writing tips!

Dialogue

One of the most common places I see writers make mistakes is when their characters are speaking. It may seem like one of the easier parts of writing a story, but how you frame dialogue is very important.

Take these two examples, which feature the exact same sentence being said, but with very different descriptions of what the characters are doing as they say these things.

Example 1:

"Well, that wasn't awkward at all!" she said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Example 2:

"Well, that wasn't awkward at all," he grumbled, rolling his eyes.

In example one, the speaker is relieved because her interaction with someone was much less awkward than she expected it to be. In example two, the speaker is being sarcastic, which is to say that the interaction was actually quite awkward.

I often see writers skipping dialogue tags and writing it like a script:

Johnny: Let's go out!
Taylor: Okay!

Unless your entire story is formatted like a script, please use dialogue tags (as in 'he said', 'she grumbled') when the characters are speaking, as they are so important for the readers to see how the characters are feeling.

Remember, it's important to "show" rather than "tell", meaning that it's better to say that a character scoffed before they said something instead of just saying "They were annoyed." Dialogue tags are one way you can do this.

Although, you don't need to include them every single time someone speaks. If it's a back-and-forth between two people, you can drop the dialogue tags after you establish who is saying what. But remember to keep the quotation marks!

You've probably been told this by a myriad of English teachers, but be sure not to overuse the word 'said' (it's ok to use it once in a while, or if you can't find a better descriptor for how your character said something.) your readers want a variety of vocabulary, or else your story becomes boring to read.