A dialogue within a literary work is when two or more characters have a conversation between one another. This can be in a spoken or written form. When used properly dialogue can help advance a story and share a character’s thoughts, personality, and feelings. It also helps to make the character seem more human to the audience. This is often the liveliest portion of any literary work. When we see the characters begin to interact, we quickly get to learn the nature of their relationships and the dynamics that may exist between them. Characters can also have an inner dialogue where they speak to themselves to help reveal their personality a bit more. When conversations happen between two characters, we call this outer dialogue.

Quotation marks (" ") are the form of punctuation that is used to declare a clear dialogue is taking place. They are placed at the begin and end of the words being spoken. You will not want those tags are words that may identify the speaker. When you identify the speaker, you will want to use a comma to connect it to the dialogue. Over the course of a dialogue, you will want to start a new paragraph each time you transition between speakers in the conversation.