Six Tips on Writing Speech

Or more precisely, a conversation in six sentences.

A pupil recently asked me about writing speech in stories.

“Do I need to put he said, she said after every sentence?”  he asked.

“No.” I replied.  “If you look at a story in a book, you’ll notice that they very rarely indicate who has spoken.”

“Really?”  He picked up a book, read a few sentences. “Oh yes,  I see what you mean!”

“There you go.  You have to learn to trust the reader; they’re cleverer than beginner writers give them credit for.  The reader can recognise who’s speaking when people are taking turns in a conversation.”

“So you only have to indicate the names at the start?”

“Well,” I said, “You might want to occasionally remind them who’s speaking.”

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4 Comments

  1. Can you send this blog to John Scalzi, I love his work but the constant, x said, y said does get a little tiring…

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