A small Python package for splitting text into dialogue and narrative.

narrative is available on PyPI. Simply install it with pip:

pip install narrative

narrative splits a piece of prose into narrative and dialogue components. The main function split() will return a dict containing both narrative and dialogue components:

>>> import narrative
>>> text = '"Hello," he said. "How are you today?"'
>>> narrative.split(text)
{'dialogue': ['"Hello,"', '"How are you today?"'], 'narrative': ['', ' he said. ', '']}

There are two other helper functions as well.

get_dialogue() returns only the dialogue components:

>>> narrative.get_dialogue(text)
['"Hello,"', '"How are you today?"']

get_narrative() returns only the narrative components:

>>> narrative.get_narrative(text)
['', ' he said. ', '']

Note: The empty strings are a feature of Python's split() function. See Why are empty strings returned in split() results? for an explanation.

Each function accepts a second parameter of a regular expression used to parse out the dialogue. This defaults to narrative.DIALOGUE_RE, which follows the American standard of using double quotes for initial quotes. narrative now includes a second regular expression, narrative.BRITISH_DIALOGUE_RE, which follows the British style of using single quotes for initial quotes. Simply use it as the second parameter for any function:

>>> import narrative
>>> narrative.split(text, narrative.BRITISH_DIALOGUE_RE)
>>> …
>>> narrative.get_dialogue(text, narrative.BRITISH_DIALOGUE_RE)
>>> …
>>> narrative.get_narrative(text, narrative.BRITISH_DIALOGUE_RE)
>>> …