I'm working on a prototype that will have an NPC give dialogue for the player to read and since this is the first time handling dialogue I would like some advice on the programming side of handling dialogue.

Make a list of questions with possible answers, and for each answer the next question you want to ask.

Have a variable that tracks the currently displayed question. When the user answers, update the variable to the next question.

@Tom Sloper

That and programming a dialogue box

@Alberth

The dialogue will be used to tell a story like how most fantasy games have someone explain your purpose in the game. But your advice will help if I plan to do that

@Alberth

My apologies I meant role-playing games in my first reply

Did you consider writing a text file with lines of text in a convenient form and parse that?

Eg

invite_walk
condition: quest0=completed, attrA > 7
tell: It is good weather today, care for a walk in the garden?
answer: No, not really I am busy -> end
answer: Hmm, maybe, I was looking for a bar -> invite_bar
answer: Yes please, I'd be delighed -> go_for_walk

With python (or any other language for that matter), you can read the lines of the file, and check text of them.

In my example, first line is the name of the node Other lines have a special word in front like “answer:” so you can recognize them. For each type of line you can decode what the text contains. For the “answer” line, you should look for a “→” sequence, which is after the text to show, and before the name of the next node

For a conditions, you first split on commas, then you have texts of the form “word OP word”, where OP is “=”, “>”, etc.

Editable with any text editor, and text-processing to understand the lines isn't terribly complicated.