Webnovel.Forum

yaoyueyi

Ah yes—the em dash. It was explained in the next post so I don’t have to say what it is for, but it is a wonderful punctuation mark. Also one to be used sparingly though. If one were to put it everywhere—and it can go almost anywhere—it would lose its effect.

RachelRuth

Hmm... I can try. That can be my next post, but I’ll say a few things about speech tags. If I mention an attribution, that is just a speech tag.

Dialogue follows some easy rules, actually. I’ll list a few rules below to see if that is easy user than a long paragraph:

• the first word spoken is always capitalized
• the dialogue tag is attached with a comma (unless the comma would replace a exclamation point, question mark, ellipse, or dash! These character replace the comma)
• dialogue tags are always lowercase unless they start with a proper noun (a name)
• quotation marks go at the beginning and end of speech
• only what is said goes inside the quotation marks
• a period always goes inside the quotation marks; however, an exclamation point or question mark are left outside unless they are spoken
• if there is a quote within a quote (like a character mocking another character), then the speech is done normally and the part that is quoted is put in single quotes. That is what single quotes are for.
• thoughts never go in quotation marks, not even single ones
• one speaker per paragraph!

Some additional notes

• an ellipse (...) means the character paused and their voice trails off. It’s a specific type of pause and is usually only used in speech. A narrator wouldn’t have their voice trail off unless it is a framed story and they are a character.

• ending speech with a dash means they suddenly stopped or someone interrupted them

• speech tags are not always needed, but it should be obvious who is talking. I do it like this, the first time a character talks they get a speech tag. If two people are talking, then I alternate by paragraph after that and assume the reader can follow. Three or more speakers can be tricky. It is better to use too many tags than too few.

• if the character does something while talking, you can break their speech into two parts and have an action in the middle. You don’t necessarily need a speech tag, but only the parts being spoken are in quotes. Only the speech tag is attached with a comma and made lowercase. Everything else is punctuated normally. See my example below.

“It’s not that hard,” the man said. “Punctuating speech follows the same rules.” He waved his hand as if to dismiss the subject. “Once you know them, you should be able to do them repeatedly.”

Let me know if anything doesn’t make sense. If I do another post I’ll include more examples and such to show how to do this.

Snowin

Sure! I’m not an amazing author, but I love honest feedback! The grammar shouldn’t give you a headache... I hope. Also, let me know if you have a novel you want me to look at. It will be a long time for I finish my review, but I’ll put it in my library.

https://dynamic.webnovel.com/book/16930452606946205?utm_source=writerShare&utm_campaign=4311387755

MintyMintyMilkTea

I’ve never considered doing editing. Pointing out some mistakes during a review swap is as close as I’ve gotten. Being an editor might be fun; however, I don’t know where to even start.

Nathair_Insint

Great questions!

First of all, question marks and exclamation marks do go inside the quotation marks if they are being said. They only exist outside of them if they are not a part of the dialogue.

I’ll use your example:

“I hate you!” she screamed.

Later, if someone is talking about “her”:

“Did you hear that she said, ‘I hate you!’?”

Or you could do it like this:

Didn’t she say, “I hate you!”?

That is grammatically correct. Note that the single quotes in the first example contain only the direct quote. It uses single quotes because it is inside another quote for dialogue. The question mark is not a part of the quote, so it moves outside. The second example only has one set of quotes, so they are double quotes. Still, the question mark is outside of the quotes.

Here is another example that doesn’t have an exclamation point.

Aren’t you mad that she said, “I hate you”?

In this example I am asking a question, but the quote doesn’t include a question. The quotation marks omit the period because it isn’t necessary to convey meaning, and the question mark is outside.

In a story you hardly ever see this happen because the narrator hardly ever asks questions about character quotes. If you are writing a story, it’s safe to assume the exclamation or question mark goes inside the quotes with the character dialogue.

As for showing thoughts in your work, italics in the technically correct way to do it. You would put the thought in italic font, followed by a comma and thought tag. It would look like this (note that I’m putting the italicized words in parenthesis because I can’t do italics on my phone):

(Wow, that looks delicious), he thought.

There is, technically, a way to do internal dialogue as well. Internal dialogue would be the character talking to themself internally. It also uses regular double quotes. This is tricky because it can be extremely confusing if you have both external dialogue and internal dialogue. Basically, you are only supposed to include one at a time. It would require you to setup the whole scene as the character having an “internal conversation” like a monologue or aside in a play. That way it is clear that all conversation in the entire scene is internal dialogue.

In my opinion, you shouldn’t need to include that many thoughts in your fiction writing. If your characters feel something, then it should influence their behavior. Show us the behavior and let us assume the feelings. This is part of “showing vs telling” in a story. In particular, you should never include thoughts of a character who isn’t the point of view character because it breaks the narrative. An example is below:

(I’m scared), Tina thought. As we walked through a dark forest

Tinas eyes darted from side to side, trying to see what was hiding in the forest beyond the light of the torch. She started trembling.

shadowdrake27 I think you forgot about multi-paragraph soliloquies, where each paragraph within the speech gets an opening quotation mark, but only the final paragraph gets a closing quotation mark (unless broken up with tags). But I suppose no one is reading a several-hundred word tirade on Webnovel even if someone had the time to write it.
Otherwise, you are providing a great service, and I commend you.