If you’re writing a conversation between two or more characters, you may run into the issue of characters talking at the same time. This is an easy thing to pull off in a TV show or a movie, but slightly trickier in a novel or a short story, so I thought I’d address it!

(By the way, I’m going to share a related post next week on how to write a great, believable argument between two characters. If you don’t want to miss it, be sure you’re subscribed to the blog—there’s a signup on the lefthand side of this page.)

Let’s look at some examples. You’ll notice that the solution to this issue usually involves just telling the reader that the characters are talking at the same time.

Examples in Back and Forth Dialogue

(“Back and forth dialogue” meaning, of course, that two people are talking and exchanging lines of dialogue.)

“Are you seriously considering stealing his car?” he asked.

“He’s got eighteen other cars,” I pointed out.

“It’s still a crime!” he said at the same time I added, “He’ll never notice.”

Now, if you wanted to have our protagonist friend interject right after our protagonist says, “He’ll never notice,” it would look like this.

“Are you seriously considering stealing his car?” he asked.

“He’s got eighteen other cars,” I pointed out. “He’ll never notice—”

“It’s still a crime!”

You can have a character cut off another character mid-word, but only if it’s a long word and the context lets the reader know what the complete word would’ve been. For instance:

She threw her hands up in the air. “Why did you even volunteer if you weren’t going to show up?”

“I didn’t exactly volun—”

“This is so typical of young people!” she said. I considered pointing out that I’d turned fifty the month before.

If you have two characters who are cutting each other off and talking over one another, it looks like this.

She threw her hands up in the air. “Why did you even volunteer if you weren’t going to show up?”

“I didn’t exactly volun—”

“This is so typical of young people! You think the world revolves—”

“Young people? I’m fifty years old!”

Now I’m going to point out something very important.

The dash used for interrupted dialogue is called an em dash.

It’s not a hyphen. It’s not two hyphens. It’s an em dash, sometimes called a long dash.

Here’s how to type an em dash.

If you’re working on a Word document on a Mac, you type it by pressing the Option key, the Shift key, and the Minus key at the same time. This is cumbersome at first, but it may very quickly become muscle memory, so you won’t even have to think about it.

If you’re working in Word on a PC, you press the Alt key and type 0151, which is genuinely a hassle.

I’m adding an explanation here: in my own experience, if you type in two hyphens that Microsoft Word turns into a long dash, that can create formatting problems when you’re putting it in an ebook file. Programs are getting updated all the time, so if this is no longer an issue, let me know!

Examples With Two or More People

It can be very funny to have two people give different answers to a third person’s question, and it looks like this.

His mouth fell open. “What are you doing in my office after midnight?”

“I left my phone here,” I said, at the same time Jacinta said, “We’re investigating you.”

Let’s say you want to show a few people talking at once. If we know who the characters are in the story, it could look like this.

Marianne’s pulse quickened. Hoping her voice wouldn’t shake, she said, “You’re a bunch of online bullies.”

They all objected at once.

“I wouldn’t call it bullying,” Brandon said, at the same time that Helen snapped, “Give me a freaking break.” Anna said something about having the right to share her opinion while Christopher was sputtering about how he’d been quoted out of context.

You probably noticed that this passage was in Marianne’s point of view, and she didn’t catch everything they said word for word. When you’re writing in one character’s point of view, the reader only perceives what that character perceives—and that character can only hear so many things at once!

What if you’re writing a story in which several people in a crowd simultaneously speak up? Just tell us they’re all talking at once, and then make each line of dialogue its own paragraph. Like this!

Linda took in a deep breath and concluded, “And that’s why Katie Craig should resign as mayor.”

Among scattered applause and boos, several voices rang out from the audience.

“No way!”

“Yes!”

“You’re the one who should resign!”

“That’s right, you tell ’em, Linda!”

I hope these dialogue examples have been helpful! If you have any other questions about dialogue, or some advice of your own about writing a conversation between characters, please share them in the comments.

Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!