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[Feladwe]

I am a novice writer and am having difficulty incorporating my characters conversation into an existing one.  I feel as if I use the phrase "he said" or "he answered" a lot in my dialog.  To me it does not flow.  Can someone give advice or a reference I can use to help me in this.

[Merzedes]

For what it is worth, what we do pretty much in my main story is like this.

***

Checking out the room and talking to the witnesses, gave Jack an overview of what might have happened, and it all boiled down to a fight between two...entities; what could well have been either a physical attack or something more intimate, and the very real possibility that they left together.  Through the window.

Jack sighed, and motioned the town cop back into the room, from where he'd been sent out into the hallway; he stood in the doorway shifting form foot to foot like a small boy needing to pee.

"Okay Officer Potkins, from what I see, there has undoubtedly been an attack here, but I can't make it a murder without a body.  Body turns up, you let us know - you got Dr. Evans picture on file and so do we.  I'm going to make some calls, see if the hospital has turned up someone suffering from gunshots or slashes.  Mean time, we'll get this room photographed and gather the evidence we may need.  You good with that?"

Potkins shook his head.  "No I ain't good with that.  We don't need you messing around here in town.  Whyn't you head on back to Podunk and let us handle this?"

Jack held his breath and counted to ten, slowly.  "Look hotshot, we're on the same side here and if Dr. Evans is still alive, then you don't lose by not getting yer pretty face in the paper.  Why don't you save the testosterone fest until we prove there is a crime.  Last time I looked it was not against the law to bleed.  If Monica Evans left this room voluntarily, under her own power, then unless she chooses to press charges, we do not have a case.  Do you understand me, Officer Potkins?"  Jack's eyes blazed, although not literally; he was not Kin after all.  Turning his back even before the policeman's answer, Jack pulled his cell phone and dialed the hospital from memory.  Just in case.

***

Since it is obvious that they are talking, we use action descriptions instead of the 'he answered' conventional method.  That rounds things out and shows more of a 'picture'.  You can start by quoting the line you are answering and then incorporate your actions, expressions, etc. as part of your reply.

[Alhaja]

Hmmm... I hadn't thought about this much before, but you bring up a good point -- writing in conversations can definitely be tricky. Now that I think about it, it's probably the thing I spend the longest polishing when I'm writing something because it can be hard to make it sound natural and flow right. I try to use word choices that are appropriate for the character and seem conversational. Often I substitute "she smiled" or "she frowned" or some other appropriate action for "she said" and when I do use any of these phrases, I try to place them where a longer pause would sound natural. Usually, you don't have to use phrases like this more than once or twice when writing a post on StoryCrafter because you're only writing a snippet of the larger conversation. Sometimes, I'll read a post or fragment of one aloud to see how it sounds.

I'd suggest looking at some well-written fiction and making a study of how the author arranges his dialogue. I suspect a lot of my relative confidence with writing dialogue comes from reading a huge amount and picking up on what sounds right. I know that's where my large vocabulary came from and suspect it's most of why I'm a fairly decent writer in general. Even if you don't read more, consciously thinking about what a writer is doing should help.

Here's some links I found in a cursory search that look pretty useful:

http://www.pammc.com/dialogue.htm
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/crafttechnique/tp/dialogue.htm
http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Dialogue&Detail.htm

[Shanna]

One thing to avoid is to have too many tags.  The one by Merzedes is good - notice the lack of any 'saids', 'replied', answered, etc.

You don't need them a lot of the time.

The second thing is that if you're writing a LOOOONG scene with a lot of tags - saids, answereds, whatever - don't worry so much about using 'said'.  It gets lost.

A lot of writers say NOT to use too many 'replied', 'whispered', 'growled', whatever.  That should be evident much of the time in the actual speech.  Too many very specific tags can be distracting.  When you read a book, you tend to skim the 'she saids' and 'he saids'.  They become placeholders, so long as they aren't overused.  Have a look at a good, well-written book.  There will likely be quite a few 'saids' that you overlooked the first time through.

But in a post, where it's probably going to be short, using varied tags probably isn't a bad thing.  Or, like Merzedes points out, skipping on them altogether.  

[Feladwe]

Thank you Mercedez for the advice and example of a well composed scene.  I found that I need to write more often and read other authors works to understand this concept.  I am also planning to take a creative writing course at our local community college.