Handsomeboy990 Dialogue Master
Writing and validating dialogue to French publishing standards. This skill has authority over every line of speech produced by the tree.
Sections 1 and 2 are French typographic conventions. Sections 3, 4 and 6 are
structural and apply in any output language. When
language.creative_output is not French, replace sections 1 and 2 with the
target language's own conventions, stated explicitly rather than assumed.
1. Dialogue typography
1.1 Main system
French guillemets to open and close the dialogue, an en dash at the head of each following line, one paragraph per speaker.
« Tu as vu l'heure ?
– J'ai vu l'heure.
– Et tu es rentré quand même.
– Je suis rentré quand même. »
Non-breaking spaces inside the guillemets and before double punctuation marks.
1.2 Light system
Dashes alone, without guillemets. Permitted, but held across the whole manuscript. The two systems are never mixed.
1.3 Prohibitions
- Straight or English quotation marks.
- Em dash.
- Two speakers in the same paragraph.
- A line opened with a capital after an incise that did not end the sentence.
2. Incises
2.1 Form
Between commas, with subject and verb inverted.
« Je pars demain, dit-elle.
– Demain, répéta-t-il, comme si le mot appartenait à une autre langue.
Punctuation: if the line ends with a question or exclamation mark, that mark replaces the comma but the incise stays lowercase.
« Tu pars ? demanda-t-il.
2.2 Economy
- Neutral verbs in four cases out of five: dit, répondit, demanda, reprit, ajouta.
- No manner adverb attached to a speech verb.
- No impossible verb: one does not smile a sentence, nor shrug a line.
- One incise per three lines at most.
2.3 Attribution by action
Replace the incise with a gesture that carries information. The gesture must change the scene, not furnish it. A character who nods adds nothing; a character who sets down their cup without having drunk adds everything.
3. Dramatic construction
3.1 Fundamental law
A dialogue is a conflict of objectives conducted through speech. Each character wants something from the other. If both want the same thing and agree, the scene does not need to be written.
3.2 Techniques
- Evasion: answering beside the question. Three consecutive evasions create immediate tension.
- Delay: deferring the expected information with an action or a digression.
- Pickup: taking the other's word and turning it around.
- Interruption: cutting before the end, marked by a suspension.
- Silence: a line of narration replaces the answer. Silence is a reply.
- Asymmetry: one character speaks in long sentences, the other in monosyllables.
3.3 What to cut
Greetings, introductions, confirmations, repetitions of what the reader knows, courtesies with no stake, first names used at the head of a line.
4. Voice differentiation
Seven levers, chosen per character and recorded:
- sentence length;
- register, from formal to familiar, without phonetic transcription;
- professional or social vocabulary;
- relation to questions: asks them, or never does;
- relation to the conditional and to politeness;
- a syntactic tic, discreet, used at most once per page;
- rhythm, clipped or ample.
Mandatory test: mask the incises. If attribution becomes impossible, the differentiation has failed.
5. Multilingual dialogue
- A sentence in a foreign language must be understood from its immediate context.
- No translation in parentheses.
- No systematic italic when the language is that of the milieu represented: the italic exoticises it.
- A character who thinks in one language and speaks another shows it through syntax, not through isolated words.
6. Monologue and long speech
A speech longer than ten lines must be interrupted at least once by a physical reaction from the listeners, a change of place, or an objection. Otherwise it becomes a platform and the reader disengages.
7. Exit checks
- Typography conformant.
- One paragraph per speaker.
- Neutral speech verbs in the majority.
- No manner adverb on a speech verb.
- Voice test passed.
- No information delivered solely for the reader.
- Every line shifts the balance of the scene.
8. Auto-critique
Score 0 to 5: typographic conformity, voice differentiation, subtext, economy, rhythm, spoken credibility, absence of exposition, accuracy of incises, tension, at least one memorable line.
Threshold: no axis below 3, average at least 3.8.
9. Interfaces
- Upstream:
character-psychologist,scene-builder. - Review:
quality/proofreader,quality/literary-editor.