Using Dialogue in Your Writing

1. Using Dialogue in Your Writing And making it come alive

2. What is the purpose of dialogue? Dialogue: • Is an essential part of most short stories and novels. • helps make our writing come alive. • shows rather than explaining or describing. • is set off by “Quotation marks” that show a speaker’s words in a dialogue

3. When is a good time to use dialogue? • When you are planning your stories on your Freytag’s Pyramid, take some time to consider the best moments to add dialogue. • Good dialogue should not simply convey information. It may be used to introduce conflict and get the story going, develop the action and the characters of the story, remind the reader about events or characters, or foreshadow events about to happen. Basically, it can be doing all these things. • Be careful! If you are writing in a particular historical time period, be sure to make the vocabulary and speech patterns in your dialogue as appropriate as possible for the time period.

4. An Example Quotation from The King’s Fountain A king once planned to build a magnificent fountain in his palace gardens, for the splendor of his kingdom and the glory of his name. This fountain, however, would stop all water from flowing to the city below. A poor man heard of it, and said to his wife: “ Soon our children will cry for water, our animals will sicken, and all of us will die of thirst.” His wife answered: “A man of highest learning must go to the King, speak to him out of wisdom, and show him the folly of his plan.”

5. Rules of Punctuating Dialogue • Always use a comma (,) before or after a dialogue tag. • His wife said, “A man of highest learning must go to the King, speak to him out of wisdom, and show him the folly of his plan.” / “A man of highest learning must go to the King, speak to him out of wisdom, and show him the folly of his plan,” his wife said. • Periods (.) and commas (,) are always placed inside quotation marks. • Example: “Alas, the grandest thought quenches no thirst,” said the poor man. • Place an exclamation point (!) or a questions mark (?) inside the quotation marks when it punctuates the quotation. • Example: “Enough!” roared the King. (inside) • Place an exclamation point or a question mark outside the quotation marks when it punctuates the main sentence. • Example: The poor old man asked, “Besides, what good is all the learning in the world if there is no one who can understand it”? (outside)

6. Rules of Punctuating Dialogue • When using action to identify the source of dialogue, each sentence stands alone with its punctuation: • Example: The King looked scornfully at him. “You come to trouble me for that?” • Watch comma use when adding action or information to a dialogue tag. • Example: “I have an important message for the King alone,” said the poor man, trembling in terror.

7. To Capitalize or Not • Capitalizethe first letter of a direct quotation when the quoted material is a complete sentence. • Example: The poor man wished for one drop of the metalsmith’s bravery. With his own last ounce of courage, he answered, “You have the power to kill me. But that changes nothing.” • If a direct quotation is interrupted mid-sentence, do not capitalize the second part of the quotation. • Example: “You are too simple for clever debate with me," the king said, “but you have a wiser head than a scholar.” • If end punctuation is an exclamation point or a question mark, the following word in the tag is still not capitalized. • Example: “A wise head? A golden tongue? A brave heart?” he said to himself.

8. Some examples of dialogue tags I said       She said     Fred said    Mark commented the king roared Ms. Hawkinson smiled I complained Ms. Matthew warned whispered John Ms. Guiry rejoiced muttered Janice Ms. McCoy blurtedSallie yelled        Ms. Monroe demanded said Max     asked William

9. Thumbs up: Totally got it! • Go through your Freytag’s Pyramid and *star* where you can use dialogue. Then read your draft work so far and underline where you have used dialogue. Are you using dialogue to bring your characters to life? How will you improve? • Thumbs down: Need more help! • Go to station 1 to practice identifying and creating sentences with dialogue. • Thumbs sideways: Working on it! • Go to station 2 to collaboratively create a dialogue exchange in a short story with the materials available to you. Move between stations as needed Thumbs!

10. Have a go!