I'm editing a story right now, and they use this construction with no speaking verbs a lot:
Rachel was finishing washing the dinner plates, “I know this will be hard on them, but Shelby needs to go on home."
I know you could replace that comma with a period, but I wonder if it's common to use a comma or semicolon to avoid slowing the reader too much?
This next one makes more sense to me because laughing could conceivably be a speaking verb:
Maddie's laugh was laced with sarcasm, “Mark, looks like you’ve got a friend.”
That one could even be a colon...
Am I overthinking this? Should I just replace them all with periods?
I have a pet peeve about commas separating two complete clauses with no conjunction generally, and it bothers me every time I see it (unless it's two complete clauses in one line of dialogue, because people do talk like that, with short pauses). Such situations are often better with a semicolon or a period instead. But I have no idea if that is a common opinion. Above all, I don't want to steamroll over the writer's unique voice.