: Re: A question about dialogue and paragraphs? First question I've asked on here so hopefully it isn't a silly one. I am a little confused about a certain paragraph/dialogue convention I am using

@Kevin153

Vote Up Vote Down

Good question. Typically it's fine, but it may bring up problems to deal with in the paragraph, and now you have a few: "...he scolded him..." This leads to the silly predicament, grammatically, of which is which. Since we know he was talking to john, that it is he scolded john, but the reader has to think of that, and grammatically you've made the reader assume your meaning. Generally a no-no.

Otherwise it's acceptable but cognitively costly. As a reader I have to re-read this first sentence twice to really grasp what's happening, not because there are two things, but because of the underlying structure. Dialog, then who the dialog came from, then an emotion from another character, finally ending with an action from the 2nd character. That's a lot for a single sentence, and the fact that it's two characters doing two different things can cause confusion.

I recommend just leaving simple actions for two characters in a single sentence for easier understanding. Right now I have trouble picturing the scene you are spelling out without reading it multiple times and thinking about it. If you can read it and just see it, then voila.

(0)

Login to post a comment!