So I have a question about a story I'm writing. In this story, one character is telling another character a story. The way I understand it, the way that works is that when I end a paragraph within his story, I don't use closing quotes. That way the reader knows the next paragraph is still him speaking. Like, "I really liked the fish at that restaurant. It was fishy and delicious. "But it had too much salt." Both the same character. But unless that's wrong, that's not the difficult part. Where it gets confusing is that there's additional dialogue inside the story this person is telling. And I'm not sure how to correctly do this without it getting confusing. Here's a passage: “You thought you could create this robot all by yourself?” I asked. (This is just regular dialogue, not part of the story the other guy is telling.) “Think so? I knew so, Ron. I built the robot from scrap metal, anywhere I could find it,” Joe said. “I constructed the chest plate from a can of Monster, the energy drink. I sliced through the back of the can with a Swiss Army knife and I flattened it out with a bread roller. When the robot was finished, it had the word “monster” written across its chest in large blue letters. (This is the story he's telling.) “‘Master,’ it said to me, on the day of its awakening. ‘Master, my programming tells me that I was created to assist you in saving the world. How would you have me do it?’” (This is dialogue within the story he's telling.) “Hold on a second,” I said. “You’re telling me you’ve sat down with not one, but two United States presidents—” (This is the main character again.) “Three,” Joe said. “Three United States presidents, and you have the engineering capability to build a fully functioning robot out of scrap metal, and yet your job is selling oxymorons?” “There’s more money in this business than you think, Ron. There are always people who are looking to buy oxymora. That’s the proper plural form of oxymoron, by the way.” “I’ll be damned. But who buys oxymora, anyway?” “All kinds of people, Ron. You could even be one of them. I never did finish my sales pitch.” “Go ahead, then.” “Well, let’s see. Could I interest you in some freezer burn, perhaps?” “Who in their right mind would want to purchase freezer burn? That’s not even something a person would want for free!” “You don’t want any, then?” “No!” “That’s fine. I don’t have a freezer, anyway.” “This is the worst sales pitch I’ve ever heard. Maybe you should just go back to telling me about the robot.” “Fine,” Joe said, looking and sounding wholly defeated. “So the robot asked me what I wanted it to do in order to save the world. But honestly, I had no idea. The robot was the idea. I hadn’t thought farther ahead than that. So I said, ‘I don’t know. Just go out there and you’ll think of something.’ “‘The world is a very big place,’ said the robot. ‘I do not even know where to begin.’ “‘Look, I don’t know, okay? Try playing some music or something. People like music.’ Okay, so that's it, but is this confusing? All these single quotes and double quotes and paragraph breaks and interruptions make it feel like I'm asking people to keep track of too much stuff, and I'm not sure I'm doing it right or if there's a better way to do it.
The story segments are so short that I wouldn't use the story punctuation--I'd instead throw in a scrap of dialogue where I'd otherwise need the story punctuation. I'd also add more tags and beats and eliminate the repetition of Ron's name, and also avoid breaking the quotes-with-dialogue with tags inside the quote. So: “You thought you could create this robot all by yourself?” I asked. Joe said, “Think so? I knew so. I built the robot from scrap metal, anywhere I could find it. I constructed the chest plate from a can of Monster, the energy drink. I sliced through the back of the can with a Swiss Army knife and I flattened it out with a bread roller. When the robot was finished, it had the word “monster” written across its chest in large blue letters." I frowned at him. "Seriously?" Joe nodded. "Seriously. ‘Master,’ it said to me, on the day of its awakening. ‘Master, my programming tells me that I was created to assist you in saving the world. How would you have me do it?’” “Hold on a second,” I said. “You’re telling me you’ve sat down with not one, but two United States presidents—” “Three,” Joe said. I wasn't believing this. “Three United States presidents, and you have the engineering capability to build a fully functioning robot out of scrap metal, and yet your job is selling oxymorons?” Joe grinned. “There’s more money in this business than you think. There are always people who are looking to buy oxymora. That’s the proper plural form of oxymoron, by the way.” “I’ll be damned. But who buys oxymora, anyway?” “All kinds of people. You could even be one of them. I never did finish my sales pitch.” “Go ahead, then.” “Well, let’s see. Could I interest you in some freezer burn, perhaps?” “Who in their right mind would want to purchase freezer burn? That’s not even something a person would want for free!” He said, “You don’t want any, then?” “No!” “That’s fine. I don’t have a freezer, anyway.” “This is the worst sales pitch I’ve ever heard. Maybe you should just go back to telling me about the robot.” “Fine,” Joe said, looking and sounding wholly defeated. “So the robot asked me what I wanted it to do in order to save the world. But honestly, I had no idea. The robot was the idea. I hadn’t thought farther ahead than that. So I said, ‘I don’t know. Just go out there and you’ll think of something.’" "Ok...." “‘The world is a very big place,’ said the robot. ‘I do not even know where to begin.’ And I told it, ‘Look, I don’t know, okay? Try playing some music or something. People like music.’"
Thanks for the input. It's not indicated in this excerpt, but Joe repeating Ron's name is a quirk of his character, as opposed to bad writing, although I admit it could be both.
