I know that you know this already, but something weird happens to authors when they write their own stories—they suddenly stop following any kind of formatting rules around conversations and just start throwing words and punctuation around like darts in a whirlwind. Writers, you know what dialogue in a novel should look like—I know you do. You’re readers. You’ve all seen this format hundreds of times. But I also know that there is a strange disconnect between seeing how something looks on the page when someone else—a famous author perhaps—does it and applying those same expectations to your own work. 

First, let’s talk about why this happens and then get into some guidelines to keep in mind when you are writing dialogue. Sometimes, this disregard for the rules happens for the simplest reason: writers assume someone else will clean up their messy words and formatting. “My editor will fix it for me.” After all, the author is the cook—she need not clean the kitchen as well. Maybe so. But cleaning up after your own words will remind you of the rules—how things ought to look—and you will be a stronger writer as a result. Yes, your editor can clean it up for you, but that person will do so at the expense of everything else, spending valuable time adding commas and lowercasing words instead of getting into the real work of editing. You are essentially paying someone a lot of money to do a menial task when that money could be paying for expert attention on other matters that would make your story better—not just bring it up to code. 

Another reason formatting may get wonky is because writers promise they will go back and fix it later—and then don’t actually go back and fix it. I know how it is. We writers may be a forgetful lot. We focus on other things, get sidetracked by other stories, fascinating characters yearning to break free, and we move on to the next one, never actually going back in and checking the capitalization in chapter two. Now, I know you love re-reading your stories. You wouldn’t have written it if you didn’t enjoy reading it (unless you’re writing to market or ghostwriting or something like that, but this blog isn’t for you, specifically). Read it again—except this time pay attention to your dialogue and tweak any remaining issues. 

This brings us to another reason for messy dialogue format: you’re just not sure. And that’s okay! Just ask. Or review the guidelines listed below. 

How to properly format dialogue in novel writing

• Every time a new person speaks, indent on a new line: 

“What are you doing?” Samantha asked. 

“Rearranging matches,” Sebastian said, boredom seeping through his voice.  

“Why?” Samantha inquired. 

“I have no idea,” Sebastian admitted. 

•  When a character speaks both before and after an interjection, the punctuation should follow like this:

“You never have any idea,” Samantha sneered. “That’s why I’m leaving you.” 

“You can’t leave me,” Sebastian replied, “because if you do, who will organize your things?” 

• If there is more text beyond the conversation, it can stay in the same paragraph:

Samantha glared at him. “I don’t need anyone to organize my things,” she snapped. “I was just fine in my organizational skills before you came along. I don’t need someone to look after me like a child.” She scanned the library, haughty eyes taking in other annoying details of his obsessive behavior. 

“Huh,” Sebastian scoffed. “You couldn’t tell that from where I was standing, dear.” He turned away from his latest project to stare at her. As usual, her clothes were in disarray, her wrinkled pants and untucked shirt almost screaming her need for his guidance. “Come here, Sam. You look a mess.” 

“You could use a good mess!” Samantha shouted, stalking out of the library. 

• All periods, commas, question marks, and exclamation points go inside the quotation marks.
• You should never put “double” “quotation” “marks” next to one another unless you are making a list of quoted items—otherwise, “double quotation marks” is sufficient. 

As I recall, you told me, “I am busy,” “I have plans,” and finally, “I am dead. Please leave a message” the last time we talked about this.  

Review the Rules

1. If you start a sentence with dialogue, capitalize the first letter of the spoken words but leave the rest in lowercase (except proper names). Put a comma at the end of the spoken words (inside the quotation marks) if it’s not a question or exclamation point. 

“I don’t know why you do this to me,” Sebastian pondered. He stared at the books lining the walls, face blank while his thoughts raced. “It’s only matches,” he whispered. 

2. If you start with the tag (the “he said” part of the sentence), you should start the actual spoken words with a capital letter. Put a comma (if it’s not a question/exclamation) after the verb and before the first quotation mark.

Sebastian said, “She’ll be back.”

3. If you interrupt a complete sentence with a tag, do not capitalize the words after the tag. If you have two separate sentences with a tag ending the first one, capitalize the second sentence.  

“I know she will forgive me,” he moaned, “eventually.” He glanced at the door, suddenly sure he heard her returning footsteps. “She’s coming back,” he whispered. “I know it.”

4. If the spoken words are not a statement, put the question mark or exclamation point inside the quotation mark (as long as the spoken words are a question/exclamation). If the entire sentence is a question or exclamation, then put the marks outside the quotation mark. 

“Why do I put up with him?” she wondered, staring down the long hallway. “He’s such a jerk!” she snapped, hands fisting at her sides. “Those matches,” she mused, shaking her head, “make me absolutely crazy.” How dare he say she looked “a mess”? “It’s only matches” indeed!

5. Unspoken thoughts should be italicized to distinguish them from spoken words. Consider having tags like “he thought” or “she wondered” so listeners to your audiobook can tell which parts are spoken aloud and which ones are internal thoughts. You don’t need it every single time, but for important moments, it can make things clearer to your listeners. 

Just one more box, Sebastian thought, emptying the matches onto the table. 

6. Only spoken words go inside quotation marks—not reported speech. 

I remember when she told me she was leaving me, Sebastian thought, lips pursing as he began lining up the matchsticks. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said, “You look a mess”?

7. When quoting someone else’s words inside a quote, use single quotes. 

“But why would he say ‘You look a mess’ to me like that?” she wondered, glancing down at her clothing. “I guess I should be glad he didn’t say ‘You look a “hot” mess’ after all.”

8. If your character speaks for more than one paragraph (telling a story), don’t use end quotation marks until the character finishes speaking. This means you will not put quotation marks at the end and beginning of each new paragraph. 

That’s it! While we’re here, a few things to avoid when dealing with dialogue:

1. Do not capitalize the word after the quote unless it’s a proper name: “Don’t do it like this,” She said. (“Do it like this,” she said.)
2. Do not put periods between the quote and the speaker: “Don’t do this.” She added.  (“Do this instead,” she added). 
3. Don’t use tag words that don’t actually signify speech: “This is so amazingly funny,” he laughed. Did he laugh those words? No. He laughed after he said those words. “This is so amazingly funny!” He laughed. (I added the exclamation point because he’s probably excited about whatever is so funny, but you could leave the period.) I keep seeing characters who shrug, chuckle, smile, and grin words (and that’s just creepy sometimes). Add the period and separate the words from the action. 

I hope this has helped shed some light on how to properly format your dialogue to save both your readers and your editor’s sanity!

We’ve all been there, right in the middle of a tense scene, when something in the story contradicts something we already know about the world, and boom–we’re sitting outside the story again, disappointed and a bit miffed that the author couldn’t maintain the magic. Whether it’s something complicated like a magical system or something simple like the song on the radio at the bar, the stories we read need consistent details to make the world feel believable. These little things all add up to create the word of the story, a world readers to crawl inside and explore. 

Tolkien talks about what he called the Primary and Secondary Worlds in his essay “On Faerie Stories” (where he basically defends fantasy as a worthy genre, among other things). The Primary World, of course, is the one in which you live, the one in which you now sit, currently reading these words. Perhaps the words are on your phone screen; maybe you’re waiting for a bus or curled up on a couch, nursing your morning coffee. Either way, odds are you don’t always find the Primary World to be the Best Thing Ever. For Tolkien, the Primary World is good because we all live in it, but it’s definitely lacking in certain aspects–and that’s why readers read Fantasy (or really anything imaginary at all). We want to escape the Primary World and spend some time in a Secondary World. 

Now, let’s pause for a moment, as Tolkien did, to examine that word “escape.” One of the easy criticisms of fantasy readers is that they can’t face the real world and have to run away into a book. I’m probably not alone in being told that reading so-called “escapist fiction” is some kind of cop-out, a weakness, a failure to accept the very real world around all of us. Tolkien disagrees, and in the most Tolkien way ever, of course, because he starts by examining that word “escape” (Tolkien’s love of words and philology knows no bounds!). He argues that there is a difference between what he calls the Flight of the Deserter and the Escape of the Prisoner. Readers of fantasy aren’t deserting reality because they can’t handle it. They aren’t running away. Instead, readers (and everyone else in the Primary World) are all prisoners of what can be, honestly, a pretty terrible place sometimes. For Tolkien, a devout Catholic, the Primary World is a fallen world, a kicked-out-of-Paradise world, and so of course, like anyone imprisoned, the inhabitants will long to escape–to occupy their minds with something not so depressing. Keep in mind that Tolkien lived through two World Wars (he fought in WWI and was one of a handful of survivors among his classmates). You don’t need to be Catholic to see that some days, the Primary World sucks–and the urge to escape into somewhere else, anywhere else, is a perfectly normal human reaction. It’s not that fantasy readers can’t handle the real world; it’s that the real world is often ugly and harsh–and humans need a break. A release. An escape. Who would deny a prisoner the chance to escape, at least in the mind?

So where are we prisoners, I mean, readers to escape into? The Secondary World. Where can we find that? Inside the writer’s mind, at first, but then through some artful magic, what Tolkien calls Enchantment, readers are also allowed to inhabit this Secondary World. And this world only works if it is consistent in and of itself. There must be rules, and the rules must be followed, or readers (and prisoners) risk being knocked out of the story forever, unable to enter it believably again. 

In other words, if people in the book’s world use the sun and candle rings to tell time, then someone shouldn’t say it’s 10:11pm. If people can fly on broomsticks, then that’s how gravity works (or doesn’t) in that world. The world should be consistent. Readers pay attention to the little things, the details, when they invest in a story. If authors switch out the small stuff, readers will notice, and then remember they are reading a book, finding themselves back in the Primary World rather than still lost in the Secondary World the writer has created for them. 

Another thing to keep in mind when discussing worldbuilding: willing suspension of disbelief. You may have heard this term somewhere in a literature course, but the essential idea is this: Of course I always know I’m reading a book. My fingers feel the pages, possibly my neck aches from staying in one position too long, I can hear the soft shuffle of the page as I turn it (or hear that little electric swoosh noise my Kindle makes when I turn on that sound feature). But sometimes, when the enchantment is done right, I can forget all that, and really lose myself in a story, falling headfirst into the world of the characters, blissfully watching their trials as the real world goes by outside the pages. In order to do that, though, I have to willingly suspend my disbelief. If I’m reading a book where people can fly, and I know that flying isn’t possible in the Primary World, I have to willingly and knowingly suspend my natural disbelief in the possibility–and just go with it. Often, people who don’t enjoy reading fiction have a hard time making this leap. In order to travel from the Primary World to the Secondary World, you have to leave your disbelief behind–and accept whatever rules the Secondary World has. 

Since we spent so much time on Tolkien, this is a good time to bring up the fact that while he enjoyed plays (and movies) in theory, he never “got lost” in them because he could never forget he was watching people perform either on stage or screen. He thought performers could never transport him the way words on a page could, the way his own imagination could. Either way, there is no transportation at all if the Secondary World isn’t coherent and complete in itself. 

Proper worldbuilding, creating a world behind the story that stands on its own and supports the tale being told, is critical if authors want readers to join them in a Secondary World. How does one create a believable world? As the old adage says, lots and lots of time and practice. And maybe a little help. 

Check out The General Worldbuilding Guide, coming soon from 4 Horsemen Publications (pre-order HERE).

In Part Two of this blog, I’ll delve into the nitty gritty of worldbuilding, and we can get you started on creating a viable Secondary World for your readers. 

You wouldn’t think that three little dots would cause so much trouble… but here we are! An ellipsis is the mark of punctuation created when you join three periods together and hit the spacebar–your writing program should join the separate periods into a single unit of punctuation. 

An ellipsis indicates hesitation… and it’s really annoying when people overuse them. There are legitimate reasons for people to pause in your writing (especially during narration), but when someone always ends a sentence with an ellipses, it makes them seem uncertain about everything. 

A few ground rules: 

1. An ellipsis includes three periods. Not two or four, but three. 
2. An ellipsis can function as end punctuation. You do not need to add a period or question mark or exclamation point after it.  
3. You use an ellipsis to indicate a pause in the sentence, a moment for a character to find the right word or decide how to proceed or what to say, or even for the narration to reveal something … slowly. 
4. Generally speaking, treat ellipses like a word when they occur in the middle of a sentence or clause; that is, they get a space on either side. So if you begin … a sentence, and then continue the thought, it looks like this. 
5. If the ellipsis occurs after a complete clause, put a space after it, but not before. So if I’m not certain how to do this… but eventually I read a blog and figure it out, it looks like this. 
6. If the ellipsis ends the clause and the next sentence is its own thought, capitalize the first word after the ellipsis. For instance, if I am uncertain… Then I go home and read a blog about ellipses, this is how it would look. 

Ellipses in action

If the ellipses ends the sentence, it looks like this: 

• Don’t get me wrong: I had a blast. I don’t know… It just didn’t spark anything, you know?
• “I won’t let you paint my nails because…” Jordan thought for a moment. 

If the ellipse is in the middle of sentence, it looks like this:

• He paid his bills, his taxes, bought what he needed … and watched his bank account dwindle.
• We’d need sets, actors, cameramen, sound people … and more importantly, money to pay those people.

If the ellipses is in the middle of a sentence where it is more “stuttering” or hesitating, it looks like this:

• I… I don’t know. 
• Wh… What?

MORE Ellipses Examples

No Space before—new idea after ellipses… 

• Gabriella tells her, “Like you… yes… I see a part of myself in your face, the way you are looking at me now.” 
• He helped them start the genocide that’s happening where I was born, blinding them into believing they were gods… that they have the power over life and death. 
• It’d break her heart to hear… and you and I both know I shouldn’t be naysaying a gift. 
• I would say I like to go out in that rec yard, but it’s a concrete box with mesh over my head… still walls. No need to belabor that… I’m fucking done. 
• But this… this type of thing, she can’t investigate. 
• Wilson’s dead… my boy… my legacy is dead, but I’ll be goddamned if my legacy will be some bitch sitting in my house. 
• He swirls the brown liquid in the cup, teasing spilling it on her white couch… messing with her some. 
• I know you have something you want to say… Not speaking isn’t an easy thing for you. 
• I… I don’t know.

Space—pause within same idea … within the sentence (Christopher Walken style) 

• “They are evil. Devils … destroying what was a great country, a great people.” 
• Some places … like the one I was at before all this started, they had good food. 
• Her face absorbs the seriousness of the space … and the death. 
• Tanner … Brogdon is not just some pretty boy. 
• That you exaggerated or lied about … some truth.

Both space and no space in the same sentence! 

• He thought … he couldn’t accept that by working with those … savages who now control the South… He thought he could control everyone. 
• Either you embellished it or something, or you made it up… Either way … it hurts your credibility.

The bottom line is that ellipses are hard, but they can be mastered by following a few simple rules. Think about the clauses in your sentence and use that as your guide for spacing!

You may be wondering what is so special about the Oxford comma and why there are so many delightful memes about it. Some context: the comma before the “and” in a list of three or more items is known as the Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma). You may have heard some debate about whether or not this comma is necessary. 

Let me assure you—it is. 

While it pains the editor in me to say, there are times when a comma doesn’t really matter. You can put it in or leave it out, and the sentence will survive. Readers will comprehend the nuanced meaning, and life will go on. Those commas are often called stylistic commas, and they may rely on their surroundings. Does the previous section or sentence have a lot of commas? Can you get the meaning across without including this one? Then leave it out to spare your reader’s attention span and focus on the important things instead. 

The Oxford comma, however—that comma in a list of three or more things—is NEVER a stylistic comma. It is never optional. It means something very specific in a certain situation, and when you need it to be there, you really need it to be there. 

Essentially, here’s what the Oxford comma says: these three (or more) items are not related to one another, as in, they are not dependent on the previous item to make sense. 

Consider the sentence: 

Tonight, at my computer, I drank a cup of tea, a bottle of water, and a can of lime Bubbly.

This sentence has three separate things: tea, water, and Bubbly. 

Here’s what happens if I remove the Oxford comma. 

Tonight, at my computer, I drank a cup of tea, a bottle of water and a can of lime Bubbly. 

Ew. Right now, my cup of “tea” is apparently a mixture of water and lime Bubbly. When you don’t have the Oxford comma, what you are conveying through your punctuation is that the two (or more) items following the commas are EXAMPLES of that first item. 

My heroes are my parents, Captain America, and Oprah Winfrey. 

Great, you have three heroes: parents, Captain America, and Oprah. Awesome. 

My heroes are my parents, Captain America and Oprah Winfrey. 

Uhh, really? I didn’t know Cap and Oprah were a thing…

When you leave out the Oxford comma, you change the meaning of the sentence and the relationship between those listed items. Instead of a list, everything after the first becomes an example. 

Hence, the litany of glorious memes!

Or you can even argue that the items following the first are being addressed in the sentence!

So, let your readers get the message you’re trying to send. Use the Oxford comma.