Drafting Your Short Story - with Dialogue Days 3 & 4 Students will write a rough draft of their short story. This rough draft must include dialogue between characters.

Days 3 & 4 – Rough Draft Take out several (5-6 sheets of notebook paper) Write your working title and ROUGH DRAFT on the title line of the 1st page Begin writing your story. Remember – this is only a rough draft, you can always go back and change things you don’t like. Just start writing!!!

Writing Dialogue Between Characters Dialogue between characters serves a purpose – it should move the story forward and help the reader better understand your characters. Dialogue: Reveals character and establishes relationships Provides exposition Conveys a sense of place and time Establishes and develops conflict Dialogue Tags: he said, she replied, he answered, etc.

Hints for Writing Dialogue Show, Don’t Tell – like good description, good dialogue shows instead of tells “I think you are annoyed with me,” she said. “Yes, I am annoyed with you,” he said. He jerked his head away as she tried to fix his hair. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Nothing!” he said. In the first example, we know one character is annoyed because the author tells us so. But it’s boo-boo dialogue because the author doesn’t show that annoyance. We can’t feel or see the character’s irritation, so it’s less effective. In the second example the annoyance is obvious even though neither character mentions being annoyed. The second example is much more true to human interaction.

Hints for Writing Dialogue - Punctuation Put all dialogue in quotation marks: “The view from here is beautiful.” When a quote is a complete sentence without a tag, insert a period inside the quotation marks at the end of the sentence: “The mountains are spectacular.” If a complete sentence is attributed to a speaker, insert a comma inside the quotation marks & put a period after the dialogue tag: “The view from here is beautiful,” he said.

Hints for Writing Dialogue - Punctuation If you want to put your dialogue tag in the middle of a sentence, put a comma inside the first set of closing quotation marks and after the dialogue tag: “Ever since this morning,” he said, “my allergies have been driving me crazy.” If your quotation ends with a question mark or exclamation point, put it inside the quotation marks. Your dialogue tag will still be lower case and will end with a period: “Did you remember the bug spray?” she asked. If you introduce the dialogue, insert a comma before the opening quotation marks and start the quotation with a capital letter: She asked, “Did you remember the bug spray?”