Need some tips from pro writers or editors :)

[Dark-H]

♥ ♥ Hello, first I thank you all, for giving me some of your time to help ♥ ♥


So I'v been writing my own novel, and form time to time I try to improve my self and my style of writing. There is some questions in my mind and need some tips to guide me in the right way.

1-Which do you think is better to use in dialogue straight quotation mark (" ") or curly (“ ”)>> noob question but I need to ask it anyways

2-When you write a novel and there is a dialogue do you link it with the narration, or spread them to keep the novel clean, for example.


Then the old man shook his head, "no need to thank me".

or

The old man shook his head and said.

"no need to thank me"

I've seen A lot of novel doing both so give me your guidance senpais

 

[CupcakeNinja]

♥ ♥ Hello, first I thank you all, for giving me some of your time to help. and sorry for my questions ♥ ♥


So I'v been writing my own novel, and form time to time I try to improve my self and my style of writing. There is some questions in my mind and need some tips to guide me in the right way.

1-Which do you think is better to use in dialogue straight quotation mark (" ") or curly (“ ”)>> noob question but I need to ask it anyways

2-When you write a novel and there is a dialogue do you link it with the narration, or spread them to keep the novel clean, for example.


Then the old man shook his head, "no need to thank me".

or

The old man shook his head and said.

"no need to thank me"

I've seen A lot of novel doing both so give me your guidance senpais

Second for padding, first for aesthetic value.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Then the old man shook his head, "no need to thank me".

or

The old man shook his head and said.

"no need to thank me"

This is some of the strangest punctuation I have ever seen. Where did you get this?

Firstly, you always capitalise after using quotation marks. There are exceptions for citing, but they don't matter.

Secondly, there are differences between American and British English regarding the use of quotation marks and commata.

I met once an editor - not a professional one - who admonished me for placing my commata after the quotation marks, calling it a mistake. I was not amused, to say the least.

Thirdly, the use of dialogue verbs like say, speak, talk, etc. demand the use of commata and not the other way around.

-

Then the old man shook his head. "No need to thank me".

The old man shook his head and said, "No need to thank me"

 

[OvidLemma]

I think every writer has to develop their own style and figure out what works for them - but reader feedback is important for this and we're remiss if we ignore it. Here's my advice on managing dialog:

When I'm worried that readers will get confused about who's talking and want to add nonverbal language into the mixture, I'll use that instead of 'X said'. For instance:
The old man scratched his beard. "Could be that way, I suppose, but if it is then I ain't seen it."

Whenever I add a 'she said', I assume that the reader will insert a pause in the dialog as they read. After all, it takes a few tenths of a seconds to read 'she said'. This serves to separate and emphasize the second part of a multi-part quote. For instance:
"Could be that way," she said, "but I sure as hell hope it ain't."

Finally, I only add non-'said' descriptors for speech if it doesn't come across from the dialog. However, in dialog-heavy works, this tends to pop up. For instance:
"Yeah, of course I love you," he snarled.

 

[Saileri]

Personally, I use the inline text + speech when there's something happening during the speech and the character is intending to still continue. Or if there's some instant thing that happens just before or after the speech. For more free happenings or movements, I use the padded ones.

“Pretty much.” He shows a wry smile. “Honestly, since the day I took [...]. In the end, I gave up. As you mentioned, it started getting too risky. But…”

and

My first priority is to assure the safe haven [...]. I turn around and give my reply.

“I agree. This is too good of an opportunity to pass. I didn’t exactly expect such a surprise.”

I move back to the table and we both sit back. Silence falls over the room.

 

[DubstheDuke]

I wouldn't call myself a professional by any means, but I use the straight quotations for dialogue, and I use single quotes for thinking.
Ex: Dialogue: "Hello. How are you doing?"
Thinking: 'What is he doing?'

As for that second question, I actually do both depending on the flow. I would say I do more of the individual lines of narration and individual lines of dialogue, but if I feel like it flows good I will combine them.

"What are you doing?", he questioned while glaring intensely.

He found himself glaring intensely at the man.

"What are you doing?"

As long as you make it flow well, it doesn't really matter- though I'm sure any professional writer would probably tell you that I'm wrong, and that being consistent is important. It is, but I think you always need to go with what sounds best to you.

 

[OvidLemma]

I should clarify my bona-fides: I am not a professional writer, but I do make money from my writing. A few thousand dollars a year from fiction writing between Patreon, commissions, and Amazon sales, which is a nice supplement to my job - a hobby that more than pays for itself! Having got that out of the way, here's my philosophy on writing dialogue:

1) Always be clear who's talking. This is especially important when there are more than two speakers in the conversation. If each speaker has a unique voice, this is easier to accomplish. For this reason, I recommend overemphasizing the difference between characters' speaking patterns when they converse in your stories. But if they use similar vocabulary and sentence structure, then you have to point it out through actions or 'X said' more often. Otherwise, it's just a mess.

2) Do not split up a single statement between a block of text. For example:
"I think you know what to do," Bev said. She spat on the ground and squinted off to the horizon, seeming to take in every last bit of the dying light. "So get to it."

Dialogue serves a few purposes - character development, plot advancement, acting as a mouthpiece for the author, etc. Whatever you use dialogue for is entirely up to you. However, if you want to be successful, you have to make it easy for the reader to understand who's saying what and what's happening while they say it.

Here's an example of my philosophy in practice, taken from a passage I wrote not one hour ago:

She tried to squeeze my hand, but I yanked it away. "Emmanuel… please! Say something!"

I took a deep breath. "You should have told me when I proposed to you."

"I… I couldn't. You sprang it on me, Emmanuel! But I meant it when I said yes!"

"Did you f*** Ambrose before or after reading my letters to you?"

"That isn't fair, Man…"

"You're g***** right it isn't fair! I… do you even love me? Did you ever?"

Marie made a nervous laugh, as if she couldn't believe I'd even asked that. "What? Yes! Of course I do! How can you even ask that? I am bearing my heart here - I wouldn't lie to you. I love you… and I might love Ambrose, too… but I said yes to you! Emmanuel, I said yes!"

"I probably wouldn't have asked if I'd known."

"Is that what this is about? Emmanuel, I can love more than one man… but the man I chose is you! You feel jilted? Do you want me to give your ring back?"

I think I was almost as surprised as her when I held my hand out, and my inner world was in far too much turmoil to shed so much as a tear. "Well?"

But Marie was crying. She didn’t sob, but tears flowed freely down her cheeks and I could hear the strain in her voice when she said, "you've broken my heart, Emmanuel."

Good.

 

[JayDirex]

Ok- I don't feel like giving a lesson on this thread today, but writing proper quotes with dialog tags HAS HARD RULES that webnovelist violate because either they don't know, don't care to learn, or say, "Ish my style!" yeah, no.

LETS ALL LEARN THE RULES OF DIALOG TAGS: https://www.novel-writing-help.com/dialogue-tags.html and be like @OvidLemma and @Saileri they are correct.

@Dark-H DM if you want me take a look at what you have in a G-Doc, but keep in mind: I do not Edit - I RE-WRITE!

 

[Saileri]

Ok- I don't feel like giving a lesson on this thread today, but writing proper quotes with dialog tags HAS HARD RULES that webnovelist violate because either they don't know, don't care to learn, or say, "Ish my style!" yeah, no.

LETS ALL LEARN THE RULES OF DIALOG TAGS: https://www.novel-writing-help.com/dialogue-tags.html and be like @OvidLemma and @Saileri they are correct.

@Dark-H DM if you want me take a look at what you have in a G-Doc, but keep in mind: I do not Edit - I RE-WRITE!

I'm still catching myself using adverbs in the drafts when rereading. It's kinda hard to avoid when you just go with the flow of events and characters speaking.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

I'm still catching myself using adverbs in the drafts when rereading. It's kinda hard to avoid when you just go with the flow of events and characters speaking.

Random reminder that the vast majority of readers don't give a fuck about whether you have adverbs or not and that there is no short amount of famous/successful authors who abuse the everliving fuck out of them. If you don't want to have adverbs in your writing, that's fine, but they're not the evil boogeymen that many like to make them out to be.

Honestly, the linked article above should be named "How to (in my opinion) Use Dialogue Tags Like A Teacher/Critic." If it's going to say how to use them as a professional... man, I guess all those top-sellers who are professional by definition and making six figures off their stories have no idea what they're doing. Most of the article was fine, but it did repeat a couple of tired hot takes that basically come down to, "NOoOo yOu cAn't jUsT UsE AdVeRbS! tHiNk aBoUt tHe sHoWiNg iNsTeAd oF TeLlInG!!!! OnLy aMaTeUrS MaKe tHeIr tAgS StYlEd aT AlL!!!!@4e1fR2Q"

As far as the hard rules go, follow these basics and you're fine. Anything else? Yeah, that's pretty much up to your own subjective style.
https://research.ewu.edu/writers_c_fiction
https://webdev.fgcu.edu/academics/caa/writinglab/files/30_FGCU_Creative_Writing_Dialogue.pdf
http://core.ecu.edu/engl/whisnantl/3850/quotes.htm

Most importantly: remember that a tag coming directly after dialogue should always be lowercase unless it's a name. Do this one thing and you'll already have better grammar when it comes to dialogue than the vast majority of web serials I see, including a good few of the ones making $5k+ a month (more proof that actual readers don't care, though). To be fair, it's my #1 pet peeve. If I ever see a capitalized "He said" or "She said" right after dialogue, I'm going to assume the entire thing has bad grammar. The rest? Meh. Style choices. There are no hard rules against adverbs, showing vs telling, breaking up single statements with action, etcetc. Those are all opinions on style, not hard grammar rules. Which is kind of ironic in a way given that these people say not to stylize dialogue tags while essentially pushing their own style of doing them onto everybody.

 

[JayDirex]

@Ace_Arriande how you going to tell him that readers don't care about adverbs and in the same breath you say you have a pet peeve with capitalized dialogue tag pronouns? o_0.

let me tell y'all something, I cannot stand adverbs littering the space time continuum with: slowly, carefully, gleefully, indubitably, scattered all over the chapter -_- like a fifth grader wrote it.

And I agree a lot of readers up here will read scribble-scrabble posted in crayon and give it five stars (freaking masochists).

But it's no excuse for an author to not write better.

Adverbs everywhere are amateur hour. The same with capitalized pronoun dialogue tags. Avoid both.

In conclusion: I suggest authors learn the rules so that they could write better. If they break them after that, they'll at least know how.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

@Ace_Arriande how you going to tell him that readers don't care about adverbs and in the same breath you say you have a pet peeve with capitalized dialogue tag pronouns? o_0.

let me tell y'all something, I cannot stand adverbs littering the space time continuum with: slowly, carefully, gleefully, indubitably, scattered all over the chapter -_- like a fifth grader wrote it.

And I agree a lot of readers up here will read scribble-scrabble posted in crayon and give it five stars (freaking masochists).

But it's no excuse for an author to not write better.

Adverbs everywhere are amateur hour. The same with capitalized pronoun dialogue tags. Avoid both.

In conclusion: I suggest authors learn the rules so that they could write better. If they break them after that, they'll at least know how.

Like I said, it's a pet peeve. I've talked to a ton of readers about this since I've rambled about this in numerous servers, including my own, several times. I'm always the only one who ever gives a fuck about it despite it being one of the few things that is actually a hard rule. I have, however, admittedly seen more people hate on the use of adverbs despite it not being a hard grammar rule. But when it comes to the adverbs thing, that's been from writers or readers who are also writers 99% of the time. I'm sure there are some normal readers out there who don't like adverbs, but let's face it. Most don't care. Does that mean it's alright? No. That doesn't mean that it's not alright, either. As for writing better - well, once you're doing the bare minimum required of you via following the actual grammar rules, the rest is subjective. Of course, I do encourage everybody to write to their own ideal. If excluding all adverbs is what you believe makes you a better writer, then fuck yeah, you go. Kill all of them. The women adverbs and children adverbs, too. But if somebody likes to use adverbs, then I say let them without implying that they're a worse writer for it. Personally, I love seeing me a good adverb or two here and there.

 

[HURGMCGURG]

Then the old man shook his head, "no need to thank me".

or

The old man shook his head and said.

"no need to thank me"

Both of these are wrong. You sicken me.

The old man shook his head, "No need to thank me."

No periods outside quotation, no comma after said, and while "then" at the front is not a grammatical mistake, it's unnecessary.

You don't necessarily need to add "said" either, so long as you make it clear the old man is speaking by mentioning him before the dialogue.

 

[Rinne]

Dialogue tags being capitalised are a menace. I don't mind bad grammar to an extent but there are a few things that just stick out. This being one of them. In general, bad capitalisation is something that bothers me pretty fast.

As for adverbs, yeah, I don't care either when I'm reading something. Heck, I won't even notice. And I sure use them while writing too. My goal is to convey a story and not impress people with my flawless literary ability. If I wanted to do that, I'd become a critic or something, not a writer.

This might be just my opinion but there are times when I deliberately use adverbs. Simply because I usually decide based on the importance of said sentence. If the scene and the sentence are important and relevant, I'll probably avoid using adverbs. Probably.
If it's a less relevant scene, I'd just be padding the scene unnecessarily with more words. And more words is something people are more likely to notice, in my opinion. Also makes it easier for me.
At least, I do. I often caught myself getting annoyed at scenes that were just padded with the longest possible way to paraphrase that someone was driving his bike pretty fast.
It's impressive in a way to be able to drag it out that much, but it breaks immersion. Breaking immersion is the absolute worst, in my opinion. At the point where you put more attention to how you paraphrased your adverb than the actual story, I think something went wrong.
Dialogue is another beast altogether. People use adverbs when speaking. And depending on the person, they might use them more or less. Not going to drop that one, now, am I?

Well, simply said, I think finding the right middleground that suits your style is a lot more important than never using adverbs. Or only using them. Adverbs are a tool at your disposal and it's not wrong using something at your disposal. Finding the right amount for you, however, might take some time, practice and a lot of writing.
Might be just me, though, since I keep seeing people always saying "Never use adverbs ever!" as if it was the one and only true gospel of the God of Writers, together with "Show, don't tell." Or maybe I should rather call it "Always show and never tell!" instead?

Literary ability is the means by which we convey a story. Of course, it's better if you are good at it. But I feel like some people confuse the means with the goal. Well, unless your goal is to show off your literary ability. That's probably not a good fit for fictional writing, though.

Anyway, keep writing and keep improving. There are many sources on the internet that are a lot more reliable than this forum. Ace posted some good links in that regard already.

 

[OvidLemma]

In conclusion: I suggest authors learn the rules so that they could write better. If they break them after that, they'll at least know how.

Well said - I think this is key here. The reason there's a rule not to use adverbs in dialogue tags* is because, if you don't have that rule, lazy writers tend to pepper them freaking everywhere and they lose all meaning. I sometimes use adverbs in dialogue, but I'd be surprised if it was one out of fifty quotes.

When you write characters interacting... when you write narrative fiction in general... you should attempt to convey the scene in your head to readers in a fairly efficient manner. It doesn't have to be the most efficient manner. It's arguable whether 'most efficient' even exists in creative writing. But if you're sloppy and inefficient, you are, at best, making it much more laborious for readers to figure out what you're trying to get across. At worst, you're making a total hash of things and you don't even know it. The formal rules exist to serve as a pretty good first-pass effort at efficient writing and, as you become more experienced and develop your own style (and 'not so good' is not a legitimate style), you'll learn when and how to bend/break the rules for even greater quality and efficiency. But you'll probably know when you get to that point.

*Inside dialogue is fine, but you shouldn't say "You shouldn't say 'he said quickly'," he said quickly. At least not in most cases.

 

[gaylolis]

1-Which do you think is better to use in dialogue straight quotation mark (" ") or curly (“ ”)>> noob question but I need to ask it anyways

if you're a weeb like me, you can use「 」 to make it look like a visual novel. for example

「 Onii-chan, asa dayo. 」

but in the end it's whatever floats your boat. if any bracket suits your fancy the most, use it!

2-When you write a novel and there is a dialogue do you link it with the narration, or spread them to keep the novel clean, for example.

if they did something important while saying such, i did so. for example, "Onii-chan no baka!" Mei started hitting me when she saw my huge erection.

but if they did something after saying such, i will just separate it.

like after "Onii-chan no baka!" Mei started hitting me when she saw my huge erection.

I will write: her face went beet red and she pulled her pants down; her PP was much bigger than mine.

it's all up to taste for most part. if you like something, go with ones that enjoy the most--fuck the meta. i don't like novels who clutter all their actions and dialogues in a single paragraph. and i hate novels that are mostly huge walls of texts even more.

 

[AbigailWP]

Rules??? What rules??? I CREATE THE RULES!!!
Come brother!!!
Join me in the 2nd person revolution!!!
Now we are few,,, but soon we will be many!!!