Skills: Dialogue

Inventing Characters Read! Journal Word Notebook

Choosing Titles The Fab Four Golden Rules Generating Ideas Stealing Ideas From an Idea to a Plan Planning from a Picture Stories Based on a Passage Stories Based on a Sentence An Example of Good Planning

Describing a Location Longer descriptions Describing a character's appearance Dialogue Distinctive Voices Show, Don't Tell Characterisation: Shown Feelings More Characterisation Techniques Playing with Sentences Playscripts Action Suspense

What is story structure? 1 Exciting opening line 2 Set the scene 3 Talking and describing character 4 Characterisation 5 Suspense 6 Action 7 Cliffhanger Standing Out: How can you stand out from the crowd? Clever Clogs: Non-Linear Clever-clogs: Two perspectives Clever-clogs: Narrative voice Practice 11+ exam titles

Checking your story in an exam Redrafting = improving your story What if I run out of time in an exam? The Grumpy Examiner's Pet Hates

Year 2 into 3 Lemony Snicket After Harry Potter Must-Read Authors Spy Novels Horror Stories Classics Animal Stories Adventure Historical Fiction Myths & Legends Fantasy Family Stories & Comedies

Dialogue is the ‘talking’ in your stories. Having your characters talk to one another makes them come alive for your reader. If you get the dialogue right, you’ve got a good chance of writing a great story.

“ If you don’t indent or punctuate your dialogue correctly you will make my blood boil,” warned the Grumpy Examiner. “And you’ll make it really difficult for your readers to follow your story!”

Remember, in an 11+ exam you’ll only have half-an-hour to write one-and-a-half sides of A4. The best 11+ examination stories use dialogue to propel their stories forwards.

Every time someone starts to speak you begin a new paragraph.

We begin new paragraphs with an indent (a two finger space in from the margin).

“ Like this!” said Bald Worm.

Everything that a character says should be enclosed between speech marks.

I’m sure that your teachers have told you “don’t just use ‘said’. Use lots of different speech verbs, like ‘shouted’, ‘begged’ and ‘moaned.” Your teacher is right!

"Please use some speech tags,” said the Grumpy Examiner, “but do make sure you don’t just use said.
“I’ll remember that!” giggled Bob.
“Remember, you’ll really impress me if you use varied and interesting speech verbs!” cried the Grumpy Examiner.
“But do I need to include a speech verb for every single piece of speech?”
“No. In longer dialogues, it is usually better to drop the speech verb altogether, once the reader realises who is talking.”
“Like this?”
“Just like this!” laughed the Grumpy Examiner.

The classic mistake is to fill your writing with salutations – comments like ‘hi’, ‘well’, ‘yeah’ – things that we say all the time when we chat with our friends, but make for dull story dialogue. Look at this example, which is typical of the bad dialogue the Grumpy Examiner often has to read:

“Hi!” said Bob.
“Hiya,” I replied.
“How you doing?” he asked.
“I’m alright. How are you?” I said.
“Fine.”
“That’s good.”
So, what are you up to this weekend?”
“Nothing much,” I muttered.
“Do you fancy coming to the cinema with me?” asked Bob
“That would be great, but my Mum won’t let me out.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll come. But I’m going to get in so much trouble for this.”

This conversation took twelve lines to give me a tiny piece of information. Twelve lines! If I was writing this in an 11+ exam I’d have wasted nearly half-a-page already! By cutting out the salutations, I can give my reader the same information in just a couple of lines:

“Hiya, mate! Fancy coming to the cinema tonight?” asked Bob.
“Alright, but my Mum’s going to kill me if she finds out.” I muttered.

Do you remember our ‘Fab Four Golden Rules for Planning a Story’? One of them was conflict – disagreements, arguments and problems. Try to base your dialogues around disagreements and arguments:

“Hiya, mate! Fancy coming to the cinema tonight?” asked Bob.
“No way – my Mum’ll kill me if she found out!”

Last updated on August 14, 2007