Direct and Indirect speeches/narrations 

Q: what are direct and indirect speeches/narrations?

Ans: there are two ways of conveying someone's message to another person.

i. Direct Speech/Narration
ii. Indirect Speech/Narration

i. Direct speech: In direct speech, we convey the message of the speaker in his own actual words without any change to another person.

ii. Indirect speech: In indirect speech, we convey the message of the speaker in our own words to another person.

e.g. Direct Speech = He says,” I am sick."
Indirect Speech = He says that he is sick.

The basic rules of changing direct speech into indirect speech
1. We remove comma and inverted commas.
2. We put "that" between the reporting and reported speeches.
3. We change the 1st letter of reported speech into small letter except "I"
4. We change the verb and helping verbs of the reported speech according to the pronouns.

Direct = She says, "I am brave."
Reporting speech Reported speech
Indirect = She says that she is brave.

Note: (i) there is no difference in the meanings of "told" and "said" but there is difference in the usage; "said" is used with or without object and "told" needs an object.
(ii) "Said" needs "to" with an object and "told" doesn't need "to"

direct = He said to me," He is playing well."
Indirect = He said to me that he was playing well.
OR: He told me that he was playing well.