DIALOGUE: HEAR THOSE VOICE ON THE PAGE
Welcome to the Wattpad Workshop Series!
Start anytime.
These are free workshops for Wattpad writers who want to be inspired and challenged. You’ll come away with new ideas, new techniques and, most importantly, you’ll generate lots of new writing. The workshops run every Monday on the Wattpad Blog.
To join in: read the post and get writing – post your writing on the Weekly Workshop Series Discussion Thread!
The workshops are run by Alice Kuipers, bestselling author of Life on the Refrigerator Door, The Worst Thing She Ever Did and 40 Things I Want To Tell You. Visit her at www.alicekuipers.com:
Week 14 (Missed the earlier writer’s workshop? Join in with this week, then go back to check out Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12 and Week 13!)
The nitty-gritty of writing dialogue comes down to punctuation and effective speech tagging. Please don’t think this is boring, it really doesn’t have to be. It’s an essential tool for you as a writer. If the idea of grammar has you rolling your eyes, remind yourself that if you were an athlete, you’d be expected to do sit ups, and if you were a chef you’d have to chop onions. Likewise, as a writer, it’s your responsibility to perfect your written dialogue.
By the way, MANY WRITERS GET THIS WRONG. It must drive editors crazy because so many good, talented writers haven’t taught themselves the art of good grammar in written speech. Trust me, your writing will shine if you make the time to teach yourself how to write dialogue.
So here goes:
These are correct:
“It’s because I love you,” she said.
She said, “It’s because I love you.”
These are ALL incorrect:
“It’s because I love you.” She said. [That first period should be a comma. That capital S of She shouldn’t be capitalized.]
“It’s because I love you”. she said. [The period is just plain wrong here.]
“It’s because I love you,” She said. [The capitalization of She is incorrect.]
“it’s because I love you,” she said. [The opening word in quotation marks should be capitalized, unless the speech is interrupted.]
This is the correct way to write interrupted speech: “It’s because,” she said, “it’s because I love you.”
“It’s because I love you,” she grinned. [This mistake is very common. Words such as grinned, nodded, laughed, shrugged are NOT speech verbs and so can’t be used in place of said.]
The punctuation of that line should read: “It’s because I love you.” She grinned.
Using speech verbs requires care. Words like gasped, murmured, screamed, yelled, argued, agreed, squalled, squawked, whispered, explained, admonished, questioned, cried, yodeled, and so on, tend to get in a reader’s way. If your dialogue is strong enough, the tag he said/she said is normally enough for a reader. The words within the quotation marks should show us what the character is saying. The speech tag shouldn’t have to tell us.
I know all this seems nitpicky, but it actually HELPS you as a writer to write speech well. Speech reveals your characters’ character, propels your story and transports your reader into the scene.
There are terrific books on grammar if you want to work harder on this (I read grammar books for fun, such as Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, but I’m a pretty geeky writer deep down).
For today we’re going to move onto the writing prompt.
This week’s writing prompt:
Two strangers start to argue on the street. Write the dialogue of their argument, up to 250 words, with perfect punctuation! Think about keeping the voices distinct and using moments where things are not said to convey emotion, as we’ve been looking at over the last few weeks.
Post your writing here at the Weekly Workshop Series Discussion Thread! I’ll read and give feedback as often as I can. Next week we start a new cycle of five workshops:
Commit to your writing by joining in this and all the upcoming workshops:
- Sept 10th-Oct 8th: Take It To A New Level - Fixes For Your Fiction
- Oct 15th-Nov 12th: Kickstart Your Writing - Trying New Things To Fuel Your Writing