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Aug 2020

I have to say, I'm curious what it is about this you don't like? Do you have an example?

oh, i should clarify my statement. i don't like when dialogue is written/placed in the middle of a paragraph like this:

He woke up, vision blurry and a tad bit hungry from skipping dinner last night. "Ah, fuck," he mumbled with his voice hoarse and throat dry. His tummy grumbled. The yearning for food increases but he ignores such calling to sit up on his bed and focus on something else.

also i wrote this, i didn't copy and paste a novel.

aaah, i see. I didn't actually realise people had an issue with that. It's something I do often if it's the right flow for the piece of work

edit: although upon looking for an example, I've found I don't actually do this that much. What do you think about if another bit of dialogue by the same speaker cinches up the paragraph?

I'm not tryna be funny about it btw, I'm just curious!

I always try to make dialogue a paragraph of its own. If I'm going to describe the dialogue in detail, however, I try to make the piece of dialogue go either at the very beginning or very end of its respective chapter. Kinda just easier to read imo

for sure, but there's some occasions when it's just far too choppy to split the description off the front or the end and it just happens to be how it works. Especially in back and forth dialogue, you don't want to be breaking up the line-to-line flow with one sentence lines that relate to the dialogue in the previous or latter paragraph, it throws the rhythm off

in retrospect, i actually can't really find any examples of this in my manuscript so i guess i don't actually do it haha

cinches? i'm not familiar with the word so I can't be certain with what you're saying.

My personal limit is under 2K per chapter, but on this app, I think around 1K is best.

I understand it’s a comic book site, but I don’t like pictures inside the text, before or after, and small size is okay

Each speaker starts new paragraph, but I am fine when there is a description between two lines of dialogue from the same character in the same paragraph.

Dialogue attribution with simple words OR replaced with a decent description. I prefer not seeing a ‘said, while doing’ or ‘verb+adverb’ often.

Paragraphs that are 3 to 6 sentences long, so it doesn’t look like a packet of spaghetti, but also doesn’t stretch too long.

A balance of description and dialogue.

Since italics are a PITA on this site, I don’t care if there is no italics for thoughts, because people can’t be forced to re-edit every chapter

sorry, i just mean ending the paragraph with another bit of dialogue, e.g. I glared out at the moors. "This is the beginning of my dialogue." Tightening my lips, I turned to the author, disdain clear in the sneer curling my lip. "You're too uncreative to actually make me say something?"

Oh, well. I'm okay with it. I really like your writing style, helps with tolerating the dialogue in the middle of it.

I can tolerate my dislike to a certain degree. I guess my pet peeve stem from the writers that puts a dialogue in the middle of a long paragraph rather than doing the same with the example you have written. And it became a criteria for what kind of novels I pursue on reading from then on.

thank you! hahaa

it's actually interesting because im writing some dialogue atm and the more i think about it, the more i realise there's rarely actually a case to do this, so i was, in fact, wrong about this.

sorry for the interrogation haha! :sweat_01:

no problem, really! it's just my preference

I don’t mind longer text if the story is engaging. I also don’t mind pictures too much unless they’re too many of they’re in a weird place. I prefer them at the end or in the middle. I also like “broken up” dialogue. Even if the chapter is longer, dialogue being its own paragraph makes it faster and easier to read. The dialogue in the description thing isn’t that bad, unless it’s one big wall of text and multiple people are talking. Then I hate it

This I don’t mind because you get to add in some descriptions like their facial expression or movement. I think it makes the dialogue more...visual?

This is a beautiful piece of art :joy:

I agree with the main points everyone has been saying. I’m pretty chill when I read, but please separate dialogue from different characters. That’s a pet peeve of mine. I don’t care where dialogue goes in a paragraph as long as there’s proper punctuation, usually.

i get a little bothered with shorter bits if it comes at the expense of scene-building, but huge kudos to people who can do tight, short scenes with description and plot

but ditto you and @kmlangleyauthor there, i'll read pretty much anything dialogue-wise as long as you start a new damn line for someone new talking, but i vastly prefer dialogue where i get body language and description and tone thrown in

I think I have a mini paragraph where people switch talking (not posted yet). I make it obvious but I didn’t want to break up the flow in that segment

definitely occasions where it works. I do a lot of reported speech in that vibe.

it's what always goes for writing: know the rules before you break them, and break them to better your writing

Honestly yes. It's only a minor thing but it's something that tends to help a lot.