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Q&A How to format dialogue with an embedded long monologue

I use the following formats for dialogues: dialogue dialogue - describing action (if any) dialogue - describing action (if any) - more dialogue (if any) There is a chapter in my book that is m...

2 answers  ·  posted 11y ago by Psicofrenia‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Question dialogue
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:51:30Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/7824
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Psicofrenia‭ · 2019-12-08T02:51:30Z (over 4 years ago)
I use the following formats for dialogues:

- dialogue 

- dialogue - describing action (if any)

- dialogue - describing action (if any) - more dialogue (if any)

There is a chapter in my book that is mainly a conversation. During that chapter, after - let's say - the 10 first paragraphs, it starts to look like a monologue since the second chars starts to tell a history to the first one.

In that scope, the normal dialogue won't work. I'm not sure how to format what the second character is saying since it will be spread out over more than one paragraph. How do I deal with such long dialogues?

It seems nonsensical to drop the paragraphs just because of the dialogue. It also doesn't seem right to use something like this:

- dialogue

more dialogue of the same char in another paragraph without the dash

Or:

- dialogue

- more dialogue of the same char in another paragraph with the dash

My solution was to insert unnecessary things from the first character just to help the formatting, but that's not what I really want.

- dialogue

- something unnecessary from the other character

- more dialogue of the other character 

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-05-06T13:01:19Z (almost 11 years ago)
Original score: 6