Dialogue in writing

We have been looking at the value of dialogue (speech) in writing and strategies to use it effectively so it isn't confusing, boring, or irrelevant. We had a look at the below example of good dialogue and discussed the strategies the author used.

We discussed the importance of breaking up dialogue with detail, description, and action which tells us how the characters are acting and feeling during the dialogue. This is a good example of the power of extra information:

We discussed what it would be like if the only thing you used was dialogue (example below). It is important to not overuse it! We also discussed strategies to avoid confusion over who is speaking. One is indicating who is speaking and the other is when there is a change in speaker, give them a new paragraph.

 We will spend some time practicing these strategies as well as looking at how to correctly punctuate dialogue.