Dialogues inside a descriptive part

Question

I am wondering if there are rules on how to format dialogues. Sometimes, you see a dialogue inside a descriptive part and sometimes they have their own lines, but sometimes it's not clear if you should put the dialogue inside the descriptive part or not. This is one of the edge cases.

Paul was tinkering with his laptop. He had been doing this for 1 hour. He took a hammer and broke his hand by accident somehow. "Ouch, why did I pick up the hammer" he said. After putting a band aid over his hand. He hurt his hand even more before calling 911. "I guess that won't do." he said before collapsing on the floor.

It can be rewritten like this.

Paul was tinkering with his laptop. He had been doing this for 1 hour. He took a hammer and broke his hand by accident somehow. "Ouch, why did I pick up the hammer" he said. After putting a band aid over his hand. He hurt his hand even more before calling 911.

"I guess that won't do." he said before collapsing on the floor.

Are both formatting choices correct?

Answer 1

There are no hard and fast rules on how to separate paragraphs in fiction. Some writers invariably make each separate speech a separate paragraph. Many say that there should be a new paragraph at each change of speaker. Some follow the "rule" stated in another answer that one paragraph should contain only one simple action, but various celebrated authors have not followed that rule.

One extreme would represent the example above as:

Paul was tinkering with his laptop. He had been doing this for one hour. He took a hammer and broke his hand by accident somehow.

"Ouch, why did I pick up the hammer" he said.

After putting a band aid over his hand. He hurt his hand even more before calling 911.

"I guess that won't do." he said before collapsing on the floor.

The opposite extreme is to put all this into a single paragraph. Both are legitimate, they are stylistic choices. And of course the action could be expanded significantly, depending on how significant it is to the story.

Overly long paragraphs may tend to lose or bore the reader, and cause the speech to blend into the description. Too many short paragraphs can feel choppy and disconcerting to the reader. Try out a few versions on trusted friends and see what the reactions are, perhaps. Look at the work of various writers, too.

Answer 2

Yes:

It reads awkwardly, but I think both are probably technically correct. The wording is poor, and doesn't express the emotion of the situation (I get it, it's a generic example). As long as one person is talking, it can all stay in one paragraph. But breaking it up to separate the ideas and emphasize him collapsing sounds better in my opinion.

Answer 3

No:

Paragraphs should be used to denote simple actions that are tied together by occurrence at the same point in time. By smushing everything into one paragraph, you have Paul in one instance picking up the hammer, breaking his hand with the hammer, reacting to the initial pain of the hammer (first quote block) could be similar enough actions to bundle together in a paragraph.

However, leaving the work station to find a band-aid, applying it, reacting to the pain (911 call, second dialog, and collapse) are all actions that can not be related to the self-inflicted pain.

As a rule, yes, paragraphs should only have one speaker's dialog, but that is because in a conversation with two people, they do not talk at the same time. Your two quotes from Paul are not happening in the same space of time and are broken up by multiple steps in time and thus should be broken by paragraphs to demonstrate this.

Additionally, there is a lot of missed oppertunity in this blurb to add content. Consider the following actions:

1.) Accidentally inflicting injury. 2.) Reacting to the Injury (OUCH!) 3.) Applying First Aid 4.) Dialing 911 5a.) Second dialog 5b.) Collapsing

These are all elements that could be expanded upon into their own paragraph. Hell, you can eek out a conversation with the dispatcher over the phone that could expand into multiple paragraphs.

Also, the placement of the second dialog is odd. Most people who call 911 realize "This first aid won't do" prior to the call, not after it.

At either rate, option 2 is slightly better but still a problem. Dialog should always open and/or close a paragraph... it should never be sandwiched between narration. Also consider breaking up the dialog by moving your said clauses around (i.e. "Ouch!" He said, "Why did I pick up the hammer?") to help this flow. Ouch is an interjection and usually when you smash your hand, you want to set the immediate ouch apart from the less aware statement. If you go this route, remember that you should not sandwich dialog by narration, which the clause "He said" would be, so this outburst needs to be separated into a new one sentence paragraph (when writing stories, paragraphs do not have to confirm to a set number of sentences).

TL;DR: 2 is better than 1, but not by much. You have too much happening in all of 1-2 paragraphs and need to space them out. Dialog should be as separated from narrative actions as much as possible.