Dialogue

Dialogue doesn't need tons of narration tags. TRUST THE READER.

Inexperienced writers need to avoid swamping dialogue with narration. I often read conversations between characters where every line of dialogue is tagged with a 'he said', 'she said' etc.

Stop this. Stop it now.

An award-winning author once advised me. "View a conversation like a game of tennis." And gave me the below example.

Serve. (opening line of dialogue pinned down by a couple of sentences of narration.)

Volley (dialogue without tag)

Volley (dialogue without tag )

Volley (Dialogue without tag)

Match point (dialogue pinned down by a couple of sentences of narration)

The reader will not get lost.

You only need more narration to direct the reader if you have more than two people in a conversation. The 'volleys' should vary between two and five in a row: Nevermore, rarely less.

Doing this brings focus to the dialogue. But you'll also find your story flows faster and keeps the story progressing.

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Dialect

People rarely speak in full sentences. When writing dialogue you should miss out the odd word. This makes it feel real and is a good way of addimg dialect. Of course, when cuttimg words it is important to retain the meaning of the sentence.

A final point on dialogue:

It always needs to be intresting. Make every word count. Cut out the boring and mundane.

P.S

Dialogue should always start with a capital letter after speech marks.