Dia

It's NaNoWriMo!! 

Are any of you guys taking part? I won't be this year, but it's because I'm already working on two novels and editing a third. :-P No project to set aside as my NaNoWriMo novel. 

For NaNoWriMo, I thought it'd be fun to go Back to the Writing for this month's series! So we'll be talking all about the writing essentials that I think every writer needs to know, and some pros and cons between different styles of writing. 

Let's start the fun! 

Dialogue

This is seriously one of my biggest pet peeves.

There is a right and wrong way to format dialogue, and I'm going to show you the basics in how to get it right.

1. How not to format

"Hey." He said, "How are you?"

How many things are wrong with that sentence? Approximately three. We'll call it two and a half.

Here they are:

a. The first period should be a comma.
b. "He" should not be capitalized.
c. The comma should be a period OR "how" should not be capitalized.

He said, "Hey, how are you?" 

How many things are wrong with that one? Only one, but it's major:

Dialogue tags should never precede dialogue

2. How to format

"Hey," he said. "How are you?" OR "Hey," he said, "how are you?" (it depends on whether your character is saying it as two short sentences or one longer one broken by the dialogue tag)

Essentially, the basic rules of dialogue formatting are as follows (and it's not as hard as they say):

• All dialogue should be contained within quotation marks. 
• Dialogue tags should only be capitalized and put in a separate sentence when they do not involve descriptions of the words spoken. (i.e. "Yeah, yeah." He sighed. and "Yeah, so?" he asked. are both properly formatted. "Yeah, yeah," He sighed. and "Yeah, so?" He asked. are not.)
•  Periods at the end of dialogue denote a shift from dialogue to exposition. (i.e. "Yeah." He turned away from her.) 
• Dialogue tags always follow the dialogue, they never lead into it
• Only use dialogue tags when you absolutely must.  

So, while you're NaNo-ing, remember these.

Also note that rules are made to be broken... but tread lightly. Some people don't like when you mess with their language.

[love]

{RD}