Typeset a dialogue?

Question

I need to typeset a dialogue in LaTeX, it's for a translation assignment. The original dialogue does something like this:

- I found it, I told him.
My finger was in the book, where George Best's autograph was. My da was
sitting in his chair.
- Did you? he said. - Good man. What?
- What?
- What did you find?
- The autograph, I told him.
He was messing.

I would like to keep that formatting without resorting to \\ and such. I found the dialogue package on CTAN, but it doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Really depends on how long you need this to go for and how fussy you are. Based on your description I'd define something like

\setlength\parindent{0pt}
\setlength\parskip{1ex plus 2pt minus 1pt}
\newcommand\X{\par\noindent---~}

and write

\X I found it, I told him.

My finger was in the book, where George Best's autograph was. My da was
sitting in his chair.

\X Did you? he said. ---~Good man. What?
\X What?
\X What did you find?
\X The autograph, I told him.

He was messing.

No need to be fancy.