Writing dialogue isn’t easy.
One of a writer’s greatest tools is the use of dialogue. When dialogue is written well, characters come alive, plots advance, and readers are frantic to turn the pages as they dive deeper into the story.
Characters need voices, and the words they express should match their personalities, ages, and professions to be authentic. The next step is ensuring readers are organized with who is speaking and when. That’s where dialogue tags can be used.
To guide the reader in who is speaking, general tags like “he said” and “she said” or character’s names can be placed before or after various lines.
Consider the use of pauses.
Beats are used in between lines of dialogue, to enliven the action of the character speaking, to communicate movement, convey an emotion, or evoke a general feeling for the scene.
With beats, readers see character movement as well as the emotional subtext of a scene. For example, a marriage proposal can be conveyed without using words. All thanks to the dialogue and the beats.
An added benefit is that the dialogue sounds more natural because beats allow for interruption and natural pauses. Adding this movement in between lines of dialogue fulfills the natural moment of pause that punctuates the action.
In turn, pauses help regulate pacing.
For especially heavy scenes of dialogue, this can be an important element to control. Still, there’s no magic formula for how often to add beats, and there are no hard and fast rules about exactly where they should occur. In some instances, beats might actually interrupt the dialogue.
Consider this scene:
Rosa stumbled backward. “Don’t come any closer. I don’t want you here. You’re not supposed to be here.”
Or this scene with a pause at the end of the dialogue:
Rosa stumbled backward. “Don’t come any closer. I don’t want you here. You’re not supposed to—” As she held up her hand, the intruder lunged forward and grabbed her.
The unfinished final line of dialogue signals an abrupt change in the scene. Something dramatic has just occurred to pause the character before the sentence is complete. Then, a beat adds further suspense to make the action more tense.
Whatever the genre, writers can experiment with placement of beats around dialogue to achieve different effects. If you are wrestling with your characters’ voices, consider the use of beats to help improve their scenes.
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