Common Mistake #2 ... Undermining Dialogue with Inconsistent Formatting

Go on, it’s not like it’ll matter in the end.

Can I say this? What will happen if I… Oh, for fuck’s sake, I might as well…

Today’s common writing mistake is all about inner dialogue. Inner dialogue gives us the chance to:

• Incorporate surprise details about a character (Imagine that second italicized sentence showing up from a character who’s a Roman Catholic nun.)

• Let the reader into a layer of complexity

• Illustrate how mental health sounds internally compared to how it looks externally

As an autistic person, I’m often trying to decipher what someone is thinking or meaning to say, so it’s no surprise that in writing I love the added layers of clarity and insight of inner dialogue. But, when it’s formatted improperly or inconsistently, it can really ruin the engine of a story.

For our purposes today, let’s assume you’re writing essays on Substack. It’s crucial, especially for first-time readers just discovering your work, that the reader can visually anticipate a shift into a character’s inner thought life. If they don’t know who’s talking or when, you risk losing a reader.

Let’s get into fixing today’s common mistake. I have a few default settings for when I’m writing inner dialogue. But my guide is rooted in my training in AP Style and my own experiments with readability. I hope this helps you write dialogue without getting too hung up on particulars.

Easy Dialogue Formatting:

Whenever a new person is thinking or speaking, it calls for a paragraph break. Whenever there is dialogue after narration or a descriptive sentence, it calls for a paragraph break. Additionally, I italicize inner thinking, and I put anyone speaking aloud into quotations. If someone has spoken out loud, nine times out of 10, they need attribution, such as: “I’m done,” said Dan.

I know those paragraph breaks might sound like a lot of space wasted, but I promise they’re not frivolous.

The visual room between the previous sentence and a shift to dialogue is critical to readability.

I’ll put an example in the comments below, as well as some dialogue tips and (!) my first attempt at writing fiction to illustrate what this all looks like.