Multi character conversations

[KeithD]

Sometimes if there's a crowd speaking and it really doesn't matter who's saying what, I'll leave it.

"You're mad!"
"What are you on, man?"
"Your head's a marley!"
"Don't be bloody daft!"
Will realised his plan wasn't going down well with the table.

The problem here would be to be careful that the reader not wonder if one of the principle characters had said this. Everything attributed to a character in the story will be taken by the reader as a building block into that character and his/her motivations in the story. The author needs to be careful not to include unintentional red herrings or misconstrued irrelevancies in that process.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If you wish to take liberties with dialogue style, it's your choice, but my recommendation would be to revise this significantly. This is full of irregularities and missing punctuation and sentence fragments.

You don't use the standard, normal dialogue tag "she said" once in this dialogue fragment, and I can't figure out why. It would be MUCH better if you simply did it that way. It seems like you are unnecessarily complicating the way you do things.

"Sophie again" is not a sentence. It's a sentence fragment. Write it this way:

"Game? What game?" Sophie asked.

I strongly, strongly recommend that you look at some stories by other authors to see what the customary way is to handle dialogue. To me, the way you've done this makes it awkward to read.

I agree with Simon. I got thrown out by the first "Michelle speaking." It read like she was a poorly punctuated call centre operator.

Story writing is not like writing a role-play script or a screenplay. Story dialogue clarity and action flow has to be seamless, invisible. "He said," "she said" tags work easily nearly every time, which is why they're so common.

Elaborate dialogue tags nearly always ends up affected and/or self-conscious, which is the last thing you want. You want the reader's eye drawn to the characters, not the construction.

You don't always need explicit dialogue tags either, context can do the heavy lifting. The last time this came up I counted my speech tag to context ratio, and found that I'm fairly consistently one speech tag in every ten lines of dialogue, the other nine being signified by context or back and forth sequencing alone. But then I don't write orgies - even a three-way increases the use of names and tags to establish who's up who and who's paying the rent.

 

[vanmyers86]

My best advice is to take the time to get it right before you move on to writing and posting Chapter 2. For one thing, getting your grammar and usage right increases the chances of people actually wanting to read Chapter 2.

It's hard to overuse "said," but you can reduce its use by prefacing dialogue with action. Here's an example from my latest, https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/so-many-kinds-of-love

I hooked my thumbs under the hem of my T-shirt. “I’ll go first.” Slowly, I pulled off the shirt, then my sweats and boxer-briefs, not trying to make it seem sexy so much as the most natural thing in the world. I folded them and tossed them to the nearby chair. “See? Easy-peasy.”

“You’ve got a good body,” she argued, staring at me in a way that made my stomach do a backflip or two. “No one’s going to reject you.”

Putting my weight on one hand, I leaned forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. “It’s just me and you here, girly. I love you with everything I have. The last thing I’m gonna do is reject you.”

 

[SimonDoom]

My best advice is to take the time to get it right before you move on to writing and posting Chapter 2. For one thing, getting your grammar and usage right increases the chances of people actually wanting to read Chapter 2.

It's hard to overuse "said," but you can reduce its use by prefacing dialogue with action. Here's an example from my latest, https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/so-many-kinds-of-love

I hooked my thumbs under the hem of my T-shirt. “I’ll go first.” Slowly, I pulled off the shirt, then my sweats and boxer-briefs, not trying to make it seem sexy so much as the most natural thing in the world. I folded them and tossed them to the nearby chair. “See? Easy-peasy.”

“You’ve got a good body,” she argued, staring at me in a way that made my stomach do a backflip or two. “No one’s going to reject you.”

Putting my weight on one hand, I leaned forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. “It’s just me and you here, girly. I love you with everything I have. The last thing I’m gonna do is reject you.”

I think the way you did it is clear. But -- and this may just be my preference -- I think it's better, most of the time, to start a new paragraph when you start a new snippet of dialogue. I think it's clearer and snappier and more fun to read it this way.

So here's how I would revise the passage you wrote, with minimal changes to content or grammar or word choice but some change to the way it's constructed in terms of paragraphs:

I hooked my thumbs under the hem of my T-shirt.

“I’ll go first,” I said.

Slowly, I pulled off the shirt, then my sweats and boxer-briefs, not trying to make it seem sexy so much as the most natural thing in the world. I folded them and tossed them to the nearby chair.

“See? Easy-peasy.”

“You’ve got a good body,” she said, staring at me in a way that made my stomach do a backflip or two. “No one’s going to reject you.”

Putting my weight on one hand, I leaned forward and gave her a peck on the cheek.

“It’s just me and you here, girly. I love you with everything I have. The last thing I’m gonna do is reject you.”

I think it reads easier this way in a Literotica story being read online.

The only real word change I made is to change "argued", which I don't think is quite right because she's not really arguing, to "said."

IMO, you can't go wrong with "said" as opposed to all the other possible alternatives. Sometimes an alternative is fine, but if you're thinking about using an alternative to "said" really think about it and make sure it's right.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

If, for example, it's a mom/son story. The third person will be in italics. Like if they go to see a doctor or something

"...." Mom said.

Jeff replied,"..."

Paragraph

"....italics..." the doctor said.

Or I'll keep the focus on one person's dialogue and have the other characters talk at the same time.

For example.


"......" I explained.

paragraph
paragraph

I saw the puzzled looks on their faces.

"....." Jeff said. "...."

Clara chimed in, "....."

paragraph

"......" I replied.

Well, as most people use the Lit app to read Lit stories, the Italics will disappear. The app currently strips our all HTML tags.

 

[SimonDoom]

If, for example, it's a mom/son story. The third person will be in italics. Like if they go to see a doctor or something

"...." Mom said.

Jeff replied,"..."

Paragraph

"....italics..." the doctor said.

.

Why would one do this?

You use a dialogue tag to indicate the doctor said it. So what is added by putting it in italics?

My two cents: I don't like this use of italics at all. I find italics distracting and annoying. Italics should be used, IMO, in an extremely limited way, because it's harder to read than regular font.

 

[vanmyers86]

I think the way you did it is clear. But -- and this may just be my preference -- I think it's better, most of the time, to start a new paragraph when you start a new snippet of dialogue. I think it's clearer and snappier and more fun to read it this way.

Fair enough, SimonDoom!