: Writing a fiction novel with poetic verses and handling dialogues I am wondering how you should format dialogues when writing a fiction novel with poetic verses. I believe that the descriptive

Vote Up Vote Down

Novels in verse, like Yevgeniy Onegin subject everything else to the structure of the verse. This means that instead of following the usual format of starting a new line for each character's line of dialogue, a new line or a new paragraph would be started according to the demands of the prosody. It might be that those go together with dialogue lines, or it might be that they don't. For example, in Yvgeniy Onegin mentioned above, several exchanges between Onegin and his friend Lenski involve multiple one-word statements. Those are fitted into two lines of verse, without respecting who speaks. Sort of like this:

"Can you introduce me?" - "You serious?" - "Absolutely." - "I would be glad." - "When can we go?" - "Let's go today". (My translation, from memory.)

So, to sum up, prosody trumps regular formatting rules, even when dialogue is concerned.

If you wish to mix verse and prose, verse is formatted like verse, and prose - like prose.

(0)