7 Tips to Formatting Dialogue




Aside from struggling with re-creating dialogue, many family historians find formatting dialogue a little intimidating. It’s important to understand the techniques of writing your ancestor’s conversations and how to format them on the page so they serve your reader best and follow some basic elements of style.

Here are seven quick tips to formatting your dialogue that will help you overcome your hesitation.

 1. Each time a new conversation or speech begins, you start a new paragraph. Additionally, every time there is a new speaker in a conversation, there is a new line. You do not include multiple speakers in one paragraph, so if one person asks a questions and another person responds, the question and the answer must be on two different lines. The use of this technique allows your reader to keep straight who is speaking.

For example:

Victoria asked, “When is Adam leaving for America?”

“On Thursday,” Grandpa replied.

 2. Learn to use single and double quotation marks. Double quotation marks are used to indicate dialogue unless it is a quote within a quote, in which case single quotation marks are employed.

3. Understand the placement of quotation marks. Tradition dictates that punctuation falls inside the quotation marks. You may find some editors and professionals who are changing this practice but I would encourage you to stick with tradition.

4. Use commas before dialogue tags, for instance:

“I don’t want to go to Grandma’s house,” Helen said.

5. Dialogue Tags are the he said/she said of quotations. Don’t use these as forms of descriptions.

For example:

“I don’t want to leave,” Adam whimpered.

Instead of telling the reader he whimpered, spend your time describing the scene so we can see the image of Adam whimpering.  It is perfectly acceptable to use he said/she said multiple times or not at all. The idea is your tags should be invisible and the focus should be on the dialogue.

6. With that being said use dialogue tags sparingly. You don’t want a string of he said, she said, he said, she said cluttering your story. If you know your characters and have given them a distinct voice, your reader will know from the dialogue who is saying what.

7. Capitalize only the first word of a dialogue sentence. If your dialogue is interrupted by a dialogue tag or description, you do not need to capitalize the second part of the sentence.

For example:

“I don’t want to go to Grandma’s house,” Victoria said while fidgeting in her chair,    “because it brings back bad memories.”

Employ the above tips and your well on your way to writing great dialogue for your family history story.

Related Post

Make Your Scenes Pop!Make Your Scenes Pop!

 

Do your stories pop?

Do they engage your reader and give them a vision in their mind through the words you’ve strung together on the page. As writers, our goal is to create clear and detailed images through the use of descriptive language. If you’re not using descriptive writing in your family history stories then you are missing an opportunity to show rather than tell. Descriptive writing adds texture, colour and dimension to our stories. It is how we make reading a sensory experience for our readers.

My favourite quote that helps to illustrate showing in scenes remains:

 “DON’T TELL ME THE MOON IS SHINING; SHOW ME THE GLINT OF LIGHT ON BROKEN GLASS.”

                                                                                                                              ANTON CHEKHOV

As we discussed in How to Write a Scene, detailed description, imagery and figurative language are components of a scene that we heavily rely on to make a scene vivid and in full colour for the reader. Today’s post pulls together a few tips to help you improve your use of description in writing your scenes.

Use all of your senses.

As we mentioned in How to Write a Scene using your senses is an essential ingredient of descriptive writing. Using the senses of touch, taste, hearing, seeing and smelling are all equally important in bringing your ancestor’s experience to life on the page. We often tend only to use sight, but employing a combination of senses gives your reader a much deeper experience.

Avoid Clichés

Clichés are words or expressions that have been overused. They may have been original at one time but through overuse they have become clichés. Be aware of them and find fresh and original ways to describe your story. Some examples of clichés include dead as a doornail, smart as a whip, sweet as sugar. You get the idea.

Use a Thesaurus

Try to avoid using the same words in a sentence, paragraph or, if it is an uncommon word, in the story, unless the word is used for effect. This applies to standard words and less common words. Use a thesaurus to find alternative words that convey the same meaning. (I used the word “word” eight times – did you notice?)

Use Personification, Similes, and Metaphors

Personifications, similes, and metaphors can add sensuous references vividly, explain things, express emotion and entertain your reader. They add richness to your writing and show an image in a vibrant way through example rather than tell directly. They should replace, enhance or define adjectives like, beautiful, sweet, picturesque and others. We’ve all learned about similes and metaphors in school. Perhaps, it’s time for a refresher course, and a little practice to help you see just how important it can be in writing your family history stories.

Let’s take a look at each with examples from the memoir Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Personification

Personification adds human personality traits to inanimate objects.

“Finally, we entered hill country, climbing higher and deeper into the Appalachian Mountains, stopping from time to time to let the Oldsmobile catch its breath.”

Simile

A simile ties two things together using the words ‘as’ or ‘like.’

“ It was like sewing meat. It was sewing meat.”  Mr. Walls gets beat up and asks for Jeannette to sew up a gash on his arm.

Metaphor

Metaphors are figurative comparisons that describe one thing by directly assigning it the traits of another, so one idea is understood in terms of the other.

Rex says Maureen “is a sick puppy, the runt of the litter, who should have been drowned at birth”

This statement expresses how Rex feels Maureen is weak and dependent, and the rest of the family has to provide for her.

 

Don’t Over Do it!

Beginning writers tend to lack confidence in writing description in those early days, but once they gain an understanding of description, they can then go too far and overdo it. As I mentioned in writing a scene, too much detail can completely overtake a story and it bears repeating again. Once we get the handle on description and detail we tend to find a reason to think more is better. It is not. As the artist of this work you must make decisions about which descriptions and details serve the story best, the feeling you want to portray on the page.  Description should enhance your characters and their world, not overwhelm it.