Questions from a first time writer

[Sweetiesnuggles]

[Angela Bauer]

Hi Sweetiesnuggles,

You ask several interesting questions.

Starting with your last request for suggestions, I encourage you to read a lot of the stories posted on Daily Diapers, both here in the Story Forum and Story Time located on the DD Home page. Also read the story forum comments. As you read stories by many authors use your own judgment as to the styles that connect with you. The bottom line is that you must enjoy the stories you write.

Take comments with a grain of salt. Still, generally comments are intended to help authors.

Read enough stories and you will discover hundreds of different styles. Some styles make reading easier. Remember DD has members all over the world.

There is an old saying: "The UK and the USA are two nations divided by a common language." In USA English dialogue starts with an opening double quote mark, followed by a capital letter. The end of dialogue is a bit more complicated. In the USA usually punctuation which is part of dialogue is placed ahead of the closing quotation mark, but the colon and semi-colon follow the closing quotation mark.

In USA usage normally only dialogue from a single character is included within a paragraph. When a block of dialogue is long and contains more than a single thought it is broken into separate paragraphs. Those kinds of paragraphs do not end with a closing quote, but the continuing paragraph opens with a double quote mark.

My suggestion is to read many stories so you can decide for yourself the style you enjoy.

[Anael]

Paragraphs are groups of sentences that deal with a single theme.