second story and writing speech

[OxfordDon]

The second part of "My First College Girl" has just been approved but I submitted it before I had feedback on the first one so apologies if I apear to have ignored any advice I was given.

One of the points raised was regarding attribution of dialogue and I appreciate that it helps to know who is saying what. However if it is purely a two handed conversation is it acceptable to sometimes just set out the speech for a few lines rather than saying "I said" followed by "she replied" every line?
eg:-

"Are you ok?" asked Jenny.
"Fine" I replied .
"Sure?"
"Of course, why do you ask?"
"You seem distracted"
"Just trying to work out this speech attribution thing" I muttered, peering at my screen.

Any advice welcome.

Martin

 

[Saucy_Sage]

The second part of "My First College Girl" has just been approved but I submitted it before I had feedback on the first one so apologies if I apear to have ignored any advice I was given.

One of the points raised was regarding attribution of dialogue and I appreciate that it helps to know who is saying what. However if it is purely a two handed conversation is it acceptable to sometimes just set out the speech for a few lines rather than saying "I said" followed by "she replied" every line?
eg:-

"Are you ok?" asked Jenny.
"Fine" I replied .
"Sure?"
"Of course, why do you ask?"
"You seem distracted"
"Just trying to work out this speech attribution thing" I muttered, peering at my screen.

Any advice welcome.

Martin

Yes, that's perfectly fine. As long as the reader can understand what you're doing, that's really all that counts. Well, that and adhering to longstanding conventions like putting commas and periods after your dialogue where appropriate.

"Are you ok?" asked Jenny. ------- (I would spell out okay)
"Fine" I replied . ------ (comma after Fine, before you end the quote)
"Sure?"
"Of course, why do you ask?" ------ (my personal preferences is for a period here, to make it two sentences rather than one, but that may be more a matter of taste)
"You seem distracted" ------ (period after distracted, before you end the quote)
"Just trying to work out this speech attribution thing" I muttered, peering at my screen. ------ (comma after thing, before you end the quote)


​

Oh, and remember how much we like links to help us find stories...

 

[OxfordDon]

links to stories

Oh, and remember how much we like links to help us find stories...


Oops! Will do in future and thanks for the advice.

Martin G

 

[cloudy]

"Are you ok?" asked Jenny. I wouldn't even use it here, since the question mark makes it very clear that it's a question. You could do something like: Jenny looked at him closer. "Are you ok?"

replied, said, and asked are a little banal and overworked most of the time. To vary things a little, instead of using an attribute, you can preface dialogue with an action, as I did above.

 

[Hisscarlett]

Thank you OxfordDon for starting the thread, I have learnt a lot from the replies! It is great how people are so open to helping others.

 

[gauchecritic]

so long as the attributes are noted at the beginning of the conversation then I'd say that an obvious sequence of speakers, has no need of attribution.

If you're confident then multiple contributors can also be unattributed and lead the reader by dialogue alone.

"Cloudy" I asked, "What do you think?"

"I agree with Saucy really. Saucy?"

"Well I've already said what I thought. Is it different somehow to what a guy thinks?"

"Mmmph, gmmm, hrgh" I mumbled, disentangling Cloudy's tongue from my mouth.

"Fine, fine, hijack away, I'm just a newb."