On Formatting Dialogue

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I have noticed a recurring issue lately: confusion regarding dialogue formatting.

Your formatting and punctation don't have to be perfect before you submit a novel to your agent/editor, but they should be as close as you can possibly make them. Correct formatting and neat copy-editing makes your writing look more professional, which is always a good thing. Plus, if you've sold your novel to a publishing house, your copy-editor will love you for it.

So, some quick tips:

1) Paragraph breaks.
When a new character starts to speak, you need a paragraph break. "Are you sure?" you ask, scratching your head. You think to yourself, surely if there's a whole paragraph-worth of interior thoughts or action between the two quotes, you won't need to break paragraphs when you switch to a new character's speech. "I am very sure," I reply. "Otherwise it would just be confusing to the reader. Like this!"

Also, if you start a new paragraph within dialogue, you do not add an end quote to the last sentence. Then you start the new paragraph with another beginning quote.

"For example, say I'm telling you a long, lengthy story, and imagine that there were several more sentences before this one. By now, my current paragraph is getting quite long. I should really break and move to a new one, even though this character is not finish speaking.

"It should end up looking like this when I create the next paragraph."

2) Quotation marks.
How do you use them? Which ones? Where? In normal dialogue, when a character speaks, you enclose it with double-quotation marks. "Like this." However, if you have one character quoting another one, you use single-quotation marks inside of double-quotations. "So, say I'm telling you a story about my friend Jorge. Jorge was running from a three-eyed purple monster. 'Help me!' he shouted. It would look like that."

If you want to get really technical, if you're quoting a character who's quoting another character who's quoting someone else, you'd use double-quotations inside the single-quotations inside the outermost double-quotations. But if you're writing something that convoluted, generally proper punctuation is the least of your worries.

3) Dialogue tags.
Formatting tips first: commas generally lead into or out of dialogue in the event that you have a dialogue-tag. She said, "Really? I didn't know that!"

"It's true," he replied.

Seem pretty straightforward so far? Well, it gets a bit confusing if you don't know what constitutes a dialogue tag. Any verb that denotes speech (say, yell, scream, shout, hollar, ask, reply, etc.) can be a dialogue tag. Although I'd recommend staying away from the weird ones. "Why's that?" Henry pontificated. Just sounds a bit weird. "Say" is my usual favorite. It's near-invisible to the reader, and thus it doesn't interrupt the narrative, the way "pondered aloud" might.

HOWEVER. Other actions =/= dialogue tags.

"I can't believe that's true," she ran past him toward the ballot box.

NO. The action of running is a separate sentence.

You don't need to have a dialogue tag every time. In fact, often your dialogue works better without one! But please separate it accordingly. The above sentence should look like this:

"I can't believe that's true." She ran past him toward the ballot box.

ALSO. "Laugh" is not a speech verb. You would sound really insane if you tried to laugh out words. Just try it. "Here we are," I laughed. Out loud, this sounds more like "h-ha-ere-ha-we-haha-areha." If your character is an insane asylum escapee, feel free to ignore this comment.

4) Punctuation.
Pretty simple. If your dialogue would end with a period, but you're adding a speech tag, use a comma instead. "Like in all the other examples throughout this post," I say.

But! If you're ending the quote in anything other than a period, such as a question mark, it should look like this:

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"I am!" he yelled.

Keep the first word of the tag lower-case.

5) Elipses.
Elipses are a powerful tool. Use them wisely. And by wisely, I mean SPARINGLY. This is coming from experience... I have a problem... It's kind of an addiction... Ahem. Anyway. IF you must succumb to the use of an elipses, remember: There are ONLY 3 periods in them. I think back in the old days (going by some vaguely repressed memory from Catholic school), if an elipses was at the end of a sentence, they said you should have 4 periods, whereas if it was in the middle, only 3 were needed. But this is no longer the case.

3 periods only! No matter where the elipses appears! So when... your character... is gasping for breath... We'll figure out by the lower case letters what's a mid-sentence break, and what elipses come at the end of a sentence...

6) Contractions.
This is more a stylistic thing than strictly a formatting rule, but I just have to say - WE SPEAK IN CONTRACTIONS. 90% of the time, when a character is talking, they'll say "I'll" or "we'll" or "we're" or "I'm" or "it's." Not "it is" or "they will" or "I shall" or "we are." If your character lives in a more formal era, or was raised by a nun in a sheltered convent or something, fine, they have a reason to speak really formally. Otherwise? It just looks weird! And not natural! The key of dialogue is to sound as natural as possible.

7) Word Repetition.
Again, more stylistic than a strict rule, but you don't need to repeat words as much as you think! When people talk in real life, yes, we repeat ourselves often. However, in writing, you want every line your characters say to move the story forward, move the scene forward, or reveal something new about the character's personality/past/ideals/whatnot. Your characters don't need to say "well" "ah" "okay" or "now" before each sentence for it to sound realistic. The occasional "well" or "okay" is all well and good. But it can start to annoy the reader if you lead-in to dialogue with too many unnecessary words like that.

Alright, that's enough ranting from me for the day! In case I haven't pimped it enough yet, please enter my contest! :)