: Re: Do you have any tips on describing dialogue? Specifically, how to describe a person's voice or tone of speaking, and ideas on how dialogue should be formatted.

In school, lots of us were taught to avoid 'said'. This is really terrible advice. In modern writing, you should definitely not look for fancy alternatives to 'said'.

'Said' is simple, effective, and does its job without distracting from your story. There's a good article on TV Tropes which explains more.

The best tip I have is to write dialogue that speaks for itself. Convey your character's tone, mood and subtext through well-chosen actions and body language. Instead of telling us how your character 'snorted [whatever] angrily', show us her fist slammed into the wall.

On punctuating dialogue, I really like this blog post. The author made some follow-up posts, too, which are linked at the bottom.

Hopefully that helps?

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: Re: Do you have any tips on describing dialogue? Specifically, how to describe a person's voice or tone of speaking, and ideas on how dialogue should be formatted.

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