Dialogue seems to trip up a lot of writers. If you are new to writing fiction, there are a few things you’ll want to know about punctuating dialogue or using dialogue tags correctly. This is mainly geared toward fiction, but it can be applied to memoirs or even other types of creative nonfiction.
There are different variations for different languages and can vary for English around the world, so this is focused on American English.
I created a short story excerpt using the dialogue examples. Feel free to skip completely ahead if you already know the basics of dialogue, or you can skip over the dialogue notes and read just the story for fun.
Punctuating a straightforward sentence
“I really need to eat something,” said Martha.
Most people will recognize this sentence structure. The dialogue goes in quotation marks with the comma tucked inside the end quote. The dialogue tag remains lowercase since it is still part of the same overall unit.
Punctuation when the dialogue flows into multiple paragraphs
“I really need to eat something. If I don’t eat something, I’m gonna get a case of the hangries. And when I get a case of the hangries, it’s entirely possible that I might do something I’ll regret.
“As you know, Greg, we still need to resolve our relationship problems. Do you think this road trip will really help us?”
It this example, you’ll notice that there is an opening quotation mark at the beginning of each paragraph, but only one closing quotation mark—at the very end of the dialogue—to cue the reader that these paragraphs are all being spoken by the same individual (separate paragraphs, same speaker). I didn’t add a dialogue tag here, even though Mary is speaking. It isn’t always necessary to use tags, as long as the speaker is obvious.
Question marks or exclamation marks in dialogue
“If I don’t eat something, I’m going to get a serious case of the hangries. I need food now!” said Martha through shimmering eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” Greg asked. “The only stop even remotely nearby is some dark hotel down that forest road over there.”
In these examples, the question and exclamation marks stay tucked inside the quotation mark. You’ll also notice that the dialogue tag doesn’t have to be at the end of the paragraph. It can be in the middle or the beginning to help create less of a repetitive pattern to the scene.
Martha blinked the hunger tears away and looked down the tree-lined road. With a half shrug, she said, “It doesn’t look too scary. Let’s give it a try.”
In this example, the comma stays with the tag and “It” is capitalized since it’s the beginning of the dialogue (a sort of sub-sentence within the overall unit.
A tag that interrupts a sentence
“I’m not sure if our relationship can handle another incident like the last one,” Greg said, shuddering slightly, “but it does seem like we’ll have to take the risk. Who knows maybe we’ll have time to talk about our issues over dinner.” He looked at the clock, then added, “Early breakfast, actually.”
When the tag lands in the middle, just add the comma before and after the tag. Notice that in this example, the dialogue in the first part is all one complete sentence and is merely being interrupted by the tag. This is different than the second line of dialogue in the example, where the tag is between two separate sentences.
When a sentence is broken into two parts, it commonly occurs just before the conjunction (and, but, or, etc.). Doing this works well, because each part is a complete clause with subject and verb, and therefor divides the thoughts or ideas rather neatly. You could theoretically break the sentence elsewhere, but often the result won’t flow smoothly and readers might get confused or even have to go back and reread the sentence.
Exercise: Try breaking the sentence in a different spot to see what happens. Is it coherent or confusing?
Sometimes, authors will break the sentence completely into two sentences with the second sentence beginning with the capitalized conjunction, like this.
“Oh, Greg, you’re totally paranoid,” Martha replied. “But I love you for it, and I know you’re only like this because you care about me.”
Whether that works or not depends on if the two clauses work better standing alone or as part of one sentence. Do the ideas work separately or are they interconnected? Do you need to emphasize one half over the other?
Exercise: To test this, take out the dialogue tag and look at just the dialogue by itself. See if the period in the middle works or not. If you separate the sentences and then remove the conjunction how does the sentence work without it. Does the conjunction add a certain emphasis or is it just filler? In the above example, the sentence works fine as a whole, but by breaking it into two sentences, it gives an emphasis to each one separately that isn’t then when they are joined together as one unit. This is where author discretion comes in. It’s not just what your character says, but how your character says it, too. Try it yourself and see what you think. Then try it with your own invented sentence.
Actions versus dialogue tags
Here’s where things start to get a bit more confusing. What exactly is a dialogue tag and what isn’t a tag?
Examples of common dialogue tags are words like “said.” Here’s a list:
• Said
• Replied
• Answered
• Asked
• Exclaimed
• Yelled
• Shrieked
• Explained
Dialogue tags pretty much all follow the same rules as the examples above.
Actions and mannerisms
However, sometimes you’ll want to vary the sentences and paragraphs to create a more interesting scene, so you can separate the dialogue with character action or mannerisms. Mannerisms are things like your character’s body language, habits, quirks, or unique tics. In these instances, you would separate the action into a separate sentence with a period or other full stop.
Mary was shaking now. “Greg, I think we really need to stop. It’s getting serious.” Mary groped around in the seat and pulled out an empty candy wrapper. She gave it a sniff before throwing it over her shoulder into the back seat.
“Did you really just do that?” Greg wrinkled his nose, but dutifully turned the steering wheel and headed down the dirt road.
The hotel sign blinked back at them with a flickering H-O-T-E- with he L dangling upside down from an electric cord.
The grey area
Grey-area dialogue tags
• Growled
• Snapped
• Scraped
• Snorted
• Rasped
• Roared
• Laughed
These grey-area tags are confusing because sometimes they are actions and sometimes they are tags. Sometimes these work; sometimes they come across as forced. Sometimes, they are confusing to readers and hard to visualize. If you read children’s books, you will see a high frequency of these types of tags. It’s easy to imagine a bear growling out a sentence. Or a snake hissing out a question. But as you move toward adult fiction, you’ll see fewer and fewer tags like this. Some people recommend avoiding the grey-area tags altogether, but I think (in moderation) they can have their place.
Exercise: A good rule for these types of tags is to ask if you can perform this action while speaking. If not, leave it as an action. Come up with a few words like those above and see which category they fall under: action or tag. (I’ll come back to this later in another blog article, but this will give you a good start.)
Tag versus action continued
Just to recap, if you decide for sure that you have an action or mannerism and not a tag, things are less complicated. Since an action is a separate sentence, it is punctuated with a period or other full stop, like a question mark.
The tires crunched on the gravel as they pulled into the parking lot. “What’s cooking this morning?”
Pretty clear cut. All action here and nothing that looks even remotely like a tag. Let’s try something harder.
They turned to greet her and she frowned with pretend authority. “What do you think they’ll have cooking?”
Greg grunted. “Let’s hope it’s something with a lot of protein.”
“Or eggs. I could go for at least a dozen,” Mary sighed longingly. “Or steak. Rare.”
“Frowning” is definitely an action and not a tag, so you would put a period and start the dialogue as a new sentence. (Although, I have seen writers try to turn it into a tag.)
In the same example, I decided the grey area tag (“grunted”) is an action. And, lastly, I decided to use “sighed” as a tag, because the words all came out in one long, breathy exhalation that, in this case, worked as a sigh. (Tread carefully. One tip is to read the dialogue out loud (while acting out the tag) to see if these grey-area tags are actually realistic or if they are confusing and hard for readers to imagine.)
Interruptions
Now we are getting to the part that trips up new writers quite often. Using dashes or em dashes to show interrupted speech.
Dashes
“Rare? That bad already? I thought we’d still have another hour”—Mary, hanging halfway out of the car, was struggling with her seatbelt—“before you started craving blood.”
In this case the dashes are outside of the quotation marks, because the action and dialogue are happening simultaneously. Greg’s speech isn’t actually being interrupted.
“Mary, slow down. Let me get my seatbelt off before—” Mary was moving fast. She tripped on the gravel, skinning a knee, but it barely slowed her down.
This time the dash is inside the quotes, because the speech is cut off suddenly.
Ellipses
“I need food now…” Mary clutched her stomach and reached out to open the heavy hotel door. “Locked…it’s locked.”
Ellipses can show speech trailing off. This is softer than an em dash, which indicates a sharp interruption. Speech can trail off slowly if the person’s voice grows too quiet to hear, or if the person forgot what they were saying, or for many other reasons.
Ellipses can also show a break in the dialogue that picks up again in another sentence or even paragraph. It can create an extra emphasis in a sentence or break up repetition for interesting effect. People speak in fragments and phrases. People speak over each other or at the same time.
Exercise: Listen to real life conversations and try to “hear” the em dashes and ellipses. Did the person pause, get interrupted, trail off? Are they talking while doing something else at the same time? Did they switch topics mid-sentence? How would you punctuate the dialogue if you were tasked with transcribing it?
Here I show examples of interruptions and simultaneous events and a bunch of other variations. How many can you spot? What other things do you notice that we haven’t touched on, yet?
“Mary, back up. Let me try to—” Mary’s hand snaked out, ripping Greg’s shirt and drawing a streak of blood across his arm.
“I’m sorry.” Mary pulled her hand back.
“—No! It’s fine. Let’s just…”
The door opened, spilling golden light across their faces and creating a silhouette in the doorway.
“I’ve been expecting you…for a while now.” A hand reached out and shoved a thick pork chop into Mary’s hands. Her fingers curled gratefully around it.
“Thanks…Mmpphh” She shoved the food into her mouth. “S’good.”
Greg squinted at their mysterious host. “How did you—?”
“We keep an eye out for these ‘situations’. Things can get complicated around here. Won’t you come in?”
“Mmm. Got another pork chop in there?”
“May, don’t be rude”
The figure moved back, opening the door enough to allow them in—and to let them see their host’s face.
Pointed ears—along with an interesting bluish-tinted skin tone—were framed by dark curly locks. The eyes, though…
Greg gulped. “Should we, um…I mean, can we…?”
“Yes!” Mary pushed past Greg and went inside.
The host smiled—if you could call it that—and Greg stepped over the threshold to go look for his wife. Relationship problems, indeed. I think we have a few other problems to worry about now, Greg thought.
Notice that the speaker isn’t always pointed out via action or tag. Some paragraphs are all dialogue with no dialogue tags or action. This can help speed up the pace of scenes with a lot of dialogue. If you have really long passages of back-and-forth conversation, you can intersperse a few tags, action sentences, or mannerisms to help keep readers on track, but you don’t need them for every single paragraph.
Fast tip: A great way to create an interesting scene is to vary sentence patterns and length. When writing dialogue, do you find that you use the same pattern or structure over and over? Try switching the position of the tag or action around to see if you can make the scene more dynamic and less predictable.
Final Exercise: For a final bit of practice, write up a conversation between two people. It can be silly small talk. See how many lines of dialogue you can get away with before you feel like you need to add a tag or action as a character identifier. Does the pace feel fast? Now add in some narrative throughout. Hoe does the pace flow now? Can you manipulate this to create fast-paced sections and slow-paced sections? For example, slow the scene down for an emotional or reflective moment, and then speed it up again for some witty and humorous banter.
There are a lot more things you can do with dialogue, but hopefully this will help you get started. Feel free to add comments if you have other fun tips or ideas.
Happy writing!
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