Hello community, my question is;
How do I best format dialogue in my book, including third party dialogue which is being eavesdropped by someone else?
For e.g.
She lay still, terrified and quiet behind the counter as the two mysterious figures walked by. She could hear their conversation while trying to hold her breath.
Thank you
That's great, thank you Peter.
There's two ways you can approach this.
First- If the conversation is important, i.e. we need to know all that's said, then simply write it out as you would a conversation between two people, we already know the woman is hiding and able to hear the conversation, once the conversation finishes you can then jump back to the woman and tell us her reactions/feelings/thoughts etc to what she has just heard.
Second- If the woman's thoughts are the most important write it out as a description, tell us what she hears and how it makes her feel. For example- as she lay hidden, she could hear them discussing where she had gone, they sounded angry as they left the room continuing their search, she smiled to herself, knowing that they couldn't find her, she would be hide and seek champion yet.
Hope this helps :)