With one quote mark or two?
It's how people talk and that's the problem. Writing it whilst in the middle of a scene playing in your head, the words sound fairly normal. We like say like yeah you know like it's what I'm tryin' to tell you.
You hear people talking that way and in the scene, it sounds very real.
Read it back and wonder, 'what the fuck was that about?' Single quotes.
Or in italics.
The italics is a form that naturally didn't exist before the word processor was developed. The italicized word was underlined through a process that involves the wheel, axle grease and a backspace key.
I think stories are driven by dialogue, with a touch of 'he pinned the gardenia to her blouse' while he stared at her chest, proclaiming "My, I love the way you have your hair up."
"Thank you, I think," she implied.
Of course, the actions are considered trite and pointless. The 'she said' is good enough but not very often because the experts tell you it drags down the scene. You just need to plop in a pronoun here and there so you can tell who's being snarky and who's being Costello.
And Who's On First.
It's cadence and if dialogue doesn't seem natural, just condense it to a paraphrased scene and move on to the moment she exclaims:
"Just because I let you put the flower on my blouse doesn't give you the right to have tricky fingers, buddy-boy!"
"Sorry," he whined.
Dialogue from my prospective Best-Seller "Tooth of Toad."
Hilly and Bonny are at the mysterious shed.
*
We found the same dirt pull-in from before and I could see the shed on the other side of the hedge apples that had looked so forbidding in the dark, even with an experienced witch as my guide. Same rusted fence posts, same little pathway through the cocklebur patch.
“OK, Hilly, my honey bun, here’s our shed. I brought the journal, so we can do some real work there.”
“Is that the same journal you mentioned earlier? We gonna make the wheel spin?”
“You wanna? It’s broken. Grab that wooden slat over there,” she pointed. “We might need to swat down some spiders.”
“I thought witches were friends to spiders.”
Bonny gazed at me. “Maybe your witches are but they scare the fuck out of me. Be my hero, Hilly, and kill any that you see.”
“Another illusion, shot to hell.”
She stopped short of the shed. “If you hear anything, let me know.”
“Any limitations on what that might be? I mean, there’s a little plane flying this direction. If you listen close, you hear the train horn over by Bradley Lake.”
“Don’t be a butthead, Hilly. It needs to growl first.”
“Spiders don’t typically growl, Bonny. Screw this, let me kick open the shed and murder anything with eight legs or fangs.”
“Fangs would have a bad attitude, Hilly. Spiders are just creepy.”
x
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