Dialogue: Where the Heck Do Commas Go?
Formatting dialogue can be difficult. Understanding commas and dialogue tags will help you put your commas in the right place.
Category: Dialogue
Posts on writing good dialogue. Believable and compelling dialogue is an essential part of good fiction. Here I address different aspects of dialogue and give you the tools to improve your conversational writing.
Double Duty Writing
Writing and editing advice are full of pithy phrases like Show Don’t Tell, Said Bookisms, or White Room Dialogue. Unfortunately, I have yet to come across a popular saying to describe the best piece of writing advice I’ve ever heard: Every sentence should serve multiple purposes. Frankly, you could probably …
How to Show and When to Tell
“Show, don’t tell” is a phrase that gets flung around a lot in writing and editing circles. I’ve seen people complain about it and even come to hate the phrase. Perhaps in part because it is used a lot. But I think a fair portion of the dislike of the …
You Caught Me Monologuing!
I had a conversation with an author the other day about villain monologuing. He pointed out that plenty of fictional villains throughout the ages have revealed their plans to the heroes. I quoted Syndrome: Villain monologuing is one of those stereotypes that popular culture both accepts and ridicules at the …
Orson Scott Card’s Dialogue
As I was writing last week’s post about white room dialogue, I kept thinking about Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card—a book which famously (and thoroughly) breaks the rule about white room dialogue. So since my last post about a dialogue rule was followed by an example of breaking the …
White Room Dialogue
Most writers fall into one of two camps: those who prefer to write dialogue and those who prefer description. Personally, my innate talents fall more on the dialogue side of the spectrum. As such, I have a tendency—if I’m not careful—to write “white room dialogue.” In general, this is a …
Robert Asprin’s Dialogue
While planning my post on said bookisms, I began reading a series by Robert Asprin called Myth Adventures. My husband convinced me to read the first book, Another Fine Myth, and it was pretty easy to get hooked. One of the first things that grabbed my attention—other than the clever …
Said Bookisms
Often you will hear writers and editors talk about an aspect of dialogue called the said bookism. I first learned this term many years ago from the excellent writing podcast Writing Excuses. Since then, proper use of dialogue indicators has become one of my biggest editing crusades. Let’s talk about …