What's the best way to format dialogue that goes back and forth (with three characters in the scene)?

Question

Example:

"Roses and a dead body?" Anna wrinkled her fine nose. "I don't see the connection."

"And they came from Paris," I said. "How did it end up here?"

"Yeah. It's a six-hour drive. What kind of nut would travel that long to deliver flowers to a corpse?"

"Maybe the person was already here?"

Carl held up his palms. "Ladies, ladies, slow down. Let's look at the questions one by one."

There are three people in this scene: the narrator, Anna, and Carl. I wrote something like this a while back, but some readers complained that they couldn't tell who was talking in paragraph three (Anna) and four (narrator).

How should I format (e.g. by adding dialogue/action tags) those paragraphs to remove ambiguity and still keep them fast paced?

Answer 1

There's no hard-and-fast rule for how often to attribute dialogue, but the general goal is clarity. If readers are finding a section unclear, it should be reworked.

In this example, I'd just add a few more tags.

"Roses and a dead body?" Anna wrinkled her fine nose. "I don't see the connection."

"And they came from Paris," I said. "How did it end up here?"

She frowned. "Yeah. It's a six-hour drive. What kind of nut would travel that long to deliver flowers to a corpse?"

"Maybe the person was already here?" I suggested.

Carl held up his palms. "Ladies, ladies, slow down. Let's look at the questions one by one."

It feels awkward, I know. I think it's one of the reasons multi-person conversations are much rarer in fiction than in reality.

Answer 2

In a script this is easy as all dialogue is simply tagged. But that comes across rather artificial in a novel.

For this example I'd make it a bit more narrator-centric. Looking back and forth between Anna and Carl, observing and interpreting both gestures, facial expressions and spoken words. Reacting both to the conversation at hand and from the history, likes and dislikes this central person has with both participants.

Making all that explicit in small, casual bits should both make the whole conversation and the character's relations fall into place without hampering speed.

Answer 3

One thing that usually annoys me greatly in film is when there is a group dialogue and everybody is practically finishing each other's sentences without any pause. It's like one brain and 3 mouths rattling. The dialogue becomes unreal.

How about having two people talk interactively, until there is a transition to a third person (the camera pans).

Anna and I looked at each other.

"Roses and a dead body?" She wrinkled her fine nose. "I don't see the connection."

"And they came from Paris. How did they end up here?"

"Yeah. It's a six-hour drive. What kind of nut would travel that long to deliver flowers to a corpse?"

I agreed. "Maybe the person was already here?"

Carl held up his palms. "Ladies, ladies, slow down. Let's look at the questions one by one."

Answer 4

"Roses and a dead body?" Anna wrinkled her fine nose. "I don't see the connection."

"And they came from Paris," I said. "How did it end up here?"

Anna frowned, her lips a thin sickly line as she looked at the corpse. "Yeah. It's a six-hour drive. What kind of nut would travel that long to deliver flowers to a corpse?"

"Maybe the person was already here?" I asked, giving an suggestion to play on.

Carl held up his palms. "Ladies, ladies, slow down. Let's look at the questions one by one." He sighed and glanced at the corpse again.