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The Basic Punctuation Marks
As you probably know by now, punctuation begins with the first quotation mark, and ends with the last, completely encompassing the entire phrase said by a single character. It's the things that come in-between that seem to stump most beginning writers.
Most commonly seen in, or around punctuation are:
Quotation marks- Seen around whatever a character says.
Commas- Used as both regular punctuation, and to end the dialogue.
Periods- Same as Commas.
Dashes- Used for an interrupted phrase from one character to another.
(Note: There are others, but these are the most commonly seen)
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He said-She said
When you end dialogue with something like 'he said', 'she said', or anything along the lines of this, the dialogue itself is ended withe a comma, as so:
(Examples from the novel Bleed, by Laurie Faria Stolarz)
"Oh, hi," she says, finally noticing me.
or
"That's fine," he says. "Give us a call if you need a ride home."
In cases where the line is a little less defined, the same thing goes, like this:
(Examples once again, are from the novel Bleed, by Laurie Faria Stolarz)
"I'm going to call him," I insisted.
or
"Not Danielle," Kelly's voice said through the receiver.
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Description:
Sometimes, however, you don't want to say he said-said, and you want to describe. You want to say that a character did something. Well, here are some examples of that:
(Examples are from the novel Such a Pretty Girl, by Laura Wiess)
"Well." My mother's voice is quick with indignation. "Apparently Tony doesn't care if he loses valuable customers."
or
"...I actually heard my own footsteps on the stones." He glances at me. "You know what you said when you got there?"
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Other:
What if one character is cutting off another? What do you do then?
(Example from Such a Pretty Girl, by Laura Wiess)
"You were reading a dictionary-"
"A dictionary? Oh, come on. I don't even own a dictionary."
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Capitalization:
(Examples from A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray)
"Nothing," he says, crumpling the paper in his fist tightly enough for me to hear it. Notice that 'he says' is not capitalized, because of the comma after nothing.
Things that would still be capitalized after a comma in a similar situation- I, or any name.
"You could change everything. Enter the realms. That's why they want you." He loosens his hand, lets me go.
In this case, the first letter after the dilogue is capitalized because it ended with a period instead of a comma. Just like with normal punctuation.
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Multiple Characters in One Scene:
Something I've always found to be difficult was when you had several characters speaking in one scene, and didn't want to leave any of them out.
Ways to avoid this:
- If a character isn't going to say anything, make a reason for why they aren't.
-Have certain characters doing things. This way you can describe them every so often.
-If all else fails, make a cycle. Have characters say something one after another. It's not the best technique, but in the first draft, when you don't know what you want them to say, it works, so long as you change it later to something more flowy.
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I hope this was helpful to those of you who may have been having problems in this particular area. If you have any questions about anything else, feel free to PM me, or post the question in a comment, or, if all else fails, pick up a book by your trusted author, and see what they did. Most of the time they're right. ;P
Happy Writings!
-JC
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