How to Write Proper Dialogue

There are a lot of steps to writing good dialogue - but leaving the realistic nature aside, let's focus on the structure of it.

Dialogue Tags (Following Quotations)

Test your knowledge. Which is formatted correctly?

A) “We had to run the whole way home! It was ridic!” He yelled.

B) “We had to run the whole way home! It was ridic!” he yelled.

A dialogue tag is what ties the speaker to their quotation: he said, she said, I said, we said like zombies…

• Dialogue tags are ALWAYS lowercase, unless it's a proper noun.

- “Hey, Juliette,” he says.

- “Is someone here?” he asks.

- “Don’t open the box, Pandora!” he yelled.

If you picked “B,” you are correct!

Punctuation Within Quotations

Test yourself:

A) “I don’t know.”

B) “I don’t know”

There has to be punctuation at the ending of the quotations of the dialogue, but this is very flexible.

• If there's a dialogue tag, it usually ends in a comma: "Uh, yeah," I answer innocently.
• If there isn't a dialogue tag, there STILL has to be some kind of end punctuation: "Rough night?" / "But that's no excuse."

If you picked “A,” you are correct!

Lead-Up to the Dialogue

Which is correct?

A) He chuckles, shaking his head. “It’s alright.”

B) He chuckles, shaking his head, “It’s alright.”

The “lead up,” is usually a bit of description (that isn’t a dialogue tag) that comes before the quotation.

• This should end in a period: I shrug to myself, looking out over the empty beach. “I dunno. I don’t have anything to do…”

If you picked “A,” you are correct!

Addressing a Character

You should catch my drift by now:

A) “Can we eat Grandma?”

B) “Can we eat, Grandma?”

When addressing a character in dialogue, their name has to be surrounded by commas to separate it from the rest of the text.

• “Where’d the fire go, Ju?”
• “No. Bad, Juliette, bad.”

If you picked “B,” you’re correct. Remember: Punctuation saves lives.

That about sums up the common mistakes I see on Mibba. All of these are easy fixes that will take your writing to a new level!

_{Author's Note: Dialogue excerpts from Glass Houses.}