Basic Tips:

Indentations: Each paragraph is indented except for the start of a chapter or a scene break. When a scene breaks, the first line, and dialogue are never indented.

Quotations: What the character is saying must go inside the quotation marks. The only time when there are no quotations is when there are long speeches in which the ending of the paragraph does not have them, but the next paragraph starts with them. If a character is quoting someone else, you use single quotes within the double quotes. 

Important Info: Only add relevant dialogue. Important information that the readers have yet to learn or something that was not relayed jet that makes an impact can be said in dialogue. Do not use short talk for dialogue.

Speakers: For each time someone else speaks, you show this by starting new paragraphs each time. Even if the characters say one word.

Punctuation: When writing, there is punctuation that ends the sentence. Instead of periods, use commas. You only do not need to add commas when you use question marks or exclamation marks. 

Different Kinds of Dialogue

Single lines are the most common and the most used in writing dialogue. Where it starts and ends with quotation marks, and the punctuation is inside the quotation. Ex: “You told me you were staying late,” The dialogue is inside quotes and ends with punctuation. 

Single lines with tags. So tags are what you use at the end of your dialogue. For example, he/she said, they yelled, he/she whispered, they responded, he/she scoffed, etc. Ex: “you told me you were staying late,” he said. The “h” in “he” is lowercase because it is still part of a continuous line. It ends after the word “said” where there is punctuation again.

This also happens with questions. Ex: “Why would you do this to me?” she asked. It is still part of a continuous sentence, so the “s” in “she” is still lowercase. Unless there is some action after dialogue, the question mark would be considered a period. Hence ending the sentence.

If you want to write something with dialogue after the tags, it will look like this, Ex: She finally said, “Ok. I will go pick him up.” So, in this case, you put the comma before the quotations because it’s not part of the dialogue. You also capitalize the first word because it is the start of the sentence. You then end the sentence with a period because there is nothing to continue after the dialogue since the tag started, not ended.

(I will create another post with more examples, including all of these as well, for this week)

Realistic Dialogue

Read the dialogue out loud to yourself or with a friend or family member to help determine if the dialogue sounds real or fake. Doing this will help you also understand if there is unnecessary dialogue in your scene or if there needs to be more. Using solid words that impact the story is good, so you do not have to say a lot to get the point across. Using dialogue, verbs, and adjectives while writing also helps so you do not have to write a whole page of dialogue and can cut down to only a few lines. Adjectives and verbs will help you create the same effect you tried to make without using all the dialogue. When you write dialogue for each character, make sure that it is unique to that character. Make a backstory for each character, even if the backstory is not present in your writing. It will help you understand the character and write the dialogue and their actions in the book uniquely.