1. Say What?
The Importance of Dialogue

2. Definition
Dialogue is the part of the narrative that indicates conversation between two or more characters
Write this down in your notes.

3. Why Use Dialogue?
1. By having your character speak, you can give the readers
some insight into the character’s personality.
2. Having characters speak makes the story less boring--
helps bring the characters to life.
3. Having your characters speak can help you build
suspense.
4. It looks good on an assessment.

4. easy-to-understand dialogue
Why is producing
easy-to-understand dialogue
important?
1. It gives the reader a chance to easily detect
a change of speaker when one occurs.
2. It gives the reader a chance to easily tell the characters
spoken words from unspoken words.
3. It gives the reader a chance to easily distinguish the
story’s dialogue elements from it’s purely narrative
elements.

5. Rules for Written Dialogue
1. A character’s direct speech is always enclosed in quotation
marks.
2. A character’s direct speech is always separated from any
indirect speech by a comma or an end mark of some sort, with
these punctuation marks always inside the quotation marks.
3. If a character delivers direct speech in multiple,
uninterrupted sentences, only a single set of quotation
marks is required.
4. Begin a new paragraph every time there is a change of
speaker.