There are a couple of rules student writers need to know:
(1) Dialogue should move the story forward. In other words, the reader should learn something new about the characters, setting, and / or plot based on the dialogue. Dialogue should feel like real conversation without sounding as if the characters are blabbing just to blab.
(2) Dialogue must be correctly punctuated.
Teaching dialogue comes in two parts: craft and mechanics. Let's start with mechanics. We teach students to use open and closed quotation marks to show that a character is speaking.
For example: "I want to read a book," said Lindsey.
We know that Lindsey is talking because we used the dialogue tag said Lindsey. A dialogue tag tells the reader who is talking (said, asked, whispered, screamed). We know what Lindsey says because we put quotation marks around the words she speaks. The example is one complete sentence. A comma goes after book before the closing quotations. The period comes at the end of the sentence (after Lindsey).
A word about SAID. In an effort to get kids to use a range of vocabulary teachers began creating lists of other ways to say said. In truth (and you can verify this in dozens of grown-up books on writing), the best way to say said is to say said. Readers read right past the word said. The use of a variety of different ways to say said within a piece of writing can interfere with reading. Occasionally it might be necessary to use whispered or screamed, but for the most part, said is more than just acceptable, it is best.
Once students learn the basic mechanics of simple dialogue they can go forth and conquer dialogue as a central part of storytelling. One of the best ways to learn dialogue is to read and analyze examples from published literature.
I will post Writing Dialogue: Part 2 in a few days. In the next segment I will discuss writing dialogue using action tags.
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