Hi all,
I know that we start a new paragraph every time a new speaker speaks. Similarly, do we start a new paragraph every time a new speaker carries out an action?

EXAMPLE 1
"Are you ok?" asked Jack.
Sarah said nothing.
"Come on babe, talk to me," pleaded Jack.
"I'm fine," replied Sarah.
Jack sighed with relief.
"Now leave me alone." Sarah walked away.

Lines 2 and 5 contain actions. Should they be on a pargarph of their own or can they be tagged to the end of the previous one like in EXAMPLE 2?

EXAMPLE 2
"Are you ok?" asked Jack. Sarah said nothing. "Come on babe, talk to me," pleaded Jack.
"I'm fine," replied Sarah. Jack sighed with relief. "Now leave me alone." Sarah walked away.

Which way is corretct? Thank you!!

I've seen both ways in novels, so I'm not sure what the correct grammatical way to write dialogue is. I know you should indent whenever a new speaker speaks, like so:

"Everytime I kill you, I love it," Desmond said.
"Me too," replied Corrin, "it's such a thrill..."

I don't know if anyone else does this.

JB

<Added>

*Except the indent on the second line doesn't work on the forum, of course.

Hey, thanks for your reply.
I did indent but like yours, the spaces were deleted.

It's such a small grammatical thing but I was shocked to realise I didn't know what the correct or most common form was.

Can anyone else shed light on this?
Thanks,

There isn't really a rule about paragraphs, and the conventions have changed over the years. Generally, however, they should contain one complete scene in a sequence of thought, or action, or dialogue. They also separate our attention between characters in dialogue scenes. In your example, our attention is like a movie camera, moving from one person to the other. Therefore, it's more effective to start a new paragraph each time the camera changes.

Example 2 is not so effective, because it mixes attention within the camera angle, so to speak, within one paragraph. It also means you have to keep telling us who's talking, which slows down the flow. Actually, in this respect you don't need so many name calls in your first example. It could be written like this:

"Are you ok?" asked Jack.
Sarah said nothing.
"Come on babe, talk to me." [you don't need 'Jack' because it's obviously him speaking and you don't need 'pleaded' because the dialogue shows us this is what he's doing.]
"I'm fine. Now leave me alone." Sarah walked away. [Personally, I don't think you need to tell us that Jack sighed with relief – but that depends on how much you want to spell out his emotional needs at this stage.]

Terry

Hi Terry,

Thanks a lot for your response. I think I'll have to comb my manuscript and fix all instances where I have integrated one character's actions with another's speech. I was just a bit hesitant to give actions (i.e "Sarah said nothing") a paragraph of their own but if it's generally accepted, I think I'm better off following that convention.

Thanks again,
Kia

Kia,

I don't want to mislead you. There is a fair amount of room for using your instinct in this area. For instance, you may feel that to have page after page of paragraphs with just a few words in them is too staccato, so you could mix it up a bit for variation.

For example, you could say:

"Are you ok?" asked Jack but Sarah said nothing. "Come on babe, talk to me."
Finally she said, "I'm fine," and Jack sighed with relief.
But then she walked away, saying, "Now leave me alone."

Which links up some of the actions but keeps the fast flow.

On linking up, you suggested:

"Are you ok?" asked Jack. Sarah said nothing. "Come on babe, talk to me," pleaded Jack.
"I'm fine," replied Sarah. Jack sighed with relief. "Now leave me alone." Sarah walked away.

But this separates the different characters' actions with seperate sentences which has the effect of switching the POV, e.g. from Jack to Sarah, and should really be done in separate paragraphs. But by joining up the sentences, as in my version, you stay in Jack's POV which helps our reading continuity.

Hope this makes sense!

Terry

It does make sense Terry, thank you. And to tell you the truth, the places where I mixed one character's speech with another's actions did feel wrong, I just wanted to check before I corrected it.

Thanks a lot for your help.
Kia