Narrative Basics Lesson 4: Speech and Dialogue

Characters need to talk to each other, so stories usually have speech and dialogue. 

But it helps to think of speech as an action. People don’t speak for no reason—people speak to persuade, entertain, inform, frighten, mock, reassure, and so on.

For instance, what are the characters doing in this snippet?

The entire snippet is dialogue. But what are the characters doing with their dialogue?

The coach is pumping up the team. The team are responding to the coach’s energy.

In this lesson, we’ll focus on speech as an action in this way.