Good catch with the question mark. But isn't it a matter of personal preference if you want to split it up with line breaks? Personally, i prefer something like this. “We should visit the zoo,” I heard someone say. “Yes, later today,” I heard someone else reply. I turned around, and saw my parents right behind me. “Can I bring a friend with me?” I asked. “Sure, why not?” my dad replied. I grabbed my phone and called my best friend Anthony, asking him to join us. It just makes it a lot more fluid and gives it a better flow if you dont break it up in lines. Yes I agree, and im not american like you, and english isn't my first language.
I would perceive this as an error. A less clear-cut error than the debate about commas versus periods before dialogue tags, but still an error.
Nothing would matter here if I wasn't interested in actually providing enjoyment to (paying) people. I would think "on-line" versus "online" would be a more accurate analogy. However I am probably just more bothered by the idea of having to comb through 600 pages for this persistent grammatical error than anything else. I could avoid tags for the most part, but I cannot avoid them entirely--especially if they make sense in their context. I guess I'll just have to deal with it. I hate English lol.
There's a spectrum where hard rules stray into strong guidelines stray into softer guidelines stray into style decisions. Spelling is a fairly hard rule. You can decide that "field" and "yield" should be spelled "feeld" and "yeeld", but unless you're already big and famous, you're probably not going to get traditionally published that way. Standard punctuation for dialogue is a similarly hard rule. Things like avoiding sentence fragments, run-on sentences, etc., are rules...but they're rules that in a relatively casual writing voice can be broken by choice, as a style decision. I say "by choice" because you should absolutely have mastered the technically correct form, but once it's mastered, you can choose to violate it, for good and carefully-chosen reasons. "Never use adverbs" is a style guideline, and IMO not even a strong one. "Never use passive voice" is similarly a "soft" style guideline. (And that's ignoring the fact that most people don't correctly recognize passive voice.) "Show, don't tell" is a strategy guideline. It sounds like you're saying that the "Start a new paragraph every time you change speakers" rule is a very soft guideline. And I'm saying that it's a stronger rule. It's the way that dialogue usually works, so readers of fiction get used to that clear visual/formatting guideline that tells them who's speaking and acting. When you give that up, you also lose access to a lot of advantages that it gives you. For example, consider the following: Jane said, "Where are you?" Janet said, "In the kitchen." She raised her voice. "Walk down the main hall. It's in the back." Here we can be quite confident that the "she" raising her voice and saying "Walk down the main hall..." is Janet. That's because that's in her paragraph. If you combine the sentences: Jane said, "Where are you?" Janet said, "In the kitchen." She raised her voice. "Walk down the main hall. It's in the back." then you've introduced ambiguity as to who is making that last statement. And for people like me, who are used to a new paragraph per speaker, you've made the dialogue much harder to read. And if you have just two people speaking, the "new paragraph per speaker" can very often mean that you don't need tags at all. Jane looked up. "Did you get lost?" She slid a can of Coke across the counter. Janet shrugged as she picked up the Coke. "I ended up in the cellar." "How did you manage that?" "Stop it. This house is a maze." Janet dropped into a chair with an exasperated sigh. "Can we leave yet?" "Just how much did you drink at lunch?" Janet glared at her. "Nothing. Not a thing." While without paragraphs, we're going to get lost. Jane looked up. "Did you get lost?" She slid a can of Coke across the counter. Janet shrugged as she picked up the Coke. "I ended up in the cellar." "How did you manage that?" "Stop it. This house is a maze." Janet dropped into a chair with an exasperated sigh. "Can we leave yet?" "Just how much did you drink at lunch?" Janet glared at her. "Nothing. Not a thing." Now, you can add a bunch of new tags and be sure to attribute every action to the actor: Jane looked up. "Did you get lost?" Jane slid a can of Coke across the counter. Janet shrugged as she picked up the Coke. Janet said, "I ended up in the cellar." Jane said, "How did you manage that?" Janet said, "Stop it. This house is a maze." Janet dropped into a chair with an exasperated sigh. Janet said, "Can we leave yet?" Jane said, "Just how much did you drink at lunch?" Janet glared at Jane. Janet said, "Nothing. Not a thing." But that, IMO, makes it even less readable. You could also have multiple-exchanges-per-paragraph when that doesn't introduce confusion, and new-paragraph-per-speaker when it does, but then you're constantly changing the rules on the reader. I don't know if an agent would declare multiple dialogue exchanges per paragraph to be an error, and, if repeated throughout the novel, enough of an error to reject the work. I very strongly suspect that they would. I know that I would regard it as an error, and I wouldn't buy or read the novel. Edited to add: That's not to say that you can never ever ever have more than one speaker per paragraph. You might use it rarely, for example to indicate that a bunch of people are speaking at once. "No," said Mom. Joe said, "What do you mean, no?" Janey said, "That's not fair!" Joshua said, "Yes. Yes yes yes!" And Michael just shook his head and looked down at his cereal. I don't think I'd do this, but I would regard it as a deliberate choice to break a rule for style reasons, rather than something that's Just Plain Wrong.
I just got done reading your post. It's a very long post, so i may have missed some of it. It's interesting to see how people have so many different ways of writing. I think its mostly confusing to read because of the way it's being described, and not so much because of the line breaks missing. Something like this would be a lot easier to read. Jane looked up. "Did you get lost?" She asked, sliding a can of coke across the counter. I shrugged and picked it up. "I ended up in the cellar," I said and opened it. Jane looked at me for a moment. "How did you end up there?" She asked. "Well, this house is a maze," I said and dropped into a chair behind me. I personally find this very easy to read and I don't have any problems finding out what's going on in the dialogue.
As I read this: Jane looks up. OK. Jane says a thing. OK. Now someone identified by "She" is going to ask a thing, but first she slides a can of Coke...wait. She didn't ask the thing. So we have "Jane" and an unnamed "She" in the room. Now the narrator picks up the Coke and says a thing. Then, for no apparent reason, we have a paragraph break, despite skipping the several needed paragraph breaks above. Somebody unknown asks "How did you end up here?" Now the unnamed "She" asks...well, no, she doesn't. "She" keeps threatening to ask things and she keeps not asking them. Now the narrator says a thing and sits down. Edited to add: And yeah, I can figure out what you mean. I can say, "Huh? Oh. Dialogue punctuation error. Huh? Oh, right, same error; Jane and She are the same person. Huh? OK, sure, they finally deigned to give me a paragraph. Huh? Oh, right, same dialogue punctuation error. How many people do we have here again? Right, right, Jane is the same as She, and there's a narrator. Got it. Now that I understand, let's read it all again so that I actually know what happened. Whew. That was a lot of "huh?" for two paragraphs. I'm going to read something else now." I can figure it out. I'm not supposed to have to figure it out. That's not the reader's job. It's the writer's job.
I got bored and Googled: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Quotations/faq0029.html "It’s traditional to start a new paragraph with each new speaker. That is, a piece of dialogue can go straight into the paragraph as long as the person saying it was the last person mentioned. If someone else speaks, begin a new paragraph instead." http://www.theauthorschair.com/2015/08/31/dialogue-mechanics-part-one-the-speakers-paragraph/ "Every time the speaker changes, break to a new paragraph. I’m sure the vast majority of you already know this, but I receive a surprising number of stories that have multiple people speaking in the same paragraph." https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/ask-writer/do-i-really-have-to-start-a-new-paragraph-every-time-someone-different-talks-it "Even with dialogue that is clearly attributed, start a new paragraph with each new speaker. The reader shouldn’t have to wait until after the dialogue is spoken to understand who is saying it." https://firstmanuscript.com/format-dialogue/ "Start a new paragraph every time you change speakers." http://writerlylife.com/home/2010/09/how-to-use-dialogue-correctly/ "Rule #1: A new speaker makes a new line." https://www.novel-writing-help.com/punctuating-dialogue.html "Start a New Paragraph for a New Speaker" http://www.saidsimple.com/content/100835/ "Every time you switch speakers, you make a new paragraph." https://grammargeddon.com/2017/10/12/formatting-dialogue-when-do-you-need-a-new-line/ "Start a new paragraph when the speaker changes." https://owlcation.com/humanities/Punctuation-of-Conversation "Indent each time a new person speaks." http://resources.writersonlineworkshops.com/resources/quotation-marks-and-dialogue-mechanics/ "each change in speaker is indicated by a new paragraph." http://jenniferellis.ca/blog/2015/10/31/the-rules-and-art-of-paragraphing "Just remember new speaker, new paragraph unless you like confusing your readers."
There are plenty of excellent writers who don't line break for each change of speaker. But the norm for commercial fiction is to do so. I've started playing around in this area, combining different speakers into one paragraph where it feels appropriate. I expected a lot of protest. Not one single word about it. Everyone accepted it as fine. But it was done carefully rather than by default. Been reading Doris Lessing's sci-fi sequence Canopus in Argus and some Thomas Pynchon (again) which is where I got the idea. Jose Saramago and Claude Simon too.
I just finished starting to read a friend's daughter's newly self-published book. She rolled three or more speakers into a single paragraph, continually. I found it so torturous to read that after about ten pages I gave up in disgust. I just couldn't follow the dialogue in that layout. Doing it once in a while, maybe for some effect, OK. But if you do all your dialogue that way, I suspect many readers will react as I did. And I was motivated... I really wanted to finish the book and giveher a nice review. But I couldn't
I wouldn't have even gotten ten pages in. If I can tell from the Amazon "Look Inside" feature that the author isn't following standard English grammar, I would never go any further than that. I'm too old to learn a new way to read, especially when there are millions of books out there written in the format I'm used to. I'm thinking most agents and publishers feel exactly the same way - they are going to take one look at an MS with no paragraph breaks for different speakers and acknowledge pretty quickly that an author who does that is way too much work.
Well, actually you wrote it. But I wouldn't have any problems reading it if it was written by someone else. I see, could you provide an example? It didn't take long for me to add the commas, but six hundred pages is a lot.
Do you have any problems reading this? I went into the living room, and saw my mom sitting in the couch. “Mom, can I get the car keys?” I asked. “Why?" she mumbled. “I'm going to visit a friend,” I said and grabbed a piece of fruit. “Alright,” she said, and gave me the keys. I placed them in my pocket and went out of the house again.
That's the kind of thing, yeah. Essentially treating dialogue as any other kind of action, and paragraph breaking for dialogue as you would for anything else. This reads fine to me. I'll post some examples later, but yours is a good one. The other way I've used it is to maintain a sense of speed, of events running away with the MC.
For third person, I would use Italics for thoughts and inner monologue. Though that is just a stylistic choice so that it doesn't seem like breaking the 3rd POV narration, with use of 1st POV thoughts. Though the way grammar is going, there seems to be quite a number of ways to write it out.
