Dialogue and Its Tags

This is something that really irks me. Dialogue. Some are experts with it, and some are...well, not. Basically, dialogue is interaction between two characters. Which means, these characters are talking. I know it's sounds stupid, but keep that in mind. Often, I find dialogue between two people in high school with extremely formal language. High schoolers don't speak in "I do nots" and "I cannots". They speak in "I don'ts" and "I can'ts". Students want to keep things brief, and that's why they use contractions (and make up their own contractions).

Think about the two people interacting and their personalities. How do you think they'd speak? A good suggestion that may seem a little crazy is having a conversation with your characters. Think of how they'd respond and think of how you respond. You should also study the interactions between people around you. I know it sounds stalkerish and creepy, but when you know how people speak to each other in real life, you'll be able to put it in writing.

Now, once you've got the concept of dialogue down, it's time for tags. Not the game, but the words outside the quotes. For instance "he said" is a dialogue tag. It's the most common one and it is your friend. A lot of people want to mix it up and put things like "he growled" and "he grated" but don't. Stick with "he said" "she said". They're your best friends.

The difficulty is where you put them in the sentence. I learned this in elementary school and retained the lesson for years, but many haven't.

WRONG WAYS:

"My name is Jane", She said.
"My name is Jane", she said.
"My name is Jane," She said.
"My name is Jane" She said.
"My name is Jane" she said.
"My name is Jane." She said.

RIGHT WAY:

"My name is Jane," she said.

Remember, the comma is always inside the quotation marks. It's very simple, but I see a lot of people who become confused. This is perhaps because of action tags. They go as "She bit her lip" or "He smiled." Action tags are when the person is doing something. People often become confused on how to punctuate sentences with action tags, too.

WRONG WAYS:

"I didn't mean it," She shuffled her feet. "I really didn't."
"I didn't mean it," she shuffled her feet. "I really didn't."
"I didn't mean it", She shuffled her feet. "I really didn't."

RIGHT WAY:

"I didn't mean it." She shuffled her feet. "I really didn't."

With action tags, you always put a period and capitalize the first letter in the sentence. Since it's an independent action, it's not part of the actual dialogue.

I hope you learned something from my lesson today.