#cinderadvice

For something serious I format it like most authors do, blending it with the paragraph with certain sentences standing on their own, the standouts or important turning points in a conversation. We'll use an argument for the purpose of this post:

By this point, Susan had moved from across the living room into the kitchen to continue her tirade, "-and another thing! You even had the audacity to lie to me about it!" Emily found herself standing straighter in indignation "I did not! You didn't ask!" Scoffing Susan settled back in her stance "Omission is still lying". Was it? Or did she just want something to pick at? Opening her mouth again like a little idiot who hadn't learned her lesson, Emily talked her way to the couch-

"Well maybe I would've told you if you weren't so unreasonable."

And just like that, she had lost the fight as Susan's face turned from angry to frigid.

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Forgive the punctuation (I am fond of run ons), but my point stands. For paragraphs, I do admittedly find it hard to split the dialogue up in a way that isn't repetitive, I tend to describe what the characters are doing while they speak before they do, sometimes if the dialogue is super long ill split it using - to describe several actions or even putting a thought in between or a background occurrence (a friend pulling out a phone or whispering or backing away, the cat getting into trouble, the weather, etc.).

In general I actually do not like doing what I did up there, having constant dialogue, I tend to lean towards have a lot of descriptions, explanations, and thoughts in between words as when I'm speaking my mind is running very fast to figure out what I'm saying and what I really mean or want to say but can't because social rules. There's also a fun thing I do where I will put a dialogue down and then immediately after put a thought exactly negating whatever they said because they don't mean what they said.

It's very hard to blend dialogue in paragraph for me as well actually, it's one of the most difficult things about writing for me- dialogue. It's hard because sometimes dialogue becomes out of character just by using the wrong descriptor for what they're doing, the words may be right but maybe the way you're describing the body language is just wrong, maybe the words are right but the reason they're saying them would never happen or it would stay an inside thought.

Another thing about formatting dialogue is that if there is a lot of dialogue you really really need to split paragraphs earlier because it can be tiresome and even difficult to read. If there isn't a lot of rapid fire dialogue then paragraphs can run a little longer but also splitting a paragraph is integral to the formation of a conversation.

Multi-paragraph conversations need to be comprehensible, and by that I mean you need to group parts of the conversation in a way that makes sense per paragraph. Beginning a paragraph with dialogue is personally a no-no for me. It just looks wrong. Splitting certain parts of a conversation or topic is also wonky. See what I did here? Splitting this off where I did into a new paragraph feels odd, what I'm talking about applies to what I was talking about above, so why did I split it anyways? Because I knew this was going to be a bigger paragraph, and large paragraphs can discourage people from reading what you've written. The topic of a conversation and its stages are important, it's like the topic of an essay, keep it together unless it's is strategically chaotic (ADHDer conversation, ifykyk).

I like to split conversations by what I call grouping. If I feel a character has talked too much, I start a new paragraph, and they start their count over. If I think the stage of the conversation (beginning, rising, apex, falling, end) is over, I start a new paragraph. If I think a phrase is so important that italics isn't enough to showcase it, it gets its own line and then I start a new paragraph, if they're switching topics entirely I start a new paragraph. If the conversation is short, I either keep in one or two paragraphs (beginning and rising then apex, falling, and end; for two) or I use one liners back and forth.

Sometimes a conversation will repeat a stage, especially in fights as someone is likely to bring something else up when losing a fight which makes it look more like: Beginning, Rising, Apex, Rising, Apexpt.2, Falling, Flatline, Falling, End (flatline being the first apex and matching that energy for a while) and during a sad conversation you can also hit what I call a rock bottom conversation which looks more like; Beginning, Apex, Falling, Falling, Falling, Flatline, End. Or if a conversation is going in circles you just stay at Flatline for a long time- you get it.

Going back to where to put dialogue, the beginning is a no no for me personally, putting dialogue at the end of a paragraph is kind of a weird exception to the rule, as in sometimes its okay. Really depends on the vibe tbh, but most of the dialogue needs to be in the body. Formatting can also kind of change depending on who is talking, like rapid fire speakers have a lot of split dialogue "blalddjd-" somethings going on in between "-sofnrissi" as they're hard to interrupt while slow talkers have the same thing but longer descriptions or breaks in between them as they take forever and if they interrupt they might start over.

For more silly stuff I do line by line, the lack of knowledge of what's going on while they speak tends to make it more humorous (at least to me):

"So you and Dave are going out apparently"

"What"

"You and Dave. Rude of you not to tell me"

"What the fuck are you talking about"

"I just think that as your best friend, I should get to know about this stuff first, but whatever"

"Debbie."

"It just hurt my feelings, okay?"

"Debbie, I am not going out with Dave"

"Yes, you are"

"No, I am not"

"Stop lying! Everyone knows"

"Debbie, I literally have no idea what you are talking about, I am not dating Dave"

"Oh. Well, everyone thinks you are"

"Why"

"Because Dave is telling everyone you're dating"

"WHAT"

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Silly stuff is one of the rare moments where I'll forgive an all caps dialogue as well, it's where you can just put the words on there and not worry about anything else going on. The absence of movement makes it harder for people to think in absolute logic of what's going on which makes it easier for people to find things funny as in writing funny things can be hard to hit because a lot of people are just thinking 'that's not possible' but if you want to use the paragraph formation you can I tend to use more outrageous word choice or action descriptors to make it seem more ridiculous.

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