When I want to narrate or tell someone about a conversation that I or some people were involved in, it seems wrong to me to represent the participants with, for instance,
Sam said...blah blah blah
Then james replied....blah blah blah
The. Same said.......
The james replied ......
And so on....maintaining the narrating with the same pattern.
Here, my tuition of narrating a story sounds weird to some extent with saying: he said, then he replied
............
However, I see that some people use something like
Sam go like......,
James told him like......
Then, Sam was like ........
My question, what is the best way to narrate a story and sound natural in English when making the switch of back and forth between the participants in a dialog?
I mean retell it with being formal and make it look more idiomatic.
How do native speakers do it?