Keezee

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"Most seeds of greatness are buried in graveyards across the world; the biggest mistake you can ever make is to be afraid to make one."

Shawn

"This is how you should properly format dialogue," I said, "It's not all that hard to master."

"Punctuation should stay in quotes and connecting words (example: 'I said') should be outside of quotes."

"When writing a quote that is multiple paragraphs long,

"Omit the last quotation mark at the end of a paragraph, but include it at the end of the last paragraph."

"Whenever there is a new speaker, the paragraph must change... see, here I am one person."

"Then I'm another."

"And another."

"Simple enough?"

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The most frightening part of leaving a parent's home, to me, is not knowing where one's own home is.

archer88iv

Basically, you start a new paragraph each time you have a new speaker. With simple conversations between two characters, this allows readers to keep track of what's being said by who pretty easily. You throw in dialog tags to explicitly state who is speaking when the speaker would be unclear otherwise.

That's really the only "style." Of course it isn't really a style; just a standard bit of formatting employed universally. Some authors use more tags than others partly because some have more intense bits of dialog with more speakers and more being said... and partly because some authors just like tossing descriptors into dialog tags.

Of course, no one will tell you that the latter is a good idea.

Dialog is a strong tool because it lets the characters communicate directly with one another and with the reader--thereby allowing you to communicate directly as well. (That's why movies are full of dumb lines beginning with, "As you know...") Keep it spare and it stays nice and strong. Throwing in too many tags can cause dialog to lose its punch.

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-J

Keezee

It's all so clear now, thanks.

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"Most seeds of greatness are buried in graveyards across the world; the biggest mistake you can ever make is to be afraid to make one."

Krim

Well, uh, wouldn't that be:

"This is how you format proper dialogue," I said. "It's not all that hard to master."

or

"This is how you format proper dialogue," I said, "it's not all that hard to master."

The first would be the equivalent of: "This is how you format proper dialogue. It's not all that hard to master."

And the second is: "This is how you format proper dialogue, it's not all that hard to master."

Putting 'he said' or 'she said' in the middle denotes a brief pause in the dialogue, about as long as it takes for the reader to read it.

__________________
"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller

Shawn

Whatever.

__________________
The most frightening part of leaving a parent's home, to me, is not knowing where one's own home is.

Krim

- hitches up his skirts and flees. -

__________________
"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller

*aspiring(female)writer*

Wow, great advice, guys! My lame advice: look at examples in books.