How do you structure your dialogue?

[Thraben]

I learned a life hack for dialogue from my Sophomore English teacher. She taught me to just write out nothing but the words the characters have spoken until you've completed the dialogue exchange, the go back and add break things up to add dialogue markers, breaks for a paragraph or two of internal monologue, or other details.

Essentially, write dialogue the way it would occur to the people speaking. You don't think about what you're doing while talking or what someone else is doing until it gets pointed out for someone reason, so it makes more sense to write the dialogue not caring about that, and fluff it up after the fact.

Everything you're putting in, dialogue markers, internal monologues, descriptions of expressions or emotions, that's all for purely reader benefit, but it will be far easier to implement if the conversation already makes sense.

It works for me, though I can't say I recommend trying to learn it for yourself if you have a way you've done it for years.

 

[melchi]

Where to put it depends on where the emphasis should be.

Like if two people are talking, it is really obvious who is speaking so middle / end can make sense.

However, if a bunch of people are talking it might help to have it at the start. That way a reader won't get mixed up when person 4 is talking and they thought it was person 5 until they came to the dialogue tag.
The stuff at the start of the sentence always pops more, just something to keep in mind.

 

[CorvusG]

All three. If you want the technical explanation, any dialogue tag that's different from "he asked" or "she said" will read as a small, one-second pause in the conversation. You should be putting your dialogue tags where those pauses should be, and letting the character voices differentiate themselves on the dialogues where no tag is needed.