How to Format Dialogue in Novels - The art of clear conversations

Author: Sandy Vaile
Previously published on the Writers in the Storm blog on 3rd August 2023.


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Dialogue in fiction stories is a reliable way of bringing characters to life and immersing readers in their lives, but for it to be effective, it needs to be understood.

As Michel de Montaigne said in his essay, On the Art of Conversation,

The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind … is conversation.”

​It stimulates thinking, engages facial expressions and has the magic to convey complex ideas to others. In fact, we were communicating verbally long before we decided to write down ideas.

Engaging conversations that add value to narration, need to:

• Make it clear who is speaking to whom;
• Use succinct and authentic language;
• Compliment the surrounding narrative; and
• Be correctly formatted and punctuated. 

Dialogue doesn’t include private thoughts, dreams or narration. 

Make it clear who is speaking

It’s important that readers can easily determine who is speaking, so they can follow the conversation and don’t get the wrong impression of what’s going on in the story.

Ambiguity can lead to misinterpretation, but this can be prevented by:

• Separating the speech and actions of each character into different paragraphs.
• Not going too long without a dialogue tag to establish who is speaking. 

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