I’ll let you in on a secret: not all authors have the best spelling, grammar, and punctuation. That’s why we need editors. In fact, Midnight Splash was nearly perfect. A reader reported finding ONE typo. That’s pretty good when it comes to the 104K+ words that make up the story.
But this isn’t a grammar lesson. Grammar is a set of accepted rules that govern how language is used. I would amend that by saying grammar is a set of accepted rules that govern formal written language. Grammar often goes out the window when people are talking to one another.
Accent, colloquialisms, slang, and other modifiers make it into everyday spoken language much faster than it becomes acceptable in written language. Dialogue isn’t all no-holds-barred, but you certainly have more flexibility.
When was the last time you heard a child or teenager speak in full, grammatically correct sentences? When was the last time you spoke with someone and used slang or other regionally-understood language?
Dialogue should reflect how humans speak. Having every character speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences would be boring and mechanical. You’d probably put the book down after the first scene of dialogue.
Even though dialogue communicates things – characters’ feelings, needs, wants, or gives us peeks into discussions that move the plot forward, authors have a little extra creative license when it comes to contractions, bad grammar, misused words (if your character doesn’t know the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ have them say it and have the group or person they’re with correct them).
Prose is the main form of communication in any book. A story told completely through dialogue would be exhausting. When will these people shut up and let the story unfold? I didn’t count the number of words of dialogue vs. the number of words of prose in Midnight Splash, but I can tell you my editor was a stickler when it came to the details outside the quotation marks.
I personally find that writing dialogue comes fairly easy for me. I like listening to my characters talk, and seeing how their words move the plot along. New characters and new facts can be introduced through dialogue. A phone call to the forensics lab can reveal the fingerprints on the piece of evidence don’t belong to the person the detective expected. Prose could do the same, but with the dialogue of that phone call we get the news along with the character reaction.
Forcing the ‘camera’ into a room and giving a look at what’s going on inside is less natural. It can give an overall idea, but without dialogue, it’s just a room. That room might become important later, but the characters interacting in that space or talking about it or inside it make that room come alive as part of the story.
There’s bound to be someone who’s a stickler for grammar in spoken language. But when it comes to fiction, inside the quotation marks is where the fun is at. Outside the quotation marks is where business is conducted.