These long paragraphs grouped related activity and related ideas. They served as transitions for the reader.

Flash forward 30 years. Somewhere along the way, the style changed. Now a separate paragraph for a new speaker is politically correct.

Flash forward another 30 years. You attend a workshop. One of the critiquers says to you, "Oh, you used a different paragraph with each new speaker."

Style changes. Victorian wordiness is largely frowned upon these days. Plot structures and pacing differ. Language itself changes. New words arise, old words die. Spelling alters (read novels from a hundred years ago and they will use the word "divers" where we use "diverse" - I found this particularly confusing as I think I first noticed it in Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and actually thought he was talking about the plural of diver in some way).

There is probably greater variety now, however, in acceptable styles of writing than there has been historically.

No-one can stop you writing the way you want to write. But if you want to be published, you may find it appropriate to make some compromises. You don't have to. Go read Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker" to see just how far you can go outside the "style norms" and still get published (I use that, not the traditional James Joyce, as an example because he's a lot more recent).

It's fine to break the rules, as long as:
1). you know what the rules are and why you are breaking them
2). you can convince an editor of point 1

If you want to see what the bounds of accepted style are, the best way is to go to the ultimate consumer of your materials. If you are self-publishing, then that would be whoever is buying, or downloading, or whatever, your stuff. If you desire to be published in a webzine, or see your name in actual print, that will require you to start submitting things to markets you want to break into. Those editors are the gatekeepers to the short story market, and regardless of your well-held beleifs that such-and-such-a-rule-doesn't-really-matter, if an editor thinks it does, then it does.

See if you can get an editor to accept a story with dialogue lumped into one paragraph. See if you can get one of what has been called your journalistic style stories published. Merlion has found an editor who doesn't like too much showing, and prefers telling in his stories. Try submitting some stuff there.

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No-one can stop you writing the way you want to write. But if you want to be published, you may find it appropriate to make some compromises. You don't have to. Go read Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker" to see just how far you can go outside the "style norms" and still get published (I use that, not the traditional James Joyce, as an example because he's a lot more recent).

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Great example of how to express this viewpoint in a good, open-minded sort of way. Nice to see.

I don't think I remember seeing anything...even amidst the older stuff I read...in which multi-speaker dialogue was all in one paragraph. Although anything can be, I see this less as a style thing and more as a technical thing.

One of the incidences was in one or more of the murder mysteries set in Rome by Iain Pears. There are others. I skate dangerously close in my latest story. But it is only in one or two places and definitely for emphasis -- for a reason, not just to be doing it.

1)Terribly uninformed
2)Terribly naive

Well, as long as it doesn't matter who's talking (as in the information is more important than the characters), then I suppose that kind of formatting will work.

Dr. Wilson’s staff had woke George in the middle of the night more than once as part of his monitoring and as part of various experiments So when I woke him, he noticed that I was wearing a lab coat and assumed that I was there as part of his training. “Hello George,” I said. “I’m Dr. Scott.” Dr. Wilson interrupted. “George, I don’t know who this man is, but he came here to steal you from us.” “Yes, George, Dr. Wilson doesn’t know who I am and I’m here to take you away from him. You will never return and Dr. Philips will never hurt you again. But first, I need you to ask you a very important question: Do you want to get out of here and away from these people?” George looked back and forth at the two of us. Clearly, he needed more information before he could make a

NOTE FROM KATHLEEN: Other writing rules may be "mere guidelines" but there is ONE RULE here on this forum. Quoted text is limited to 13 lines.

“The water footprint is the amount of water required to accommodate an individual’s lifestyle,” Dr. Taylor reluctantly defined. “Gallons per day to accommodate an American lifestyle.” “1000 per person.” “Undeveloped nation.” “5 per day.”

Is Dr. Taylor speaking both the first & second dialogue sentences? Or is Rogers speaking the second? I can infer which is actually doing the speaking based on what they're saying (I think I can at least...gallons per day-Rogers. 1000 per person-Taylor, alternating after that), but the structure of your paragraphs shouldn't be generating confusion, it should be an invisible aid to the writer to see who is speaking and who is acting.

The bit of narration in the middle (about educating her husband or somesuch) gets lost - I was trying to determine if I had missed a quotation mark somewhere along the way, or if perhaps you did.

If you enjoy writing like this, then by all means go right ahead, but my opinion is that the separate-character-separate-paragraph paradigm is probably the best way to approach something like this.

Edited to say: I second Kathleen's comment about eyes glazing over, especially in light of the second example posted. Also, aren't we getting a bit beyond 13 lines here? This story is familiar, has it been posted for C&C?

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Notice that several times in these 3 paragraph, I don't include attribution.

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That doesn't make these easier to read, particularly since in the third paragraph (second in your second post) you have three characters who all might be speaking at any one time.

There are only 3 people talking in this scene. One is inviting George to leave, one is trying to pursuade George to stay, George wants more information before he makes a decision. Each of these 3 people are saying distinctly different things.

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“The water footprint is the amount of water required to accommodate an individual’s lifestyle,” Dr. Taylor reluctantly defined. “Gallons per day to accommodate an American lifestyle.” “1000 per person.” “Undeveloped nation.” “5 per day.”

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-differs in any way (except presentation) from this-

quote:

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“The water footprint is the amount of water required to accommodate an individual’s lifestyle,” Dr. Taylor reluctantly defined.

“Gallons per day to accommodate an American lifestyle.”

“1000 per person.”

“Undeveloped nation.”

“5 per day.”

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-except perhaps you're conflating how the dialogue is being delivered with how it's being presented. You want me to see this as a quickly-paced conversation, the answer coming just as the question is finished being said with no noticeable pause between speakers. There are ways of attaining this (like skipping dialogue tags, or using hyphens to indicate when speech is cut-off mid sentence) but in my opinion skipping paragraph breaks makes my reading slow down, not speed up.

Actually, that is one way of getting a reader to hear dialogue (or narration) as quicker-paced: short sentences. Less or no dialogue tags. Clipped phrases. Sentence fragments even. Long mellifluous sentences full of grand dialogue and impressive diction serve to slow the mind down and can impart a feeling of slowe pacing to a reader.

There are only 3 people talking in this scene. In this sentence, one person is talking to the second person and nicknaming the third person. All along, the first person has been giving the second person an opportunity to educate the third person. Do you really need me to tell you which person speaks this sentence? Again, have you never heard this type of expression in real life?

Interpretation 1 - Where Taylor speaks both the first two lines

quote:

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“The water footprint is the amount of water required to accommodate an individual’s lifestyle,” Dr. Taylor reluctantly defined. “Gallons per day to accommodate an American lifestyle.”

“1000 per person.”

“Undeveloped nation.”

“5 per day.”

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Interpretation 2 - Where Taylor speaks only the first line

quote:

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“The water footprint is the amount of water required to accommodate an individual’s lifestyle,” Dr. Taylor reluctantly defined.

“Gallons per day to accommodate an American lifestyle.”

“1000 per person.”

“Undeveloped nation.”

“5 per day.”

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Now do you perhaps see where my confusion came from? Both are valid ways of constructing dialogue. Do you see how I had to pause for a moment and determine who was speaking based on the content of their dialogue and the limited information I had about their areas of knowledge, rather than picking it up naturally based on the paragraph structure? That pause that I took broke my suspension of disbelief, it stopped these two characters from talking in my mind and made me cognizant that these were words on a page and not a living breathing conversation taking place between two people. Breaking that suspension is generally deemed to be not such a good thing, but of course as with everything else it is entirely up to your discretion as an author to write how you see fit.

As such, I will just Romper Room my own little self out of this conversation and look for other places to spend my time more profitably. Best of luck in the future, and if I can be so bold, I'll leave you with a quote from Strunk & White...

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It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature.

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Your arguments that "real conversations are like this" also don't work. For one thing, dialgue that is meant to be read and dialogue that is meant to be spoken are not necessarily the same. If you write dialogue the way people REALLY talk, it would e full of incomplete sentences, ums and ers, pauses, repetition, interruption... and very few of these work well on the printed page.

That is not to say that yours aren't valid examples of a way in which you might want to use run-on dialogue (for want of a better term), but it does mean your justifications for it aren't as strong as you seem to think.

No-one is saying YOU CAN NOT DO THIS YOUR WAY. Various people ARE saying YOUR WAY DOES NOT WORK FOR ME AS A READER or YOUR WAY PROBABLY WILL NOT WORK FOR MOST EDITORS. It is entirely dependent on your goals as a writer as to whether you should pay heed to such advice.

However, arguing with critiquers (and you may say this isn't the critique section but in effect critiquing of your chosen stle is exactly what's happening here) is a sure fire way to make plenty of people very very reluctant to critique your work in future. ALways remember - critiquers are giving up their time on your behalf. Even if you disagree with a critique, the more diplomatic response is to say "thanks for the input" and move on. No-one is likely to be mortally offended if you quietly ignore their advice.

If it doesn't sell, rethink it using the suggestions given.

Could you please give me a couple of examples using well-known published books or short stories? (And please stick to 13 lines - this protects you from reproduction laws related to copyrights)

And if it sells, you're going to tell the people who disagreed with me to rethink my suggestions?

Yes, they are telling me I'm free to do it my way, I get what they are saying. Yes, I might be wrong, I've wrong before and have admitted it more than once on this forum.

Period.

It is irrelevant whether or not you could find thirty-year-old literature with this style. It's a different market than in those days. Editors have different jobs nowadays. A respectable agent might not even look at your manuscript if one of their slushers doesn't make it through.

In short, it is a very difficult sell nowadays.

Most of us here are in the habit of practicing prose techniques that sell today. Many of the "greats" would never sell in the mindsets of current readership. Readers don't even want to push through twenty page chapter because of their television-induced, limited attention spans (and that's clean prose), so, anything that makes them stumble makes them stop.

If you're looking for someone to concede that it's possible to write an omniscient dialogued paragraph, I'll concede. However, it's possible to sharpen a finger in a pencil sharpener and scribble prose in blood also--but why would you want to?

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—I'm sorry, I've not taken actual food in days. Just wild cress and creek water, he said.
—It's no need to be sorry, she said, in such an even tone that Inman could not interpret whether in that last word she had meant to absolve or admonish.

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Grisham and Clancy's novels sometimes have multiple characters speaking dialogue in the same paragraph, sometimes even depicting multiple characters' thoughts in the same paragraphs, but rarely of the latter.

McCarthy is somewhat conventional in his use of dialogue paragraphing, excepting his tendency to run it in without any delineation punctuation for dialogue.

Brad Land emulates McCarthy's dialogue style in Goat, 2004, but he too is not rigid about paragraph breaking for different speakers. And it doesn't jar me, either. It's a nonfiction memoir, though, in first person present tense. More than a few rhetorical schemes in that one that fly in the face of conventional principles and prescriptive expectations.

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morrel, 2004, does similar things with dialogue and paragraphing.

Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga, 1975, will send most readers around the bend from the way he's formatted dialogue in syntatical priority and speaker positional methods.

But, here's the thing, the voice and style of each of the above and other unconventional stories I haven't mentioned fits their respective stories. Even if they're outdated by modern expectations, they're rhetorical schemes that work.

The only absolute principle of writing, there are none, save the paradoxical one, that there are none, besides writing to engage and maintain readers in the all-important participation mystique of a story's meaning space.

The only things I can recall where entire conversations were included in single paragraphs were literary experiments. My knowledge is limited to the English language...perhaps elsewhere it's done differently. Straightforward commercial writing was always displayed in "single speaker, single paragraph."

I didn't much care for the way things formatted out, when I put them in HTML in my fanfic days. I didn't like losing the paragraph indentation in particular. I tried to find out how to put it in solid lines of type, but couldn't manage it, so I had to live with it. I kinda still do it here, that way, but it doesn't thrill me.

Meanwhile, in my own writing, I keep getting the feeling that my paragraphs (single speaker or not) just weren't long enough---they seem to come out short and stubby, usually no more than five lines in a typewritten-out manuscript, often less. Yet I'd said everything I wanted to say in a single paragraph. Lumping things together didn't seem to work---and, of course, the standard for dialog is still "single paragraph, single speaker," and if they just say "yes" or "no," there's not much more I could do with that.

A writer shouldn't make a reader read a few more lines to understand who's talking. A writer shouldn't break a reader's stride. But the problem was with the way I used the style, not with the style itself.