"Pauses" in written dialogue

[TempestSong]

This has always been something I've wondered while writing my personal project's script: How does one indicate "pauses" in dialogue when you don't have room for describing people's actions in text? I'm speaking of dialogue in stuff like comics and game text, where you see characters' words but the action is told through graphics.

I've heard that using commas to add breaks is bad form, and that ellipses are even worse overused by many others.

[General Zod]

As long as they aren't abused ellipses do the job just fine.

[Coyote]

In dialogue, it's more flexible, since people don't always use proper rules of language when speaking. If you have someone trying to talk and they are wrestling with phrasing, or language, or whatever, you can use the ". . ." or the "--" but if you do it too much it looks amateurish.

You can also imply pauses if the situation and dialogue would logically demand it:

"Wait," he said, "Don't go in there. It's too dangerous."

Adding 'he said' adds a pause without making a big deal out of it, and has more delivery than:

"Wait, don't go in there. It's too dangerous," he said.

Or, you can just completely break it up entirely and use it as part of the action.

"DON'T!" he yelled. The others turned to look at him. "It's too dangerous," he said.

[Drooling Iguana]

In comics this can be done by using two connected dialogue balloons, one for the stuff before the pause and another, lower in the panel, for the stuff after. For longer pauses you can split the dialogue into two panels with a third panel of silence between them.

For video games, just program in a delay before the post-pause dialogue is displayed, or use ellipses.

Personally, I never liked the JRPG-style "box of text" method of displaying dialogue. If you can, I'd recommend you use something more akin to what was done in the LucasArts adventure games from The Secret of Monkey Island onward, and have the text shown in real-time above the speaking character's head. That allows you to easily show character movement and speech at the same time and lets you use timing tricks to better indicate the manner in which the dialogue would be spoken.

[Havok]

Weird. I was just wondering this the other night.

Like, how would you write Kirk or Christopher Walken and properly convey their quirky ways of speaking to someone that had never actually heard them speak before?

[General Zod]

Weird. I was just wondering this the other night.

Like, how would you write Kirk or Christopher Walken and properly convey their quirky ways of speaking to someone that had never actually heard them speak before?

For Kirk I'd use a lot of ellipses. I'm not sure what I'd do with Walken offhand.

[Havok]

I'm guessing that with Walken, you may need to actually write a description of how he talks as there is no way to write the way his tone changes or the specific emphasis he puts on certain words or syllables.

[Coyote]

"Spock... don't... go in there. It's... too dangerous!"

Like that?

[General Zod]

"Spock... don't... go in there. It's... too dangerous!"

Like that?

Pretty much.

[TempestSong]

If you have someone trying to talk and they are wrestling with phrasing, or language, or whatever, you can use the ". . ." or the "--" but if you do it too much it looks amateurish.

Hmm, I forgot about the hyphen now that I think about it. I'm guessing hyphens would be used for sudden, flash pauses, while ellipses would be used for normal, flowing pauses.

[weemadando]

"I want," said Holly with absolutely no hesitation what-so-over, "to be a genius again."

[Sriad]

The convention I'm familiar with in script writing is [beat].