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Q&A Normal structure for Dialogue paragraphs

You can insert narrative into dialogue wherever a speaker might pause: "You," she finally looks at me, "have been," her finger touches me on the chest, "much too reckless with my heart." She pu...

posted 10y ago by System‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:36:53Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12359
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:36:53Z (almost 5 years ago)
You can insert narrative into dialogue **wherever a speaker might pause** :

> "You," she finally looks at me, "have been," her finger touches me on the chest, "much too reckless with my heart." She pushes me away and stands. "Go!" She points at the door. "And don't come back."

Where the speaker pauses will depend not on syntactic rules but on what makes sense in your story. For me even this feels fine:

> "You," she finally looks at me, "have been," her finger touches me on the chest, "much too reckless," she leans close, "with," kisses me, "my heart."

Interweaving the description and dialogue in this way makes sense because the behavior and the words flow in unison. You can imagine the speaker pausing for effect when her actions become increasingly contradictory to her words. Still, you might find a clear separation more sylistically elegant:

> She finally looks at me and touches me on the chest "You have been much to reckless with my heart." She kisses me, then pushes me away and stands. "Go!"

That is of course not the same chain of events, and you might prefer words and action in parallel. But you must not overuse such a "special effect", because it soon becomes annoying to the reader, as any deviation from the usual.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2014-07-10T07:59:29Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 1