One of the causes of reader irritation that can lead to bad reviews and dissatisfaction with a book is when the author doesn’t inform the reader of who’s speaking quickly enough. The moment there are more than two characters in a conversation, you will need to give some indication to the reader who is saying what. If you wait too long in the dialogue, the reader will make up his or her mind without knowing for sure. Then, if you inform the reader later and they had guessed wrong, it messes up the entire conversation and the reader will likely have to go back and re-read the dialogue with the correct characters in mind.

Here is an example of what not to do:

Peter, John and James sat at a table talking, discussing the rumors of a coming Messiah.

“Do you think it’s true? Do you think this man, Jesus, is really the Messiah? I’ve heard He can heal the sick. Father heard of a man near Bethany that had leprosy and was completely healed! Have you ever heard of such a thing?” Peter asked.

You had a one in three chance of guessing correctly which one of the soon to be disciples was talking. If you reached the end and found you were wrong, it throws off your perception, causing you to go back and re-read it with the proper character in mind. This can be irritating for a reader. There are several ways to do this correctly:

“Do you think it’s true?” Peter asked. “Do you think this man, Jesus, is really the Messiah? I’ve heard he can heal the sick. Father heard of a man near Bethany that had leprosy and was completely healed! Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Peter leaned toward the others. “Do you think it’s true? Do you think this man, Jesus, is really the Messiah? I’ve heard he can heal the sick. Father heard of a man near Bethany that had leprosy and was completely healed! Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

In both cases above, the reader knows within the first ten words who is speaking. This allows the reader to make the mental adjustment as to the personality of the speaker without a break in stride.

Professional tip: Indicate within the first ten words who the speaker is.

When there are two speakers, you only need to indicate who is speaking the first time and then only a smattering of times after. Imagine the previous conversation continuing, but only after Peter left.

John looked at his brother. “James, do you think Peter’s right?”

“Depends,” James said slowly, sitting back in his chair.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there have been many men who claimed to be the Messiah. What makes this one different?”

“You heard Peter. What about the healed leper? And then there’s this John the Baptist, the one who said Jesus was the Lamb of God. That has to be significant. Important. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

James shrugged. “I guess I’d need to see it to believe it.”

“You’ve always been slow to believe.”

“It’s kept me out of trouble.”

“Well then let’s go see for ourselves.” John leaned in closer. “If you need to see, let’s go see.”

“Fine,” James muttered, crossing his arms. “If only to get you to shut up about it.”

Because there were only two speakers, you didn’t need to indicate who was talking all the time. The new paragraph told the reader that the other speaker was talking. The smattering of indicators throughout merely added depth and kept the reader from losing track of the conversation.

Happy writing, folks!