Florence Castle Writings

It was a very short job description, but Eliza had been captured at once by the small photographs beneath it. She’d glanced over her shoulder to make sure none of her coworkers were snooping or walking past, then, in the browser window she’d opened in the very corner of her screen, she’d flicked through the gallery. 

A sweeping landscape of vineyards with the blue shadows of the Pyrenees in the background, the rough stone and brick walls of the round-towered chateau, weathered by years of neglect, the long grass of the overgrown grounds where barns and outhouses looked close to collapse. She itched to be there already, to resurrect the heart of the place, her eyes staring at the images of the empty rooms with missing plaster and rubble and imagining what she could transform them into. The potential of it all made her ache. 

‘Eliza,’ came a voice, and she started, minimising the window hurriedly, though she knew as soon as she did it that it would be less guilty looking to simply leave it up. 

Her coworker was the image of the sort of woman they wanted working here - as though she had stepped, fully airbrushed, out of the pages of a magazine. Eliza was sure she saw the carefully winged eyes flick to the screen, but Natalie said nothing about it. 

‘Has that email gone out yet?’ 

‘No - I’ve nearly finished it but I’m just waiting on the list before I can link up the menu choices properly-’

‘It needs to go out this afternoon,’ Natalie said stiffly.  

‘We don’t usually send out marketing emails on Friday afternoons as policy, because the open rate isn’t-’

‘Well it should have gone earlier then shouldn’t it?’ said Natalie sourly, and without another word she turned, her heels thudding across the office carpet. 

There are hundreds of accents and dialects across the UK, all with their own histories, roots and associations, that have changed over time and often develop beyond common portrayals of them in media. They can vary not just across counties but within just a few short miles of one another - rivalries can be rather intense, though usually playful, and sharp offense can be taken if you misjudge where someone is from. 

What does the accent from [place] sound like?

When I first started writing this resource, I started listing some common accents from across the UK, with a little summary of the area, the accent, the connotations, and some regional specific slang. I’d only done RP, cockney, scouse and geordie before I accepted that it was a mammoth task that a tumblr blog post wasn’t really up to. 

Luckily, there are better resources than me out there. This amazing collection from the British library has recordings of 77 different accents from across the UK and over several decades, along with really amazing summaries detailing the features of the accent. So if you have an idea of where your character is from in the UK, you can look it up in this list and listen to a sample. There is also a map feature so if you don’t know the geography of the UK well you can have a play around with locations to find the right accent - this is helpful for areas where the accent has a name that doesn’t match the location, like “scouse” for Liverpool, “geordie” for Newcastle, “brummie” for Birmingham, and so on. 

NB: If you can’t access these resources from your location and don’t fancy using a VPN, you can often look up celebrities from certain areas to get a good range of accents - if your character is from Liverpool, you could look up Jodie Comer and John Bishop, for example, to hear examples of scouse accents. British local newspapers and Youtubers also often like listing common slang terms and things out of local pride, so you can sometimes literally Google something like “top slang from Glasgow” and find loads of listicles and videos.   

Should I write out the accent phonetically?

A brief note on writing accents phonetically - I think it’s best to do this sparingly, if at all. For British accents, this is not really because of offensiveness. I feel like the British have oppressed enough people globally to put up with a bit of light impersonation without getting too precious about it. Rather, it is because unless you truly know the dialect inside out, you are unlikely to write it in a way that is authentic and accurate, so it will come across as rather comical and cringey, and may also be difficult to understand for a wider audience. It is better to throw in occasional references to the accent, certain words commonly used (usually slang), and so on, to give an indication that your character is from a certain place. For example, if I were to write a geordie character, I probably wouldn’t try to write out the accent as it sounds because I’m not sure how to capture the inflections. But I would throw in a few “thanks for that, pet!” or “Howay, man, we’re going to be late!”. If you are going to write phonetically, it should be for a relatively minor character and/or should not be so strong as to be difficult to read for say, someone with English as a second language. A line or two here and there in an accent can set the scene and feel immersive, too much and the reader spends too long translating. 

Some authors do write out the accent, and some readers prefer it. I think if you feel you know it well and it’s not too confusing, it’s fine to do to add some flavour. But consider it carefully. It seems to be a particularly strong temptation for writers to write Scottish characters speaking in Scots. I should emphasise that Scots is beyond a dialect and is often regarded as a language of its own, it’s not just a comedy way of speaking on Twitter. Quite honestly, unless you know it inside out, you’ll probably get it wrong. I’m very familiar with it having grown up reading The Broons and more recently the Scots translation of Harry Potter, but as a non-Scot I would not attempt it. But, using Hagrid from Harry Potter as an example (his accent, for the record, is Somerset/West Country), it is possible to do for certain accents, as long as it’s not too overloaded. 

How is class connected with accents and dialects?

Something extremely frustrating about the UK is the extent to which the class system still impacts daily life. The reality is, some accents have unfair connotations and associations, and it can impact employment prospects and social life. Class in the UK is complex and hard to explain - a common misunderstanding is that it is about wealth. It is to an extent, but there are so many components that build up to the perception of class that it’s sometimes better to think past that entirely. There are plenty of very well off people in Essex that are not regarded as upper or even middle class - partly because of their accent. Similarly, there are (less common, but they exist), people regarded as posh or upper class that have very little money, particularly in rural parts of the country. 

What makes up class in the UK? Traditionally it was about your occupation or the occupation of your parents - education, wealth, where you grew up, and yes, your accent, all played a part. You can do a modern day class calculator here (which considers more modern aspects of class, like home ownership or hobbies) to find out where you, or your character, stands.  

Generally speaking, the stronger the accent, the more “working class” a person is perceived. Obviously there are exceptions like Received Pronounciation, and thankfully there is increasing diversity and acceptance of regional accents, but for many years the aspiration of RP as the “right” way to speak and the way it dominated British media meant that local accents were regarded as lower class. In particular, accents from traditionally working class areas in the north or certain places in the south like South Wales or East London. Rural accents are sneered at as being “farmery”, like accents from East Anglia or the West Country. All this means, annoyingly, that even if your character is from a certain place that doesn’t mean they will have that accent. 

Someone who went to a grammar school in Norfolk is unlikely to have that farmery accent, someone who is the child of doctors in Newcastle might have a geordie twang but probably won’t be saying things like ‘whey aye, man!’. Put simply, middle class parents encourage their children to “speak properly”, and people moving up the class ranks, so to speak, often deliberately lose their accents. I myself had an Estuary Essex (also known as mockney) accent growing up, that still occasionally comes through when I’ve had a few G&Ts. But I was heavily encouraged at school, by my parents, and by a subtle social pressure at university to be more “well spoken”. I was especially encouraged by the person I got the accent from - my dad - who felt that he had been held back by his working class background and accent. 

(Before I get shouted at in my inbox, I don’t think this is a good thing. But it is the reality of the UK.) 

My character is cockney and-

Are they? Are they really? Are you sure?

Look, the UK in popular media is shown as being made of people who only speak Received Pronunciation or cockney. Occasionally there will be a generic Scottish character too. 

The reality is, you can probably have a cockney accented character if you’re writing a period piece. Traditionally a cockney is someone who was born within the sound of the Bow Bells, but East London has always been a place of migration and demographic shift - currently it’s an area heavily populated by British Bangladeshi and Somali communities. I lived there a few years ago, round the corner from where my grandmother went to school, but the accent she has is gone from that area. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s dead - cockneys ended up moving further East, into Epping where my Dad grew up and eventually into Essex, and over time the accent shifted too, into Estuary Essex - the sort of accent you hear in Gavin and Stacey. 

There are a few old cockneys left (think comedian Mickey Flanagan), but it’s a small proportion of people in the UK and to British ears it sounds a bit dated. There are many wonderful accents in the UK, I gently urge American screenwriters and others to let go of cockney. 

(Cockney rhyming slang is super fun though, I accept, and many CRS words have become UK wide slang words - berk, for example, has cockney origins of “berkshire hunt - cunt”, but has now become widespread as a very mild word acceptable to be used in front of children.) 

My character is Scottish and-

Where in Scotland? Like the UK, the accent varies and has similar associations of class. Likewise for Wales and Northern Ireland (and Ireland, while I’m here). 

I think it’s important when writing characters from the UK to consider very carefully how strong their accent is, and if it is strong, where exactly they are from. When I lived in Newcastle, I admitted to a colleague that I struggled to understand another colleague’s unusually thick geordie accent. She irritably informed me that he wasn’t a geordie, he was a ‘mackem’, which is an accent from Sunderland. Sunderland was less than 15 miles away from where we were sat, in Newcastle. The differences of accents can be really stark even within these short distances, especially in working class areas where there has been little movement. So this is particularly common in the north of England and Scotland. Much of the south of England, especially among the middle class, has so few regional differences that they sound very similar - a generic “southern” accent. 

It is also worth remembering that migration in the second half of the 20th century introduced many new accents to the UK, and now we have community specific accents, like the Bradford Asian accent, as well as Jamaican and Caribbean influence in the Multicultural London accent. So if you’re writing a British POC, it’s worth looking beyond purely location specific accents too. 

I don’t know where to make my character from, they’re just British. 

Have some fun looking places up! Play around on Google maps. The Visit England/Scotland/London/Wherever websites are good fun to explore. Broadly speaking, the UK is wealthiest in London and the south east, with increasing poverty as you head north - naturally all cities, particularly London, have rich and poor piled on top of one another. Coastal towns in particular are either incredibly wealthy (and focused on high end tourism) or incredibly deprived.

In Scotland, Edinburgh is quite well to do, and you can find large estates and old families in rural areas of the highlands and the borders. Glasgow is generally more working class, but also has a thriving arts scene. In Wales, there are more particular accents that sadly I have little experience of so far, but it’s generally split into the Welsh valleys accent in the south, and the more English sounding north Wales accent. Northern Ireland has an accent that is particular to Northern Ireland and differs from Ireland - the accent in Belfast is different to Dublin or Galway. 

How can I become familiar with British slang?

To be honest, the best way is probably to watch British programmes. Make it comedy if you can. The Inbetweeners is good for teenagers with that generic southern English accent (warning, it’s quite explicit), Gavin and Stacey is good for Welsh and Essex, This Country for rural West Country, Chewing Gum for modern London. Comedians are also more likely to have regional accents on British panel shows - if you hear an accent you like, it’s worth googling them to see where they’re from. As examples of the top of my head, Sarah Millican and Ross Noble for Geordie/Newcastle, Johnny Vegas for Lancashire, Rob Brydon for South Wales, Frankie Boyle for Glasgow, Jason Manford for Manchester, John Bishop for Scouse/Liverpudlian, etc. Much of British media is still dominated by posh, southern accents - Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Florence Pugh, etc - but comedy tends to be more accessible for those of a working class background so we tend to see stronger accents. 

How can I avoid Americanisms? 

That’s a post on its own, and it is a challenge. I have every empathy. At the end of the day - research (there’s lots of lists out there of British vs American English!), finding a friendly Brit to read through your work (hello!), and general practice. Don’t stress too much, learn from mistakes and feedback as you go, and keep immersing yourself with British writing. If I get enough requests I’ll happily make another resource focusing on this! 

Spurred on, he scrambled further up the fence to roll over the top, grinning gleefully as he heard the teachers trying to shout above the noise of the jubilantly cheering playground. He was a skinny boy, so it was not much effort for him to nimbly get over the top and drop the last few feet. He turned to throw two fingers up at the enraged looking teachers, still blowing uselessly on their whistles and ordering him back, before turning on his heel and pelting away up Ramsgate Road. 

Quite what had set him off, no one knew or cared, least of all Freddy. All he knew was that it had seemed like too nice a day to waste in school, so rather than be lectured by the dinner lady on whatever he had done this time to annoy her, he decided to leave. It perhaps wasn’t as dramatic as the time he climbed out of the window, but it was a much bigger audience so he was pleased. 

He knew he didn’t have much of a head start, so with a quick glance over his shoulder to check no one could see, he swerved into the driveway of a nearby house, clambered onto the wheelie bin to hoist himself onto the roof of the garage, and unconcernedly made his way into the strangers back garden. With a satisfied smirk, he lazily made his way through the back gardens of the estate, hopping over fences and squeezing behind sheds, listening to the sounds of teachers, and eventually, he was sure, the police, shouting out his name. 

‘We’re not angry, Freddy,’ he heard one of them shout. ‘Just come back and we’ll have a chat.’ 

He knew well enough by now that this was not true. 

He heard a huffing sort of noise nearby, and froze, hidden in a laurel bush he’d been easing his way through to get to the next garden. Just ahead, through the thick leaves, he could see the sweating, ruddy face of a policeman, hoisting himself inelegantly over a garden fence. ‘Freddy!’ he called through gasping breaths. ‘Come on, lad…’ 

Freddy did not move, barely breathing as he willed himself to be perfectly camouflaged in the bush, to be hidden and secret and safe. The policeman paused on the neat lawn of whoever’s garden this was, leaning on his knees and panting. He straightened up and wiped his sopping brow, peering around the garden with a creased face. Freddy felt a bit sorry for him, but a bit entertained too, and considered bursting out with a taunting laugh and letting the man chase him, before the radio on his chest crackled. 

Freddy could not understand what the voice on the other end was saying, but the police office, grabbed at it, and when he spoke his voice was still gasping for breath. ‘No sign yet, I’m about halfway down the street, over.’ 

The radio spoke again, and the policeman gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Too right I’m too old for it - certainly got better things to be doing than chasing difficult kids all day.’ 

Still Freddy did not move, but his blue eyes fixed intently on the policeman, and he felt a rush of dislike that seemed to plant his feet into the dirt below, anchoring him. The policeman rattled the door of the shed, realised it was locked, and proceeded to the next garden, muttering under his breath. 

Dialogue is the written speech of your characters in your story. For some people, writing effective dialogue comes naturally, for others it feels almost impossible to master. It is worth considering, as well, the differences in dialogue for different kinds of media - in screenwriting, for example, a writer will be able to rely more heavily on actors’ expression, comic timing, body language and other effects such as music. However they will also be constrained by shorter time, more need for unnatural exposition, and lack of internal thoughts. The following lesson will focus on dialogue in fiction - for short stories or novels - although some rules will be applicable to dialogue in other mediums too, so they’re worth keeping in mind. 

The Purpose of Dialogue

Dialogue should:

Progress the story

Deepen character and relationship

Have realism

Be embellished/supported with suitable dialogue tags and appropriate narration. 

Easier said than done. Let’s take them one at a time. 

Progress the story

As with most writing, the writer needs to be constantly asking herself ‘what is the point?’ Why am I having my characters say/do/notice this? It may be to deepen character and relationship (and we’ll get onto that), but for longer stories we must acknowledge that the dialogue needs to move the plot along as well, as much as we might want to indulge in a bit of pointless fluff now and then. 

Dialogue can drive the plot in a more engaging and exciting way than plain narration. Narration on its own can be effective at building tension, but usually only in small doses, and having many pages of narration without dialogue or internal thought will feel more like a summary of events or a witness statement than the author would perhaps like. Consider the below: 

Breakfast was tense that morning. They ate silently as they pondered what to do. Michael buttering his toast so aggressively that it was surprising that the knife didn’t go through it. Susan asked him to stop, but that only started the arguing again. He accused her of expecting him to get over the affair so quickly. She threw back that there was nothing left to say if he refused to get therapy, and she had warned him for years that things had to change, and that it had been one foolish night in twenty years of unhappy marriage. She, Susan insisted, had excused plenty of foolish mistakes on his part. 

Compared to: 

‘Will you stop that?’ she said sharply. Michael did not pause in the furious buttering of his toast. ‘I said I was sorry.’ 

‘What, you say the magic word and I’m meant to shrug it off?’ he replied. ‘Pretend it never happened? Pretend you didn’t-’

‘You’ve made your anger perfectly clear, and I understand, but you don’t need to be so aggressive with everything, I get it.’ 

‘Oh, here we go. Buttering toast is aggressive now.’ 

‘Well, yes, like that - I’ve tried to talk to you like a grown up, but-’

‘It really bloody winds me up when you just say insane stuff patiently and without emotion and think that makes it acceptable, d’you know that? I’m allowed to be angry, you cheated.’

I could continue. The first example can pack a lot more information in, but using dialogue to drive the plot makes for more interesting and deeper meaning. It turns it into a story, rather than an account of events that occurred. It allows the writer to layer the plot with character work and unlock the story a little at a time.

In this regard, it is good to have your characters talking. To each other, to themselves, to the reader - whatever your particular style demands. Having that personable voice is engaging. 

There are a few “rules” to keep in mind in order to ensure you remain plot-focused with your dialogue:

Avoid small talk. Enter late, leave early. Naturally there are exceptions (if you want to emphasise the awkwardness of a relationship between two characters you might want to include some failed attempts at small talk), but the usual chit-chat and extended greetings that we are used to saying in every day life can normally be skipped or avoided. You don’t need to have lots of ‘hi, how are you?’  ‘I’m fine thanks, you?’ ‘Fine, cheers. Have you seen the rain?’ Your characters are allowed to just get to the point and your reader will thank you for it. 

Have characters on their own thought trajectories. This is a great way of driving the plot, and though it can be tricky to master it can really help in making your characters believable individuals as well as creating some conflict. If characters know each other, or both know the topic, they will likely jump ahead, make assumptions, fail to answer each other directly - this can be a great way of showing that they’re on the same wavelength, but can also be a vehicle for miscommunications and misunderstandings, or deliberately misleading one another. In that vein, don’t have the characters telling each other things they already know, unless made to sound believable. 

Similarly, don’t have characters say things solely for the benefit of the reader. This is called exposition, and while exposition is necessary, it can be clumsily handled in dialogue. It’s made fun of frequently in films where they have such limited time to get background information across. You definitely don’t want dialogue like ‘So, Michael, it’s been three years since your divorce, have you thought about dating again?’ Michael knows this, his insensitive friend knows this, the reader is not stupid and knows that it’s not natural sounding. If it must be said in dialogue, weave it into a more natural conversation - ‘I haven’t been to Ibiza in three years, and I don’t plan on going back any time soon. Don’t want to run the risk of bumping into Susan and Jorge.’ 

We’ll get onto weaving it in with narration and dialogue tags later, which makes that a lot easier, but, in short, use dialogue to drive your story. 

Deepen character and relationship

This is my favourite thing to do, and why I often prefer to write shorter stories than longer ones. A writer can find great joy in bringing a character to life through dialogue, dragging them away from plot vehicles and making them people of their own.

Firstly, it’s important to remember that your character’s background and personality will affect the way that they speak. If all your characters sound the same, they probably sound like you! A well educated character will obviously have a different way of talking than a common street urchin, but everyone has quirks and patterns to their speech that you can use to say a lot. You might use long meandering sentences with lots of rhetorical questions for a character known to be boring, for example. You might use short, sharp sentences for a character that’s grumpy or distracted with some deeper internal struggle. You can use the way two characters talk to each other to say a lot about their relationship and power dynamic, especially if you remember that good dialogue should have subtext (what isn’t being said being important).

A good example of this is from the short story Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemmingway (CW; indirect discussion of abortion). Consider the short passage below. 

‘It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,’ the man said. ‘It’s not really an operation at all. 

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on. 

‘I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s not really anything. It’s just to let the air in.’ 

The girl did not say anything. 

‘I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.’ 

‘Then what will we do afterward?’ 

‘We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.’ 

‘What makes you think so?’ 

‘That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.’ 

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads. ‘And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.’

It’s a really interesting story that is almost entirely dialogue, so it’s well worth reading to get a good sense of using subtext. I wasn’t aware of the abortion connotations when I first read it because I hadn’t heard of the very dated term ‘letting the air in’, but really the story is great at demonstrating the uneven power dynamic between the two even without knowledge of what the operation is. Without much description (though ‘man’ and ‘girl’ says it all really, doesn’t it?), you get a sense that a much older man is persuading this reluctant girl into this act by leveraging how hopelessly in love she is with him, though he does not seem to feel the same way. He speaks most when he is trying to persuade her - the rest of the time he is snappish and short with her childish and ignorant questions about the world around them. The above passage is the only time in the story where he refers to her by a name, and we can gather that it’s a pet one. The girl’s silence says as much as her dialogue, and when she does speak it is questioning - looking to him for authority. 

Understanding character motivations and background is what makes this masterful use of dialogue. It would be tempting, for a novice writer, to have the girl argue. For her to say something like ‘what if we could be happy without it?’ But where that should be, there is silence, or repeating his thoughts back to him - because Hemmingway is not only driving the story but emphasising the imbalance of their relationship and her own naive nature. She would not argue with him, she can only wish that he will change his mind. This is all through dialogue and a tiny bit of narration, barely any dialogue tags, and really says so much without saying it at all. Show vs tell is about more than description after all. 

That kind of depth when it comes to writing dialogue is... really hard. I haven’t picked Hemmingway to suggest that this is the quality all writing should be at, and I certainly don’t mean to intimidate anyone. But it really is a golden example of thinking about your dialogue within the context of the character, and how their background, situation, and goals will affect how they respond and react to those around them. Your character may not always be able to say what is convenient for you, the author, to tell the reader, because it may not be in their nature or sound authentic. But there are clever ways around that and it can make for more powerful writing, between the lines of what is said. 

Have realism

If you skipped down to this bit, I understand. It’s the area that people most often struggle with. I find that people tend to fall into two traps here - either their characters sound like robots because they are over formal and have too much emphasis on being grammatically correct or over eloquent at the expense of natural dialogue, OR they swing in the other direction and try to replicate perfectly how people speak in day to day life. 

If you do have a problem with stilted dialogue, it is a good idea to listen to how people naturally speak and try typing it out to get yourself out of the habit. But on the whole, the way people normally speak actually doesn’t sound that great in written format. In real life, we use lots of filler words, we get muddled, we go off on tangents, we trail off, we stutter and stammer and phrase things badly, we um and ah and say far more with our body language and expression than we realise. If you ever read transcripts, from interviews or courts, you’ll see how much of it actually doesn’t make a lot of sense. Our brains make sense of it when we listen to others, based on other parts of communication. Yes, sometimes adding in a ‘er...’ is beneficial and good, and you might have a really nice character moment of someone anxious trailing off when they realise no one is listening to them. Sprinkling those moments in can absolutely make your dialogue sound more authentic, especially when carefully used with character knowledge, but be careful not to over use it. In written dialogue, our characters can and should be more articulate and quicker to formulate their thoughts than in real life for the sake of the story. Striking that balance between overly structured and too real and easy can be really hard, but it only comes with practice - reading dialogue out loud can be a big help, as can writing the dialogue first with no narration or speech tags (more on that later). 

Some common mistakes when it comes to dialogue: 

Having one character speak too long without a break. Monologues are tough to get through as a reader and don’t come up often in real life in any meaningful way. They can end up cheesy or exposition heavy. Occasionally you can get away with it with very particular characters, but in general, avoid. 

Over use of names. It’s really distracting as a reader if dialogue is constantly like, ‘what do you think, Harry?’ ‘Charlie, I just don’t know.’ ‘Really, Harry, you need to decide if you’re going to marry her or not.’ ‘I know, you’re right, Charlie.’ Use names to get someone’s attention and then don’t use them again unless you need to make it clear to the reader who the character is talking to. 

Not using contractions. Even very formal people use contractions such as don’t and won’t, it is part of natural rapid speech. Save the ‘do not’ and ‘will not’s for when the emphasis is really needed. 

Having characters speak in unison. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes this can be used to hilarious effect and can always be used for a bit of comedy. But on the whole people don’t do this, including twins. 

Misuse of slang or dialects. If you’re going to use it, make sure you do your research. It’s also worth bearing in mind that if you over use it, it will be hard for the reader to understand and may break immersion. 

Over explain for the reader. I mentioned this before but it’s worth repeating. If you went outside right now and saw a UFO, you would probably shout something along the lines of ‘wtf is that?’, and you would perhaps point or scramble for your potato to take a shaky video. You would probably not shout, ‘look at flying saucer! I’ve never seen anything like it!’ Think carefully about realistic reactions, even if they are not particularly convenient to you as a writer. 

Over use of exclamation marks/caps lock. People aren’t that vibrant and it’s tiring to read. The less you use it, the more punch it packs. 

Using narration and dialogue tags

First, a quick grammar lesson. Sorry. 

‘This is some speech.’ 

‘This is also some speech,’ said the character. 

‘Is this also speech?’ asked another. 

‘Well,’ said the first, ‘yes.’ 

‘Brilliant,’ said the other. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’ 

I use single quotation marks because I’m British and annoying, the conventional double quote marks the Americans use (”like this!”) is also correct. The only important thing is that you pick one and stick to it. Quotation marks always surround the words that are being spoken aloud, and must be opened and closed. Where the sentence ends, you must use a full stop (period), or another piece of punctuation like a question or exclamation mark before closing the speech with the marks. 

Where there is a dialogue tag (he said/said/replied, etc), the sentence is continuing, so a comma is more appropriate (but you can also use a question/exclamation mark and the sentence still continues), and again this must go before the speech marks close the dialogue. If you want to continue the sentence with the dialogue tag in the middle, you can continue by using another comma, or you can end the sentence with a full stop and continue the dialogue as a new sentence. 

Use a new line for a new character speaking.

Phew, that’s over so you can pay attention again. But unfortunately I still have more to say. 

Here is a fun little exercise. Take the below dialogue between two characters, A and B. 

‘Do you love me?’ 

‘You’re drunk.’ 

‘Why won’t you answer the question?’ 

‘Sit down. I’ll make you a tea.’ 

‘I don’t want tea, I want an answer! Tell me!’  

The dialogue alone already tells us a bit of a story - a picture is probably already forming in your head, perhaps of the characters, perhaps of the setting. As it stands it’s ok, and if you struggle with dialogue it can be effective to write only the dialogue out in this way (this tip from my writing teacher also helped me cut down on purple prose!). But now look at the scene: 

It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that Alex was woken at 3am by repeated bangs on the floor and shouts through the letterbox. Nothing else would have made her rise from bed. If she had suspected even for a moment that it was anyone else, she would have called the police. 

But as usual, it was Sam. Blonde, tousled hair a mess, eye make up smudged, pouting lips trembling as she swayed. 

‘Do you love me?’ 

‘You’re drunk,’ said Alex, wincing as Sam’s grey eyes shone with tears. ‘You’d better come in.’ 

‘Why won’t you answer the question?’ 

Alex ignored her, pulled her in by her slender arm. ‘Sit down. I’ll make you a tea.’ 

‘I don’t want tea. I want an answer. Tell me!’ Sam’s voice was loud and high, and it pierced her. 

So, we haven’t actually added that much narration or dialogue tags (t’s best, if you can, to avoid using them too much), but we’re able to give a clearer picture of these two characters. You may even now be reading the dialogue in a different tone to the one you originally did - picturing the scene with a different feel. Not convinced? How about now? 

Yet again, as had happened dozens of bloody times before, Alex was woken at 3am by incoherent, slurred shouting through the letterbox. 

‘Do you love me?’ was Sam’s immediate demand as Alex wearily opened the door. 

Alex rubbed her hand over her bleary eyes and sighed. ‘You’re drunk. You’d better come in.’ 

Sam turned on the tears at once, mascara running in thick, spidery lines down her blotchy cheeks. ‘Why won’t you answer the question?’

‘Sit down,’ Alex muttered. ‘I’ll make you a tea.’ She stood aside and jerked her head towards the living room.

‘I don’t want tea, I want an answer! Tell me!’ 

Wincing once more at her piercing shriek, Alex closed her eyes. 

The very same dialogue can be shaped by carefully worded narration and dialogue tags. It’s a fun exercise to do with writing buddies - all use the same dialogue and see how different the stories come out. It can also be a pretty nifty way to challenge writers block or shake up a scene you’re struggling with. 

Some extra tips from my writing teacher - I fully confess that I am not always the best at following these ones, because my writing has been heavily influenced by JK Rowling who also doesn’t seem to set much store by them. But they are good, and since I’ve kept them in mind my writing has improved. 

Avoid overuse of adverbs (’she said nervously’). Use action or dialogue alone to convey this information instead. 

Avoid overuse of verbs besides ‘said’. The reader will skim over said and barely notice it, if every character is whispering and muttering and shouting all the time it stilts the flow of the scene - use sparingly.

Use tags when necessary to ensure clarity as to who is speaking, otherwise let the dialogue stand for itself. 

Use internal thoughts in place of speech tags sometimes. 

Use action beats (’he turned to stare coldly out of the window’) in place of speech tags sometimes to help set the pace of the scene. 

I hope this very lengthy post has helped! Please do get in touch if you have any further questions or would like any elaborations on anything I’ve mentioned here, or if you have suggestions for future lessons!

‘It’s called kintsugi,’ the young girl sat beside her said. The girl’s hair was cropped short, a wave of dark curls just skimming over one eye, her nose ring glinting in the light. It was amazing how young ladies dressed now. ‘I learnt about it at college,’ the girl continued as she mixed a glittering powder into a resin. ‘Rather than try and hide the damage, it just becomes part of the story of the object - embracing the flaws and illuminating them. I think it’s quite lovely - thought we’d try it this week.’ 

The older woman frowned slightly at the girl. She was extremely familiar, and now that she said that, she was certain she had been here last week. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t recall who-?’

‘Lucy,’ the young girl reminded her, with a pleasant smile. 

‘Yes. Of course. I did know that,’ she replied, waving a slightly flustered hand. She peered down at the little pot of resin. ‘And that’s gold, is it?’ 

‘That’s right. Biggest piece first?’ Lucy suggested. 

She nodded, and held up the largest fragment of the bowl; it had shattered down the middle, one side into several smaller shards, but this side was untouched. She held it steady as Lucy delicately applied the golden resin onto the edge with a small brush. 

‘I must say,’ she remarked, ‘I’m glad to see make do and mend coming back into fashion.’

Lucy grinned. ‘Yes. Nice to not just throw it away.’ 

She nodded sagely. ‘Everyone throws things away nowadays. I remember my mother helping me unpick one of my father’s old jumpers, so that we could reknit it into something trendier.’ 

Lucy raised her eyebrows, though she didn’t look up from the careful application of the gold. ‘What did you knit from it?’ 

‘A nice new cardigan for me; I told all my friends it was out of a catalogue though.’ 

She burst out laughing. ‘Did they believe you?’ 

‘Naturally.’ She picked up another fragment, and at Lucy’s nod, held it against the resin. Lucy leaned forward, continuing the repair. ‘We were very poor then,’ she told her vaguely. She could remember it quite clearly, the smell of the coal dust from the fire, the ancient mangle in the corner, the long queue outside the phone box on the street and the excitement when number fourteen got a telly. ‘Getting something new from a catalogue… that was… well, that was something worth lying about. A bit of glamour.’ 

‘I suppose they wanted to believe you,’ said Lucy. 

‘Yes, I suppose they did.’ She looked down at the bowl, steadily coming back into shape, the resin hardening into golden streams across the smooth landscape of the bowl. ‘Everything was so exciting then, but that’s childhood really, isn’t it?’ 

‘Aren’t things exciting now?’ Lucy prompted. 

‘Oh, well, I’ve seen it all, love,’ she replied. ‘And it moves too fast for me now to keep back. But I think back on those times a lot lately.’ 

‘Do you?’ asked Lucy quietly. ‘Like what?’ 

‘I think about my mother sometimes,’ she said. The fragment she had been holding was set enough to be released now, so she shifted her fingers to hold up another piece for Lucy, the thick blue lines of her veins sprawling across the back of her hands. ‘And my old school friends. And even the teachers sometimes. They just wander through my thoughts. I can remember my mother sitting by the fire, showing me how to unpick the threads from my father’s old jumper so we could reknit it into something new.’ 

Lucy blinked at her and nodded before looking back to the glistening gold roots that were growing steadily across the bowl. ‘That’s a lovely memory to have,’ Lucy said at last.

‘Yes,’ she said, remembering the mewl of the cat as they ignored its batting paw, the soft muttering of the radio, the glowing coals of the fire, the taste of the tea. Her mother’s hands, careful and precise, painstakingly picking away at the jumper. 

‘Like this,’ she had said. ‘That’s it.’ 

‘All my friends were so envious,’ she continued, remembering Judy Mayhew’s wide eyes and parted lips, and how Binky Conlon had run her hands over the outstretched sleeve of the cardigan, secretly born from a tattered old jumper. Binky’s eyes had narrowed as they noticed the buttons, familiar from the window of the drapers, betraying that it was not brand new from a catalogue, but she had pretended not to notice her friend’s suspicion, parading up and down the cracked pavement as though in a beauty pageant. It had been her pride and joy, that cardigan.  

‘One more piece,’ said Lucy, jolting her out of her memory. 

‘Oh… yes…’ She kept her fingers pressed against the cool ceramic, with just a little pressure to keep the pieces in place, her gaze tracing the seams of gold that shone between the fragments. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘It’s very pretty.’ 

‘Isn’t it?’ said Lucy brightly, holding the last piece in place. ‘Even more precious than it was before.’

‘Yes… I really am sorry for breaking it.’ She had just remembered, suddenly, the bump against the table that had left the deep purple bruise on her hip, the high pitched crash of the bowl on the floor. She supposed it had been last week. 

‘Don’t be silly! I’m glad you did - I’ve wanted to try kintsugi for ages.’ 

Lucy took the bowl in careful, steady hands, and raised it onto a high shelf to set. 

She rose too, her slow bones aching, but then paused, gazing around the studio. The clay splattered sink, the surfaces covered with old newspapers, the shelves and shelves of ceramics, some half-finished, some beautifully glazed, pots and plates and vases and sculptures of unknown figures or animals. 

‘Did you make all these?’ she asked. 

The moment hung like the clay dust in the air, swirling in the light that fell through the window. Lucy’s voice was steady, reassuring, calm. ‘You did, Nana,’ she said. ‘Remember?’ 

She sat in the tent, clutching a flask of coffee she was not allowed to drink, watching the tip of the fishing rod, enraptured. Every now and then she would squeal in excitement as the tip seemed to bend and flex, but it was simply the pull of the sea. 

She fell asleep, in that lull of the sea and the cold wind whispering around her tent and thick coat, a hazy, half-sleep, her eyes occasionally fluttering open to peer at the dancing fishing pole. Eventually, the call of her name roused her, suddenly alert and her heart thrumming, and her father crouched behind her as she clung onto the pole, his hand over hers to wind in the prize.

It wriggled on the end, and she giggled as she held it, the tail flapping, beaming for the camera, before it was released back into the darkness, swimming away beneath her wave. 

After, he carried her to the car, the rods tucked under his arm, and the drove down the winding, empty coastal road.

‘Look at all those snails,’ he said. ‘I wonder where they’re all going?’ 

She frowned slightly, and stretched forward to see over the glovebox. In the headlights, she could see dozens of little black dots, lines of silver glinting in the light behind them. She let out an outraged yelp. ‘Stop!’ 

He did so at once, with a rather amused look at her as she unbuckled herself and leapt out of the car. He followed, and watched as she immediately bent down, plucking up the creatures and carrying them clumsily in one hand, or shoving them into her pockets. 

‘They’re happy here,’ he said. ‘Leave them.’ 

‘They could get run over,’ she replied stubbornly.