"Come here right now."
"I am, just give me a minute."
"No, right now." He was livid. What the hell happened to the car?
"I said now. Get out here."
"Okay, okay."

If you don't follow the conversion and simply alternate voices for each of these lines, you end up with the wrong person saying "Okay, okay".

Narrating dialogue is a lot easier if you give yourself visual clues as to who is talking. This is especially important if you have written several lines of dialogue without using 'he said' and 'she said', to indicate who is saying what.

Get some contrasting colored pencils (blue, red, green, brown). Stay away from colors that are hard to see on white paper, like yellow, or which are shades of the same color. When you reach a section of dialogue, select one color for each speaker. Make a small mark (a little box or little circle) at the beginning of each person's speech. For example, if John and Mary are having a discussion, each time John starts to talk, put a red dot at the beginning. Each time Mary starts to talk, put a blue dot at the beginning. Use another color for the narrator, so you will know when to go out of character.

Here are some don'ts:

• You don't have to use the same color for a person throughout the book. John can be red in this dialogue, blue in the next.
• Don't use felt-tip markers. If you accidentally get them out of order, you won't be able to erase the marking.
• Don't mark through the entire text (like you would with a highlighter), just make a small dot at the beginning of the person's line.
• Don't assume that a new paragraph is the other person speaking, especially if the 'he said, she said's are not written.

Speaking a dialogue usually requires a lot of switching: for each character, you will need to vary the pitch, rate of speech, and emotions. You will also have the neutral narrator's voice mixed in. Getting the interplay of emphasis and pauses right between speakers will take most of your concentration when you are recording. Having color codes will help you identify the speaker immediately.