Dialogue is an important part of any story. when it's done right it will give insight into your characters' personalities, and possibly even foreshadow future events. Good dialogue is preceded by a dialogue tag. dialogue tags are the words that establish what character is speaking. one example of a dialogue tag is, I said. Obviously, this particular one is only used with first-person narration, words such as he, she, they, or the characters' names are used with third-person narration.   

I want to take back something I said in the original version of this part. Using said a lot is fine, but depending on what a character is saying other words such as asked or answered might be more appropriate. Also, Dialogue tags are followed by a comma. Once you have clearly established what characters are speaking you can leave out dialogue tags here and there, but I don't suggest doing this too much or it could get confusing for your readers. Some words you might occasionally want to use instead of said are

 asked

  answered

 whispered

 yelled

 shouted

 replied

 Protested

 argued

 insisted

 taunted

 joked

 Those are some options to help you out but most of the time you can just use said. Your characters' speech has to begin and end with quotation marks. " "

 Never end a character quote with a period, end it with either a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point depending on what is being said and then the closing quotation mark. If your characters are having a heated argument an exclamation point might be the most appropriate, and obviously, if your character is asking a question, a question mark would be the best option. 

break up your Dialogue with character thoughts and actions. Instead of having six straight lines of dialogue show a character's thoughts or actions between quotes. Doing this can help tell your readers what your character is thinking or feeling while the conversation is taking place, helping them understand why your character reacts the way they do to what is being said. When you are writing dialogue ask yourself would someone say this in real life?

If you're not sure read your dialogue aloud. Doing that can help you decide if your dialogue sounds realistic. technically you don't want dialogue to sound exactly like real conversations since real-life conversations can often have stutters, lisps, pauses and other mistakes.  while it is good to include these in dialogue in small amounts don't overdo it, like when almost anything is repeated too many times they can get annoying.  for my last piece of advice, I will say, another way to get some good ideas or inspiration for writing dialogue is to look at some of your favourite books and see how the authors of those wrote the dialogue.  I will finish off with some examples of what I think is well-written dialogue, these may not be perfect since I came up with them on the spot but I hope they give you an idea of what good dialogue should look like.

My girlfriend had locked herself in the bathroom and she had been in there for a while so I was getting rather worried, I asked her, "Amy are you okay?"

"What's wrong?" I asked her worriedly. 

for a minute she didn't answer so I got even more worried, finally, she opened the door and I hurried inside toward her. she seemed fine if maybe a bit worried. "What's wrong?" I asked again. 

Her worry even more obvious now she finally said, "James I'm Pregnant,"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she replied, reaching for something on the counter.

I'd guessed what she was reaching for and as the news sunk in multiple emotions shot through me. Sure I wanted to have a child eventually but we were still young I didn't think either of us was really ready for parenthood yet. We were still trying to pay off all our student loans, I wasn't sure how we would manage with a child added to the mix. She brought her hand back to where I could see its contents, sure enough, she was holding three pregnancy tests.

 I was surprised she'd taken that many, I guess she hadn't wanted to believe what was obviously the truth. I could see she was still worried probably because I hadn't really shown her what I thought about it. I hadn't fully decided how I felt about it either but I wanted to make her feel better so I told her what I knew, "I don't know if we are really ready for this, but if you want to keep the baby I will stay with you and be a father to our baby. If you don't think you're ready you can give it up for adoption or abort it. I know we didn't plan this but I'm leaving the choice up to you,"

"I love you Amy and I will stay with you no matter what," I promised before kissing her, she returned it. We kissed passionately until we eventually had to separate for air. 

"I think we should keep the baby, I know it won't be easy but it was our own fault that this is happening and I can't just kill our baby or abandon it,"

I smiled and nodded honestly pleased, sure I was worried about becoming a father but I wasn't going to abandon my girlfriend or our child. I know relationships don't always last but so far Amy and I had been going strong and I hoped that wouldn't change anytime soon. I knew that might have been rushing things but I was already thinking about possible baby names in my head and imagining what we might do with our child as it grows up. I also wondered what the gender would be  I knew I would be happy with either but I think I would still like to find out when we could.

A/N If you want more information on dialogue or anything else I have mentioned in this book so far a good source is Pinterest.  there are many pins on there that will take you to different articles about many different aspects of writing including dialogue. another good source is Youtube, there are some youtube channels that will provide you with even more information.