Funny the rules you never notice until someone breaks them. I am reading something where it keeps having dialogue like this:
“Hello,” I said.
“What do you want?”
“I just want to talk.” She glared at me.
“I don’t want to hear it.” I sighed.
It’s putting the reactions from one character in the same paragraph as the dialogue from another and it keeps confusing me. That’s not the normal way to do this right? Normally you would usually keep any descriptions of a character or their actions to their paragraphs of dialogue? I am not just making that up? I feel that that’s true. That it helps keep track of who is speaking in lengthy dialogue sections. But I’m not sure if that’s something I’ve actually seen in style guides or it’s just something I am making up myself now because I am having trouble with his one story.
There might be thematic reasons to intentionally do it with the story in question, to blur the lines about who is who in some conversations, but it does this consistently even in conversations where that is definitely not the case.
