Easily teach DIALOGUE for creative writing: format, punctuation and keeping it real!

I’m a chatterbox. I wear my heart on my sleeve and have to talk about eeevvvverrryyythiing. It’s fairly easy to get to know me! So, I’ve been thinking; why don’t we leverage dialogue mor? Teach dialogue for creative writing because it's a powerful way to develop characters.

We don’t often focus on dialogue because:

We assume it’s a ‘given’. If students want to include dialogue in their story, they can. Meh.
We secretly hope the students hate using it as much as we hate teaching it. We've all swept it under the carpet. Yikes.
We (okay, I!) flippantly remind students that dialogue should sound realistic with poor grammar, unfinished sentences, slang ‘and stuff’, and of course you must remember those quotation marks! Then I put my head in the sand and pretend I’ve ticked that box.
Ugh…formatting and punctuation drives us nuts, right? Hopefully last year’s teacher covered that!

The basics:

If you listen to real speech, you'll find these characteristics:

Sentences are left unfinished.
Ideas don’t flow logically; they jump around from one thought to another.
Real speech is sometimes – in fact, often – full of poor grammar.
It rambles.
It is repetitious.
It sometimes relies on physical gestures to clarify meaning (so you might have to describe this in your writing too).
It uses elision (cutting off the last letters - eg goin’ instead of going)
It uses slang such as ‘kinda’ instead of ‘kind of’.

Ergo, we tell our students, dialogue sounds more realistic if you do these things. If students don't believe you, try getting students to transcribe that last bus or lunchtime conversation they had with their mates. Hopefully this’ll prove the point!

Formatting:

Change in speaker = change in paragraph.

A change in speaker means a change in paragraph (ie, a new paragraph). Do NOT fall into the trap of saying to students a NEW speaker means a NEW paragraph. Students will say, “Sally’s not a new speaker though, Miss. She’s been here all along.” Valiantly, you go down the explanatory rabbit hole of, “Yeah, but the last person to speak was Mere, so Sally IS new.” Forget it. Use the slogan CHANGE THE SPEAKER. CHANGE THE PARAGRAPH. Trust me. I’m old.

Prove it: Grab a novel. Find a section of dialogue – conversation going back and forth between characters. Break it down to show students:

The new paragraphs.
How the new paragraphs help the reader know who is speaking.
That the author doesn't always have to tell us who is speaking because the new paragraphs help the reader navigate that.

Use the tab key to indent the first lines of paragraphs.

Grab that novel again. Point out the way new paragraphs are indicated - not by missing a whole line, but by indenting the first line. If students miss a WHOLE LINE to begin new paragraphs, then a full-on conversation is going to spread the story all down the page.

Teach students to indent the first line of a new paragraph. This involves showing them the TAB key on their keyboard. They should NOT hit the space bar multiple times to indent! Prepare to be shocked: many students don’t know the tab key does this! (You might need to show them how to adjust the indent using the ruler view on their document.)

Punctuation

Keep it simple with these two rules:

Always use the double quotation marks - ye ol' 66 and 99! These are the real ones. Don’t let students use the singles …sigh…yes…even though many a publisher does this now…cry. Make like Braveheart and HOLD…HOOOOLD…HOOOOOLLLLLD firm on what’s right! Yas!
Always have a ‘bit of punctuation’ BEFORE every quotation mark.

Activity ideas to practice skills

Conversations with mates/family

Have students remember and transcribe a conversation with friends or family. Obviously, it doesn't matter if it's not perfectly remembered! (At first, I thought about getting students to record lunchtime convos, but that might open a nasty can of worms, right?!).
Then, ask them to add in the ‘fillers’ – eg: …said Jo. …replied Sue.
Next, ask students to edit their transcript so the format is correct. That is:
- A change in paragraph when there’s a change is speaker.
- Indentation of the first line (using the tab key, not the space bar).
Students can then return to the second instruction to rethink those additions. Are they all needed or do the changes in paragraph help the reader navigate speakers easily enough? Superfluous information makes writing sluggish, so deleting unnecessary cues is a bonus.
Finally, edit to ensure punctuation is correct. That is:
- Double quotation marks.
- Punctuation of some sort before every quotation mark.

Conversations from a video clip.

Alternatively, you could play a video clip of characters in discussion. Have students transcribe this then complete the same steps above. (You could double dip by choosing a conversation that’s important in a film they’re already studying or read a passage from a class novel.)

An idea for a writing task:

Begin with the dialogue. Students can show a lot about characters through what they say. (Ummm…playscripts?!)

Then have students pad their dialogue out with:

Actions – especially:
body language – She looked down, tweaking at a furball on her jersey
Facial gesture – His disgust meant he struggled to control the rise on one side of his top lip, but Tom clocked it.
Descriptions about the surroundings, characters’ thoughts etc.