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I am trying to use colons for dialogue in a creative work. The purpose is to make a distinction between imagined dialogue and actual (fictional!) spoken dialogue, e.g:

An elderly lady opened the door. A dog stood behind her and said: I know you.

This would serve the purpose, but if the situation required that the speaker is identified after the dialogue the sentence would read:

An elderly lady opened the door. A dog stood behind her: I know you, said the dog.

This now has two different interpretations, and I don’t think that it’s acceptable grammar.

Though the following is fine – The dog said: I know you.

I’ve realised that it’s possible to use italics:

An elderly lady opened the door. A dog stood behind her: I know you, the dog said

I am uncertain whether this is how it would be normally written.

Please don’t try to rewrite this sentence with different variations such as ‘I imagined that dog said’ as I am looking for the conventions that are used as I understand that colons were used for speech in the Bible, so I’m wondering what basic rules were applied. The purpose of my chosen usage with these variations is to achieve a more complicated and flowing dialogue exchange with magical realism, where there is real and imagined dialogue in a sequence.

E.g.,

Bob walked over to me and shook my hand, “Bad luck, old boy, but we have room for you on the team.”

I looked over to the portrait of Old William on the wall: I told you not to trust him.

This sentence really requires, said Old William from his grave after the dialogue, but the grammar would be incorrect.

It may seem pedantic, but with a few basic rules, the dialogue could be far more complicated and flow with more ease, but with a colon it seems that the sentences will always be of the form Speaker said: dialogue.

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The purpose of my chosen usage with these variations is to achieve a more complicated and flowing dialogue exchange with magical realism, where there is real and imagined dialogue in a sequence.

By 'imagined' I think you mean like hallucinatory?
(I'm not trying to correct you, just paraphrasing so I understand.)

There is no rule for this so you are free to make up a rule and stick with it.

I like the sparse bluntness of the colon followed by the statement. It feels intrusive, which I think is the effect you are going for.

Ultimately you will run into instances where you'll need to solve the problem of who is speaking. I understood the example of the dog, but I did not understand the painting. Your sentence makes grammatical sense but in the moment of reading I lost track of 'Old William' for the physical 'painting on the wall'.

On the wall the painting of Old William scowled from his grave: I told you not to trust him!

I think it's just a matter of not confusing the reader between the last evoked image/impression and the intrusive dialog. It may actually help to emphasize the person experiencing this voice is hit abruptly each time. The voice is not coming at a pleasant respectful pace the way normal dialog would flow. It is not a conversation.

In the case where multiple voices are competing or arguing, again this is a common writer's problem with normal he said/she said dialog. The key is to have clear characterization with opposing ideas, or an inherent conflict where the speakers are taking different points of view. The dialog is followable because the reader knows which character would be saying those words.

Where everyone is agreeing, it doesn't matter who said what. There is no character differentiation or conflict that makes the POV crucial to follow. It is a 'gang up', but maybe one speaker has a quirk and this helps to add a reference that the dialog is going around in a circle.

As general writing advice, look up Free Indirect Speech. It is a narrative technique that allows for anecdotal opinions and character interjections in a very seamless way, despite those characters not actually saying those lines, and without resorting to 'he thought to himself' contortions.

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