My dialogue is as stiff as wood. I'm not gonna argue that. Because of this, some paragraphs are straight up copied from Ezn's guide.
If you remember the last chapter – you should – I said that Senpai Ezn mentioned that a new speaker starts a new paragraph. In fact, they pointed out it is the most important rule.
I... do not agree with that.
Now listen, my peeps. There is a difference between the formatting of physical books and digital formats. Like Wattpad!
The difference is called indentation and vertical space!
Indentation means that the writing starts a bit into the line.
Fhrbdid djd rj
Sdbebsobdjeidbwisbrje
The first line is indented to signal that a new paragraph began
While vertical space is just that.
Space.
Books use indentations, Wattpad uses vertical spaces.
Ezn had the theory that many readers aren't aware of indentations, that they don't notice them when reading. Which causes everything to be a great wall of text. It may look "book-like" to them... but isn't. It is just a pain to read.
And now the thing I struggle with. Tags. Mine just feel so bland. Just X said, Y guessed, just a name and a verb. That's it. The only thing more bland are my descriptions! (That chapter will be a pain. Or an eye opener, we will see.)
Dialogue which precedes a said tag (some variation of "said Character") can end in a comma, or an exclamation point, or a question mark, or an ellipsis, but never a period.
Which means:
"That woman.", muttered Giovanni annoyed.
This ain't working, chief. Essentially, you can only use one Period. And it comes at the end of the tag. (Unless you end the tag on something or the tag is followed by the speech.)
This also means that the speech can end on a Comma. Maybe it is my native language speaking, but it feels wrong to me. The Comma comes outside of the Quotation Marks, it belongs to the tag. The sentence in the Marks are complete.
Okay, I may could befriend this, if there is a second part of the speech after the tag.
"That woman,", complained Giovanni annoyed, "Ariana was right, I should have raised him myself."
Nah, still looks cursed. [Complains about the mutiple Commas in 3, 2, 1...]
Said tags are never capitalised. They are not complete sentences, and they should not ever follow full stops (as stated above). Think of them as the subject and verb of a sentence that has the dialogue you're applying them to as its object.
Dialogue which is split in half by a said tag will either form a single sentence or two separate sentences. It should be formatted to reflect that.
If a said tag precedes dialogue, you introduce the dialogue with a comma.
And now my real struggle. Action tags. The main reason why my dialogue is bland as white bread.
Remember the punctuation? That speech shouldn't be ended with Periods? There is an expectation!
If the speech ends on such, the tag doesn't tell that a character said it. Instead the character does an action. Like looking at something.
Okay, maybe I should use more action tags.
Action tags are a good way to not constantly write 'said'. While 'said' – despite what most teachers may tell you – can't really be overused, it is nice not to be repetitive, even if it is invisible to most readers.
Like epithets, alternatives to 'said' can become annoying to read. Action tags avoid this.
And there isn't much of potential Punctuation fuck ups.
But this only works with complete sentences. But hey, that's what dashes are for.
A quick note: there's a difference between putting the dashes outside of the quotation marks and putting them inside the quotation marks.
If the dashes are outside, the action is performed parallel to the speech. If the dashes are inside, the action interrupts the speech and is only continued when the action is concluded.
Miscellaneous: a fancy way to say "different (stuff)" I had to google what this meant.
In the weird case that you write dialogue for one character that is multiple paragraphs long – that just sounds like bad writing to me – do not put the second mark at the end of the paragraphs that isn't the last. But put a mark at the beginning of each paragraph.
This hideous oddity is meant to remind the reader that the dialogue isn't over.
I wasn't aware of this. I would just assume the writer forget something.
Last but not least, if someone is referred in the speech, separate the name with a comma.
YOU ARE READING
Absolute Fanfiction Writing Advice
FanfictionI wrote and read Fanfiction for five years. In these five years, I learned many things. But these is still a lot to learn for me. To celebrate my five year anniversary, I want to collect said knowledge. While not all is stuff I learned over the last...
