Now of course, if you have more than two people speaking, things get a bit more complicated. All the aforementioned rules still apply, but you might find yourself needing to identify the speakers more. In this case, try to use action surrounding the dialog instead of tags if you feel it might be confusing as to who is speaking.
“There’s a party this weekend. You should come,” Henry said, sipping his drink and waggling his brows.
“You know I hate those things,” Don said with an exaggerated moan of complaint.
“Oh, come on! It’ll be fun. I promise we won’t get you too drunk,” Bob said with a laugh.
Don sighed. “Why do I always let you two talk me into these things?”
“Because we’re so incredibly persuasive?” Henry grinned, throwing an arm around both men.
“We do it because you need to get out more,” Bob said, pulling away and pointing a finger at Don.
“As long as you don’t try to set me up with anyone.”
“Who, me?” Henry batted his eyelashes in an exaggerated show of faux innocence. “Never.”
OK, in this scene, there are a few times we use dialog tags to establish who is speaking, and it’s nice to use the excuse to interject a bit of action. Reading plain dialog is generally not very exciting. Let us know what your characters are doing; what do their facial expressions look like (remember that body language is at least half of what you say!)? Are they distracted? Interested? Amused? Etc. Give us a sense of how they say the words: angrily? sarcastically? bitterly? with a chuckle? – This also paints a picture of who the characters are.
In this scene, we see that Henry is a little silly when he lets his hair down, so-to-speak, Don is kind of a stick-in-the-mud, and Bob kind of goes along with Henry. We’ve learned all this only from a few lines of dialog, based on not just what they say, but how they say it. Notice also how this gives me a way of cuing the reader into who’s talking without having to say “Henry said” or “Bob replied” all the time. Also, notice how once you get in the rhythm of the conversation, you can start to pick out who is saying what even though there are three men talking, simply based on the subject of the dialog.
“As long as you don’t try to set me up with anyone” could have had a dialog tag like “Don said” or “Don complained,” but it isn’t necessary. We know that Henry and Bob are trying to convince their reluctant friend Don to go to the party with them, so he’s the only one who could say that line. In this case, it is also unnecessary because first Bob speaks, then Don, then Henry. Both Henry and Don have dialog tags (or other cues to let you know they’re speaking), so since it’s on its own line, the only person who could say the untagged line is Don.
Of course, there is more to formatting and writing dialog than just these tips, but this is a crash course, after all! So when writing dialog, keep the following in mind:
- Make sure each character gets their own line for dialog AND actions to prevent confusion.
- Use dialog tags sparsely; to initially establish who is speaking or to let the reader know how the words are spoken.
- Avoid confusing your reader and getting repetitive with dialog tags by surrounding dialog with the actions of your characters. Flesh out the scene!
- Beware of run-on dialog; if the dialog can stand on its own as a full sentence, use a period and start a new sentence with a capital letter; otherwise, use a comma and lowercase.
- Be aware that not every line will need a dialog tag or action if who is speaking is easily inferred based on context and/or the flow of the conversation.
- Beware of ambiguous pronouns! Especially in scenes with several characters, beware of using pronouns unless it’s very clear to whom it is referring!
I hope this little crash course will help you improve your dialog writing and formatting! I know I obviously didn’t cover everything (that wasn’t my intention), but if there’s anything major I missed that you have a question about, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer it!
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