How to Write Great Dialogue in an Essay?

By: Seohyun lee

June 4, 2023

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Dialogue is an existential part of a piece of writing. If you dont know what a dialogue is, it is essentially a component of writing where its character or live figure speaks. It adds a tangible message to the overall meaning almost bringing your piece of writing to life. Just imagine a whole novel, or your favorite book just rambling on about the plot with no dialogue. It’ll give vivid imagery and a lot of descriptive language on what the scenario is about, what the character is doing, and the surrounding setting but it isn’t enough.

And the dialogue is what fills that space. It brings the characters to life adn the story itself to life. Just imagine our world where no one is talking adn everyone is mute. So bring that same concept into a piece of writing. Now you know the importance of dialogue in writing, how exactly would one incorporate dialogue into their piece of writing?

Including dialogue in your writing for the first time can be a challenge. However with time and practice and using and knowing the right techniques and rules on how to write a dialogue it will get very easy. As many people already know dialogue is signified by its quotations. So essentially you are supposed to enclose whatever dialogue, or the phrase someone said, in two quotations.

Oftentimes you would want to specify exactly who is speaking, especially if there is more than one person in that setting. Or if it’s a research paper and you would like to quote a specific researcher or a credible person to increase your reliability in your writing.

And that is called a dialogue tag which is often right after the dialogue, so it is outside of the quotation marks while the punctuation stays inside the quotation marks. To go a step further imagine you want to specify what the character is exactly doing at the moment theta re saying the phrase.

For instance, it could be that the character was sobbing while saying it or whispering or any other adjectives you could include. In that case, the dialogue tag goes before the dialogue and it ends with a full stop as it is an independent clause. However, even with these dialogue tags to the readers, it may still be confusing as to who is speaking and it is easily lost track while reading your piece of writing.

To prevent such we also use the special formatting technique to identify when there is a shift in speaker. You essentially begin a new paragraph whenever you switch speakers. To do this all you have to do is create an indent in your document which will shift your writing to a new line. The dialogue tag and anything related to that specific dialogue should go in that same paragraph.

And when someone else begins speaking, for since mauve they are having a conversation, then you begin a new sentence. This makes it for the readers to who is speaking and who isn’t and when there is a shift in person. Another aspect of dialogue change is capitalization which can also play a really big role in determining the specific type of dialogue you are writing.

For instance, if you are continuing with an action in your dialogue that is separated by a dialogue tag then you lowercase the first letter. So if an action or a dialogue tag comes in the middle then you lowercase the second half of the dialogue. For instance, let’s say you are in the middle of saying something but someone interrupts, then the action of someone interrupting will be the dialogue tag, and the dialogue after will be lowercase.

Adding on to what I just said, let’s say you are saying dialogue and someone interrupts you. How would you indicate that? Well, you do it with an Em Dash. You will put the Em dash at the end or technically middle of the sentence in order to signify that it is not completed and interrupted. Then the second half of the dialogue is when you will continue with your dialogue.

As seen using dialogue is a lot more complex than previously thought. There are small intricacies you may have never considered before and small little grammatical rules you have to follow. However, dialogues are essential and a writer can never be at its full if he doesn’t have dialogues.

Thus, although it may be hard to learn how to add a dialogue, what specific symbol to add, when to add it, and the exceptions, it is still essential to do so. Of course, there are still a lot more rules I haven’t covered in this essay but with time and practice, it will soon easily get to you.

By: Seohyun lee

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