punctuated dialog
Dec. 6th, 2011 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliSometimes the run-of-the-mill punctuation marks do not do enough to structure dialog. Not even if you use copious dashes or put a period. After. Every. Single. Word.
Attributives -- he said, she said -- do more than keep the characters straight. They break up the speech. Putting them in can sometimes be a trick, when you don't want to break up the speech. I've had to resort to starting the paragraph with "He said," a few times. But it can break up a speech when a mere period does not seem to give enough space.
Actions can do it even better. Or incidents involving people or things other than those speaking. A gesture, a shrug, a bird warbling in the nearest tree can be useful to remind the readers that this is not some disembodied voices chattering in a vacuum. But it can also help break up speech more elegantly than punctuation marks or even paragraphs -- because more naturally. The nature of speech is to be broken up without consideration for paragraphs and topic c sentences and the like.
Attributives -- he said, she said -- do more than keep the characters straight. They break up the speech. Putting them in can sometimes be a trick, when you don't want to break up the speech. I've had to resort to starting the paragraph with "He said," a few times. But it can break up a speech when a mere period does not seem to give enough space.
Actions can do it even better. Or incidents involving people or things other than those speaking. A gesture, a shrug, a bird warbling in the nearest tree can be useful to remind the readers that this is not some disembodied voices chattering in a vacuum. But it can also help break up speech more elegantly than punctuation marks or even paragraphs -- because more naturally. The nature of speech is to be broken up without consideration for paragraphs and topic c sentences and the like.
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Date: 2011-12-07 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 12:37 pm (UTC)