Subject: You're getting closer.
Author: Zingenmir
Posted on: 2017-06-22 19:19:00 UTC

The spacing is much better (though not perfect--generally, if one person has an action before they speak, their dialogue will be on the same line), but you're still using colons where they shouldn't be. In fact, at a glance, I'd say pretty much every colon you've used before dialogue should be a comma or a period.

Again, I recommend reading this article. It's pretty clear, and goes over just about every way there is of punctuating dialogue. It's almost definitely more clear than any explanation I can easily give.

What I can do is give some examples of how something could be written (admittedly more in my style, though I've tried to mimic a bit more of yours in the first one, since I don't seem to automatically go for putting longer introductions before the dialogue. That's more of a stylistic choice, though). I hope the examples and the article help.

Let's say I'm writing dialogue for my agents. It might look something like this:

Dawn sighed. "I don't know--it seems like a lot of effort to go to just for a bit of chocolate," she said. "I'm not sure I want to bother."

"But it'd be awesome!" Abaddon got to his feet. Picking up his mug, he added, "You know you'd have fun. Besides...I don't want to do the diving competition alone."

"But here's the thing: I don't feel like swimming." Dawn shrugged. "What can I do? I've had enough water lately."

The two agents looked at each other in silence for a bit; finally Abaddon put on his best wide-eyed expression and said, "Pleeeaase?"

Dawn snickered.

"Oh, go on, then." Abaddon dropped the expression. "How often do you get to compete for chocolate?"

"Not often enough."

Here, I've used periods and commas before lines of dialogue. I've also used a colon within a line of dialogue ("But here's the thing: I don't feel like swimming.") and used a long introductory sentence followed by a comma before the dialogue (The two agents looked at each other in silence for a bit; finally Abaddon put on his best wide-eyed expression and said, "Pleeeaase?") What I haven't done is use a colon to introduce a line of dialogue. I won't say it's never done, because for all I know there's a little-known exception somewhere, but going by grammar articles, a grammar book, and past reading experience, colons are generally not used to introduce dialogue in English fiction writing.

(I did use a colon to introduce the example itself. That works because I'm introducing a giant quote of sorts as an example in a non-fiction post, rather than a line of dialogue in a fiction story).

--

If I were writing an academic paper, I would use colons differently. I might well write something like Grimaldi continues the explanation in his 2016 paper 'Wildlife of British Columbia': "[t]he grizzly bear [...] is the fiercest of all, dwelling primarily in the far North of the province. The lack of residents enables the grizzly to refrain from eating garbage, making for a far healthier animal..."** (Or, boiled down: Grimaldi continues: "[t]he grizzly bear [...] is the fiercest of all...") The colon works here because it's introducing a quotation in an academic paper.

In fiction, however, this would look quite different. Let's take Grimaldi again and rework this into fictional dialogue...

The audience was, by now, captivated. Grimaldi smiled as he continued. "Now, take grizzly bears. They're the fiercest of the BC bears, but they mainly live in the far North. They also get to eat less garbage, since there aren't as many people around..."

That got a laugh.

Here I've used a period, though I'm fairly certain a comma would also work. As far as I'm aware, it's just a matter of nuance here. (If anyone reading can articulate the rule about when you use the comma vs the period in this sort of case, please feel free to chime in!)

Another way to write it, this time using a comma:

Sensing that his audience was now captivated, Grimaldi continued, "Now, take grizzly bears. They're the very fiercest of the BC bears, but they mainly live in the far North..."

--

I hope some part of this helps.

I do very strongly suggest reading the article I've linked (here) and looking up more articles on writing dialogue tags as well. There are a surprising (or perhaps not-so-surprising) number of grammar blogs and articles around, and most of them are pretty clear. This should help you figure out what you need to replace the colons with--because as it is, every single one of them should be a comma or period (which one depends on the context). You could also find a SPaG beta to help you out.

Your first writing sample has only one colon in it, and is a much more natural sort of read. Something along those lines (and with no colons used to introduce dialogue) is more the sort of writing I'm looking for.

As before, I'll be happy to look at a revised version; just be aware that it might take me a few days. I'm in the last couple weeks of preparing to move away for a year, so there's a lot to do some days.

~Z

**Grimaldi, his paper, and the quote are all invented by me. While I'm pretty sure northern BC has grizzly bears, I can't speak for the truthfulness of anything else in that fake quote. Although campgrounds in Canada do frequently have bear-proof garbage containers.

Also, now I rather like the guy. I wonder if he'd fit into anything I'm currently writing...

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