Tips on Writing Dialogue

by Bobbie Christmas

Q: Which of the sentences below sounds best?

John's mother told him,

A. "I'm beginning to regret giving birth to you."

B. "I regret giving birth to you."

C. "I wish I never gave birth to you."

A: I assume you are striving for the most realistic dialogue possible, rather than what sounds the best, so I will give you a fourth choice. It is the most realistic because I actually overheard it in person. Yes, I witnessed a mother saying to her fortyish son (whom I was dating at the time), "I wish I'd never given birth to you." This quote is the most realistic, but it is devastating for a child to hear. It could end a relationship between parent and child. Don't use it unless you intend for it to have dire consequences, as it did in real life.

Q: I have written a novel in what could be described as conversational style. There are large blocks of text in which one of my characters is telling the story of her life to someone. I am having a little trouble finding information that explains how to use punctuation marks in this type of writing. Any suggestions? 

A: Without seeing the manuscript, I’ll say the following:

Monologues (long dialogues without anyone interrupting) are discouraged in contemporary literature, because readers today prefer to see a story unfold with action as well as dialogue. Consider breaking up the monologues with actions and or reactions. Here’s an example of using action to break up a monologue: 

Elton scratched his forehead. “I don’t exactly remember the date this happened, but I remember . . .” He looked up as if retrieving memories. “I remember being under a bed, afraid my brother was going to hit me with that broom, but he stuck the handle of the broom under the bed anyway and poked me with it. Hard.”

Here’s an example of breaking up a monologue with a reaction:

Elton scratched his forehead. “I don’t exactly remember the date this happened, but I remember . . .” 

“Don’t stop now,” the therapist insisted. “What happened?”

Elton looked up as if retrieving memories before he continued, “I remember being under a bed, afraid my brother was going to hit me with that broom, but he stuck the handle of the broom under the bed anyway and poked me with it. Hard.”

Even though readers today don’t want to be told a story and would rather feel as though they are watching the story unfold, monologues do have a place, and they also have punctuation guidelines.

When a character speaks for more than a paragraph, don’t end the paragraph with quotation marks. Open the next paragraph with quotation marks, though. At the end of the monologue, close it with quotation marks. Here’s a brief example:

“One night my father came home stinking of whiskey.” John shifted his weight. “Pops yelled at us, woke us from a deep sleep. We didn’t know what he was going to do next.

“To our surprise he made us all get up, Ruth, Susan, Samuel, and me, and he danced with every one of us in the living room.” John shook his head. “That night turned out to be one of my best memories of my old man.”

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Send your questions to Bobbie Christmas, book editor, author of Write In Style: Use Your Computer to Improve Your Writing, and owner of Zebra Communications. Bobbie@zebraeditor.com or BZebra@aol.com. Read Bobbie’s Zebra Communications blog at https://www.zebraeditor.com/blog/.