: Re: How to present asides in play writing? I'm not sure whether this is the stackexchange website for this, but I'm in the process of writing a play for a competition. The main character often
I am not a playwright and don't have experience in that genre.
But I did format a play anthology for an ebook recently.
The convention that I noticed was to put in parenthesis immediately after the speaker's name any short description of how the line ought to be delivered.
Then I indicated stage directions (i.e., movement, props, etc) on a separate line in parenthesis -- centered.
But sometimes I broke these rules a bit. For example, when the manner of delivery changes midspeech, I indicate it in parenthesis after the sentence in the same paragraph where this happens. Also, if there was a quick gesture between sentences, (i.e., holds up sword) I sometimes just ran it in the same paragraph of dialogue. I don't start a separate paragraph.
Sometimes if there's a distinct narrative break in the speech or a dramatic pause, I will put the break in a separate paragraph -- and occasionally put the stage direction, description of manner of speech in a separate paragraph.
In one play, I made a separate paragraph with the stage direction (beat) within a very long dramatic dialogue.
I don't think there is a hard and fast rule (unlike screenplay writing for instance). It might be helpful though to see how Project Gutenberg formats their plays.
Some examples of how PG formats their plays. www.gutenberg.org/files/844/844-h/844-h.htm and www.gutenberg.org/files/10623/10623-h/10623-h.htm
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