Adding Conversation Into A Short Story!!?

Question

If you are typing a short story and all of a sudden have to insert some sort of conversation, dialog, or thought, do you start typing on the next line as if it is a new paragraph or not ?

For instance, say you were typing:
Andrew went back to his computer, eager to continue his conversation with Natty. He began to reflect back on his day, "I wonder if Brittney ever recieved my note" he thought. At that moment, Vince entered the room. "what do you have goin' on tonight?" he asked.

How would you write/type this into a story correctly??? Thank you!

Answer 1

Thoughts and dialog are different things. Thoughts can be within a paragraph, while dialog must be it's own paragraph. Here's paragraph, revised;

Andrew went back to his computer, eager to continue his conversation with Natty. He began to reflect back on his day; "I wonder if Brittney ever recieved my note" he thought. At that moment, Vince entered the room.
"What do you have goin' on tonight?" he asked.

Also, you should note that things work a little differently if your dialog ends in a period instead of a question mark or exclamation point. You still need a new paragraph, but you may need to use a comma if you splice the sentence. For example;

"Hey there," Jack said, "I heard you were looking for me.

I hope I was helpful, and good luck.

Answer 2

You would start a new paragraph when a person speaks. For example, instead of:

"Andrew went back to his computer, eager to continue his conversation with Natty. He began to reflect back on his day, "I wonder if Brittney ever recieved my note" he thought. At that moment, Vince entered the room. "what do you have goin' on tonight?" he asked."...

it would be...

"Andrew went back to his computer, eager to continue his conversation with Natty. He began to reflect back on his day.

"I wonder if Brittney ever recieved my note" he thought. At that moment, Vince entered the room.

"What do you have goin' on tonight?" he asked. "

it's also a good idea to start a new paragraph before "At that moment...", because it's a change in focus and action, but I think that's a stylistic choice rather than a hard rule. ALso, if this were in a book, there would be tabs before each new paragraph and there would be lines of empty space between them. It's something about Yahoo answers that doesn't let you do that...