-Jared

"Another thing to remember," DX said, walking in. "Is how to split a line of dialouge with a statement. Just write normally, and if the first part ends in a period or no mark at all, end it with a comma. THe statement outside the dialouge ends with a period, then the dialouge continues normally."

"Actually," Snoink said, walking in behind DX, "if I want to continue the sentence that I started before my action, I split the sentence, put my action, stick a comma afterwards, and then continue my action, sort of like this."

So basically, when thunder_dude7 says:

"Another thing to remember," DX said, walking in. "Is how to split a line of dialouge with a statement."

...this is wrong. What is should actually be is this:

"Another thing to remember," DX said, walking in, "is how to split a line of dialouge with a statement."

This is for when you want to split the actual piece of sentence up. When you don't want to split the sentence up, you do this:

"Pigs are cool," Snoink said. "My hair looks nice."

They're two completely different sentences, so I put a period at the end of said and capitalize the beginning letter of the next line of dialogue.

With two people talking, you should make a new paragraph whenever someone else speaks.

Example:

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Master, please,” she pleaded.

“Please what?” When she didn’t respond, he frowned and brushed her away. “Who is the master anyway?”

“You are, sir,” she said.

“You’re a funny girl, did you know that?” He hesitated a moment before pushing her off completely. “We shouldn’t do this to ourselves.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked. He shrugged.

“It just can’t happen.” When she opened her mouth to respond, a pained look came onto his face. “No, don’t say anything. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m thinking it too, but it’s just not that easy. You’re right; I am alone. But when haven’t I been?”

So this is two characters talking together. Not the best bit of dialogue ever, but it hopefully shows you how the talk and everything.

Also, I made up a list of examples for dialogue grammar here:

http://snoink.com/kn/writing/mechanics/1.php

Good luck!

Thanks guys!
I needed this so could continue writing my
next chapter, and fix my last ones.
Thank you all for you help!