"What is the best way to handle characters who speak multiple languages in a story or narrative?"

Writing dialogue for characters who speak multiple languages requires considering linguistic and cultural context.

Dialects, accents, and idiomatic expressions can create authenticity in representing different languages.

Language proficiency can be shown through phonetic spellings, glossaries, or translation dictionaries.

Dialogue tags and action beats can add realism, such as "she gestured wildly as she spoke in broken English."

Linguistic details can help create nuanced and realistic portrayals of multilingual characters.

Writers can reveal character traits through the use of language, such as education level or socioeconomic status.

Writing for multiple characters requires crafting dialogue that creates a sense of real-life conversation with less small talk and more conflict.

Covering character names during reading can help ensure distinct voices for each character in the scene.

Writing foreign languages in a dense block of text should be avoided.

Mixing dialogue with action indicating laughter or writing out laughter can convey humor in multilingual conversations.

Writing simultaneous dialogue in a screenplay requires denoting characters and their spoken words.

Summarizing dialogue can keep the story moving, trading style for pace.