The quote offers your audience these benefits:
- It introduces a human voice.
- It explains something important about the subject.
- It frames a problem or dilemma.
- It adds information.
- It reveals the character or personality of the speaker.
- It introduces what is next to come.
Most quotes are above or outside the action of the story. Quotes are “about” the action, not “in” the action.
Dialogue presents the reader with a form of action. You can recover and reconstruct it from careful reporting, using multiple sources and appropriate attribution. It can come from court transcripts or other public record. Or maybe you heard, or overheard, the dialogue. An angry exchange between the mayor and a city council member can be captured and published.
The goal is to use dialogue to transport your audience to a place and time where they get to experience the events described in the story.
Taken from The Writer’s Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use, a self-directed course by Roy Peter Clark at Poynter NewsU.
Have you missed a Coffee Break Course? Here’s our complete lineup.
