Dialogue punctuation is something I really harp on about to my students, because there are a lot of rules in fiction, and you can break every single one of them if you have a good reason – except dialogue. Yeah, okay, I know there are some big-name authors out there who DO break the rules of dialogue punctuation and paragraphing, but essentially, I tell my students, the rules of dialogue punctation and paragraphing are unbreakable, because they exist to make things clear to the reader. You want your ideas to be clear, right? Yes, yes you do. *ahem*.
So anyway, in conversation with the Twinny One, I realised I’d never shared my dialogue videos with you before. So I’ve set up a special new page: you can click here to go to Dialogue 101, where there are three videos that step you through all the finicky ins and outs of how to punctuate and paragraph dialogue correctly, as well as the difference between beats and tags, and how to use them 🙂