How to write good dialogue

I agree with this. It's important to have balance and it's not necessary to include every minute detail just the ones that would be relevant to the character or the story. As to what is relevant to the character that really depends on their personality and mindset. Different people notice different things.

Body language is an excellent way to express what is going on with the characters. A huge amount of human communication is nonverbal.

 

So a little off topic. I'm working on a scene, it's a tournament and I found the actual contest not contributing that much to the story. The point of the chapter was some other conflict. So I write the conflict up, it's dialogue heavy, naturally, there's a festival going on and then I finish up with the contest.

Doesn't work, I almost feel like I wanted to summarize the tournament outcome and be done, but that wasn't right. But if I just wrote the the contest scene, it was boring, predictable, and it didn't move the story forward.

So, I'm sharing my solution. I moved the contest into the middle of the conflict dialogue. A little contest, a little dialogue, a little contest, more dialogue.

I am very pleased with the result. It works! Yay!

 

Action tags

I would put flashing lights on THIS. Interspersing dialogue with frequent action does three good things:

It helps set a scene
It can help develop character (what characters are doing while they are speaking is often crucial to understanding them)
It keeps the tedious 'saids' at bay

It can also help to break up a long glob of dialogue spoken by only one character, which is especially useful if the character is not speaking to him/herself, but is 'telling' something to another character.

Whenever there is a new paragraph in a scene with dialogue it is natural to assume the speaker has changed. Even the correct punctuation marks ...no end quote at the end of a paragraph and a start quote at the beginning of the new one ...can be confusing. So, if you've got a character going on and on at somebody else (and no, this is not always boring!), by all means break up the speech into paragraphs, but make it clear who is speaking with action tags at the start of each one.

What @circ said makes sense to me:

What @heal41hp said about Hemingway brought back memories of why I never enjoyed reading those stories. Hemingway's considered a 'master' but I found his sparse style irritating at best, and totally confusing at worst. In my mind, a reader should never have to backtrack to figure out what is going on or who is speaking. I had to do this while reading Hemingway all the time. He did not have the gift of sucking me straight into the world of his story and keeping me there till he was done telling it. I kept coming out of it all the time, thinking: whaaa?

 

I'm much the opposite way - I have been writing poetry for a few years but I have only just begun to write stories. I find that it's much easier for me to describe a scene than write dialog naturally.

 

Breaking dialogue at key points builds interest, and can also focus the reader's attention on what was being said at the interruption. You leave the reader hanging for a spell, and the reader anticipates the resuming of the discussion.

 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and thoughts. I think I'll play around a bit more with interspersing dialogue and action, as well as practicing a bit of writing non-verbal scenes. I think (and these comments have reinforced) that having a mixture of scenes - some dialogue, some action, some both, some pensive, is probably best to keep variety, and I will try and be aware a bit more of that when I'm writing (and reading).

As for screenplays, that's an interesting idea that I hadn't really thought of before. My sister is actually studying film and screenplay writing, I might talk to her a bit about that. It's funny, I really get a lot of creating the world in my head (and brainstorming on sheets of paper, notebooks etc), but find that when it comes to writing it down, I can't find the words! It's a surprising challenge. At least I'm learning about myself and the way I like to work!

 

The title basically says it all. Is it a no-no or is it acceptable?

 

It's perfectly fine. It needs to answer to the same paradigm as anything else that closes a chapter in that it needs to feel like break.

 

I think it's fine. As long as it's not the punch line to a joke. That makes me die a little inside every time I see it.

I actually read on someone's blog that the best advice they ever got was to take out the first and last paragraph of every chapter they wrote. I don't use that as a 'rule' per se but I have to admit I usually try it just to see if it works. A lot of times I just tack on that last paragraph to make things pretty and it ends up ruining everything. Could be the same with dialogue.

 

Personally, I am a little surprised I keep seeing these can you do this or can you do that type of questions here.

You can do anything. The question is whether you as the author make it work for the story you're telling.

 

Funny you should say that. My publisher recently sent back my forthcoming novel with some edits to see what I thought. One thing he did was to remove the first paragraph and transplant it to somewhere else near the very end of the book. And it works better.

Myself, I would not have even seen that potential.

 

Why not- if it works.

Here's Elmore Leonard ending a chapter of Pronto:

(Raylan on the phone)
"You tell them it's urgent?"
"Call me tomorrow," Torres said.
"I'm checking out in the next ten minutes," Raylan said. "If all goes well I'll call you from Harry's villa."

Key words are urgent, and if all goes well. A page turner.

 

If it leaves you wanting more, or stumps you with a philosophical point or question, then sure. If it just ends, then unless there is a reason, it will feel empty.

 

It sounds like you need to read more...

 

Dialogue can be a very useful tool for Chapter ending. It can leave the reader in a state of suspense in ways non-dialogue cannot.

Our first date at the zoo had gone wonderfully. We watched bears playing and meercats hugging in the warm, dappled sunlight.

It was all going perfectly until she said "Is that my husb- We should go!"

 

Like others said. Yes, ending a chapter with dialogue is not a problem. It's done all the time.

 

that!

 

Yeah, it's bizarre that people continue to ask these kind of questions.

 

I think these questions go back to the education system (I wrote a discussion on this awhile back) and how they teach English. Most people are browbeat from K-University with rules for formal English, therefore they develop a fear of stepping outside the box. That's why I ask these type of questions anyway.

 

True. And I suppose it is understandable to have new people coming in and asking these sorts of things, for the reasons you state or just because of a general feeling of uncertainty. Sometimes, though, you'll see the same people asking these questions over and over again no matter how many times it is pointed out that you can do what you like, so long as you do it effectively.

It is better to provide an example of what you're trying to do, and let people critique that and give you their opinion as to whether it was effective or not.

 

You can end a paragraph with dialogue. Nearly any paragraph can end a scene, including one which ends with dialogue. Any scene can end a chapter.

QED

 

Exactly.

 

I think it's perfectly acceptable and is used often, just don't get carried away and end every single chapter with dialogue, or create unnecessary dialogue just for the purpose of ending chapters. Chapters can being or end with dialogue, but it really bugs me when people begin or end their entire book with dialogue. That just seems lazy to me.

 

I once ended a chapter with a punctuation mark.
It went,"She smiled, twirled the ring,"

and in the next chapter I completed the sentence. It was cool, but a one-trick pony.

 

sorry, but as both a reader and an editor, that pony's trick wouldn't amuse or impress me in the least... the critter would be hustled out the stable door...