Questions tagged [dialogue]
He said, she said, or what your characters are saying.
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Developing a dialogue that unexpectedly leads to strong feelings between two strangers
A short story I'm writing involves a stage in which the male protagonist talks to a stranger with the intent of asking them to do a favor for his friend. I want them to start having strong feelings ...
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How would you write the dialogues of two characters talking in a chat room?
How would you write do the dialogues of two characters talking in a chat room? I am seriously wondering about the format. Should it look like regular dialogues, what about emoticons like OWO and ;) ...
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Using ”as” after dialogue tags
Should a comma be used after a dialogue tag and before the word ”as”.
For example:
”I don’t like this at all, ” he said, as the door closed behind them.
Or ”I don’t like this at all, ” he said ...
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Should you avoid redundant information after dialogue?
Should we avoid repeating redundant information after a dialogue and is there a way around this? Sometimes, you feel prompted to write the description of an action that follows a line, but that also ...
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When should a character refer his dad or someone close in third impersonal person?
When should a character refer his dad or someone close in third impersonal person? Let's say you have a character and his dad is the President of the United States. In what situation is it appropriate ...
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How can one write good dialogue in a story without sounding wooden?
I began an assignment to write a short story for a Creative Writing submission to a publication and although it was accepted, I found that I struggled with the addition of dialogue to this first-...
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How do we handle pauses in a dialogue?
How do we handle pauses in a dialogue?
Let's say that character A speaks and then after a pause character A speaks again. How should we separate the two moments, should we write two lines of ...
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How do I apply Hemingway's dialogue techniques to my own writing?
I open Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises at random (chapter 9).
'I haven't seen you since I've been back,' Brett said.
'No.'
'How are you, Jake?'
'Fine.'
Brett looked at me. 'I say,' she said, ...
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When should the dialogue reference be written, before or after the dialogue?
This might be a very trivial question but I don't know what to google to get an answer so asking anyways.
In this dialogue;
"I have such a miserable cold, your sarcastic remarks are hardly
...
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Can I use spoken English at some places over 'technically accurate English' in a general fiction?
I have written my novel as a 'first person singular' and in past tense. There are lot of times in it where I have written it as I will say it while speaking. I have used phrases which have implied ...
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Breaking dialogue with actions from another character
This can get... confusing, which is why I tend to avoid it, but sometimes, I really want it there.
“What?!” [said Character B.] I laughed, giving her a minute to process
my words. “You’re getting ...
3
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2
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How do you transcribe a dialogue when abbreviations are used?
How do you transcribe a dialogue when abbreviations are used?
For example, when people uses acronyms like FBI or abbreviations like a.m., do we just write them as we write them when they're in a ...
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How to convert dialogue in to paragraph?
This is my first time writing a novel. In my novel, there is a part of the married life of my protagonist who is a woman. I don't have any experience of married life so I have taken inspiration from a ...
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Writing the dialogue of two travelers who dislike each other
I'm currently writing a journey-focused plot arc, and I'm struggling a bit with the character interactions. To give you some background, the protagonist is a lone wolf of sorts whose job is akin to a ...
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Grammar of, in dialogue, someone quickly negating a previous word?
For example, let's say that someone says a word, but then immediately "corrects" it to a different word. Do you use a comma, an em dash, or what?
In addition, if it's at the beginning of a ...
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I have a dialogue that I can't write directly. What would be a good alternative?
My attempt at the current writing challenge features a flock of sparrows.
Since the actual "dialogue" between two sparrows would sound like a bunch of cheeping, I need another way to show what they'...
user36961
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My characters sound too eloquent. How can I strike a balance?
Here's a critique I've received more than once: "your character talks like a character from a book. He's too eloquent, nobody really talks like that, unless they grew up in a library."
Now, to some ...
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Should I "tell" my exposition or give it through dialogue?
When my work was being critiqued, one of the critics said that the exposition given away in my dialogue was forced and unnatural. Though, this exposition is crucial, so leaving it out is out of the ...
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Can non-English-speaking characters use wordplay specific to English?
Would it be jarring if in an original (non-translated) story, the characters, who don't speak English in-universe, use "untranslatable" wordplay/puns that are specific to English?
By "untranslatable" ...
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Why is the construct "'hello' says Pete" most common?
I am asking this from the point of a reader not a writer and just wondering why, so sorry if this is a bad place.
I read loads of books to my kids and the construct always seems to go:
"What a day,...
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Writing slurred speech
One of my characters gets drunk and accidentally kills another. He has a couple of lines where he needs to sound obnoxiously, falling-down drunk.
Is there a good way to accomplish this? What sounds ...
user36961
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Using too much dialogue?
I'm working on a novel of my own and, looking back at the bits of it I have so far brought into light, that almost everything in it is dialogue. Is this a bad thing? How could I fix this if it is?
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Writing "hahaha" versus describing the laugh
When posting an excerpt of my book on a critiquing site, someone commented on my use of "hahaha" inside the dialogue instead of just having a laughing verb after or before it. They said it ...
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How would you write dialog in a 1st person story?
I'm a novice writer working on my first book. I've made the story 1st person from the perspective of the main character. The way I've been writing dialog goes as such:
C1: "So, where are you guys ...
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How to write character accents in dialogue respectfully?
When writing dialogue how should one tackle accents? Changing the spelling for certain words (V for W in German) is effective but may come off a little cheesy.
Then again, not doing this might cause ...
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How to write the action of someone reading in a story? An example, please
I am rather a very amateur writer, who is trying to write a thriller/fiction novel for a class, and I find myself absolutely dumbfounded as to how to write into my story the action of a character ...
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Saying something reluctantly dialogue tag or 'said' synonym?
For example, I'm rewriting a sex scene and my current dialogue and subsequent dialogue tag is:
Almost reluctantly, he said, “Okay, I'll pull out now.”
"Hinted" is a bit too straightforward, and I ...
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How to write Arabic in dialogue for an English piece?
I have a character who is a Syrian refugee to Canada. His first language is Arabic, but he's lived in Canada long enough that he's learned English and uses this as his primary spoken language. On ...
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Elongated vowel sounds
When we speak sometimes we draw out certain sounds for emphasis. We also see this technique in song, for both emphasis as well as expanding the meter to make the words fit a certain rhythm.
One way ...
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The difference between dialogue marks
Most authors use dialogue in writing, especially when writing fiction. Now, if I remember my first grade primary school correctly, dialogue can be directly separated from narration in a number of ways....
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Why do professional authors make "consistency" mistakes? And how to avoid them?
I'm currently reading a sci-fi book that has over a dozen characters. The author had written dialog for two different characters using the same odd idiom in two separate chapters so far. I cannot see ...
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Writing in a Christian voice
I'm Jewish. My middle-grade fantasy novel is very Jewish. Most of my characters are either Jews or converts/future converts or people with at least one Jewish grandparent. But some are not.
My ...
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How do we distinguish someone talking to another person via telepathy rather than via vocal means? [duplicate]
In my sci-fi novel, some people have the ability to talk via telepathy so how do we distinguish telepathy from other types of communication? I would like to do it, because it's not the same, and I ...
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How do we properly show that a person is talking at the same time as something or someone else? [duplicate]
I am not sure how to best handle this, do we skip over a part of the dialogue? When a person is cut, he can resume, but it's not the same thing for a TV.
Anyway, here's an example:
The TV blurted ...
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My story is written in English, but is set in my home country. What language should I use for the dialogue?
I'm an amateur writer from the Philippines. I am writing a novelette for an international writing contest. My story is written in English, but is set here, in my country, with my POV character being ...
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Dialect resources for early/mid 20th Century Midwestern American speech
I'm setting the book I'm writing in the 1900s ~ 1950s, in the central states of the US: Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. I'm having difficulty getting the language for narration and dialogue ...
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Tool for editing dialogue of each character
I would like to edit all of the dialogue of a specific character in my book.
Then I want to repeat this for other characters.
I think this would help to give each of them a unique voice.
Of course I ...
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How do we objectively assess if a dialogue sounds unnatural or cringy?
By unnatural, I don't mean ungrammatical, but something people wouldn't really say. For example, in many fictions, you find yourself in very weird situations and it's hard to know how a person would ...
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How would we write a misogynistic character without offending people?
In a short story I am writing, I have this misogynistic character who keeps saying misogynistic stuff, and I thought it would be a bad idea to give him dialogue lines. I was thinking that, because I ...
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How can I write an annoying character without annoying the reader?
My story has a group of five refugees traveling across the kingdom. One of them is preachy and pretty much useless (unused to physical labor, trying to convert the heathens in the group). She's ...
user36961
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Writing dialogues for characters whose first language is not English
I am seriously wondering how to go about writing dialogues for characters whose native language isn't English and who aren't very fluent in English. It's very hard, because people have different ...
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Showing friendship between people of different ranks - maintain formality, or drop it?
There is a prince. (Or some other person of high rank.) And there is that prince's good friend, who, naturally, holds a somewhat lower rank.
There are two ways I could show the close relationship ...
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Protagonist constantly has to have long words explained to her. Will this get tedious?
A while back, I redrafted my NaNoWriMo 2017 story, but it still needs another draft. This question is about one of the concerns I have.
The story takes place in a medieval fantasy setting, and the ...
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Adapting dialogue from a novel into a screenplay
I would like to adapt a novel I wrote into a screenplay, and I was wondering if there are things to take into consideration before taking the dive. The novel doesn't have a lot of dialogue and I think ...
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Adding lines to a video game script to futureproof a project [closed]
Sometimes, video game development can go awry, so I want to add extra lines in case there's a decision to add generic questlines and new game mechanics. So how do you come up with a lot of lines that ...
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Showing that a character is in pain in a dialogue
Do you add pauses? Do you add interjection? Which ones? Do you misspell certain words? What are some of the tricks writers use? I don't want to say it in the descriptive passage. I want people to feel ...
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Writing the dialogues of characters who are much smarter than you
A.I. should have perfect English, but because they are mainly servants, they should be easily understood. Cyborgs, on the other hand, not necessarily, because they're augmented humans, but some ...
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Ensuring that character dialogues sound like they are coming from different people
I am wondering if I should make the female characters speak in a different way compared to male characters, and I am wondering how to make sure they all sound different.
What are some strategies, ...
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How to incorporate a silent protagonist into a chatty world?
You see this a lot in video games: a silent protagonist who can somehow communicate with the rest of the world with seemingly no or few words. Usually, it's hand-waved away by simply assuming from the ...
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Writing a dialogue with a lot of ellipses
Is there a way to do this properly?
Roxas... I need you... to do me a favor. All those hearts that I've
captured... Kingdom Hearts... Set them free.
This is from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and I ...
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