Dialogue Tags: Just say "said"

[micah]

Yes, I know. Technically it should be "just write said," but that's not nearly as interesting, is it?

So, my turn on the pet peeve wagon. The abuse of the dialogue tag. Nothing screams "amateur" like some flowery, foo-foo, or just plain impossible phrase used in place of the word "said."

Here's an example of what I mean. I pulled this from something I read on-line a few days ago.

"Oh my God," she gasped. "Kevin!"

Gasp--verb--from the Norse geispa: to yawn
to inhale suddenly with the mouth open, out of pain or astonishment.

Let's try that, shall we? I'd like you all to open your mouths, inhale suddenly, and use that inhalation to express the words "Oh my God."

OK, stop. You're going to pass out.

It can not be done. You can not inhale and make words that other people can hear.

Other classics (from an article entitled "Avoid Creative Dialogue Tag Syndrome")

"Just be like that," she pouted.

"Right," he snarled.

You get the point.

The problem here is twofold. First, you can not do the actions implied by the verbs used as dialogue tags while expressing coherent statements in any language. You can't pout a phrase. If the character has to pout (or gasp, or snarl, or whatever) have the character do it as a separate action.

What is even worse, for my money, is that the use of a goofball dialogue tag like one of these takes the readers completely out of the scene. These words are intrusive. They remind readers that they are reading, which destroys the immersive experience.

Fortunately, we have a completely non-intrusive word in our arsenal: said. No one pays attention to "said." Most readers will pass right over it. Don't feel bad for said, this is its strength. It remains invisible while still achieving its purpose--letting readers know who is speaking.

However, if you have done you job as a writer and created characters with distinct voices you can probably do away with the dialogue tag for most of a conversation. This is especially true if there are only two characters talking. Elmore Leonard is a master of this. He can write pages of snappy banter between characters and exclude the dialogue tags altogether without the readers ever losing track of who said what. I think that this is something to strive for. Sure, throw in the occasional "he said," just to keep things clear, but if you have a wealthy aristocrat talking to a street urchin, your readers should be able to figure out which phrases belong to which character.

[Side note: When I use the word "voice" I am talking about the character's way of thinking, speaking, and acting which provide examples of his or her background, upbringing, state of mind, etc. I am NOT talking about the hackneyed practice of phonetic speech patterns: "'allo guv'no'. Wha' th' news of 'igh street?" This will not only snap the reader out of the immersive experience, it will probably cause the book to be thrown across the room in frustration.]

If this concept is puzzling, try this characterization exercise foisted on me at a recent convention. Write a scene, something brief and fairly mundane, from a specific point of view. A thirty year old woman walks into a conference room. What is the first thing she sees? How does she feel about it? Now write that exact same scene, but change the gender. Make the viewer a retiree, then a child. Each will see different things and react to them differently. Your descriptions should say as much about the viewer as they do about what they are viewing. Naturally, each character would speak differently too. If you can tap into that, you should be able to write tagless dialogue.

Remember, a bit of dialogue on its own packs a bigger punch than one with an oddball tag next to it.

"Oh my God, Kevin!"

If you are uncomfortable with this, remember your old friend "said."

[awgifford]

I couldn't agree more. One of my favorites is: "Go to Hell," she hissed.
How do you hiss go to hell?

To write bad dialogue attribution is human, to write he said, she said is divine.

[MontiLee]

Crimney - you'd think you were complaining about Kubrick, or something.

I've been thinking alot about dialoue tags while editing Isle and my own shorter works. I've also been noticing the way Stephen King does thim - which is to say, he doesn't. He wraps the dialogue around the action, which is something you don't even notice until it's pointed out. It makes the story flow because you know the characters are talking and if you're not a complete idiot your imagination along with the carefully crafted story will play out in your head.

In The Cat Dragged Inn, when the main character returns to the Gullah island where she grew up, the man she speaks with initially talks with the island patios, but as she becomes more accustomed to it, the language blends to regular English. it's easier on the writer because I don't have to create brain bleeds writing out Gullah, and the reader thanks me because he doesn't have to learn Gullah to understand.

We think in our native tongue, in our native dialect. Once you tell a reader that they are no longer in Kansas, they will play along. As a writer, you've already established the where and the when. If you've done your job, the reader is already thinking in character.

[micah]

Ah thank you! I can't believe I forgot the other easy way to sneak in who said what without using an actual tag. Perhaps it's because it is something which one doesn't notice until it's pointed out...

[thekarmasuitzya]

Great tips, gang! I'm loving this whole proboard thing. Please keep up the great advice. It really does help!

[Stout Roost]

I agree and disagree with tags. On the one hand, sure you can't actually hiss out words, but on the other they do a pretty good job of describing how the person is saying something. It's not meant to be taken literally. Your professor didn't just finish grading a thousand papers, your grandmother didn't slave over a hot stove for hours--it's an exaggeration. We're writers, we know we communicate most effectively with lies. It's how we reach out 'truth'. It's not the tip of the turd that stinks, it's the whole thing.

[micah]

Ah, finally. I thought there would never be any disagreement here. I know for a fact that we don't always agree with each other

Having written that, I agree that we are writers and we are allowed to take license occasionally. I can even forgive the occasional dialog tag. However, when it is done repeatedly (and by this I mean more than once every 300 pages) the book will get thrown across the room.

Elmore Leonard has a line (which I am just too lazy to find and quote, so I paraphrase) about dialog belonging to the character and verbs used as tags belonging to the writer. I feel the story should really belong to the characters, so taking anything away from them is wrong. This is especially true when it is so easy to give the characters both the dialog and the action. Simply break up the sentences. "Shut up, Micah." & 'He hissed' can both be used. 'He hissed' gets to be an independent sentence of its very own, not a tag.

As for the other examples, I am sure that I have used structures exactly like those given and left them in the draft zero. However, as soon as I put on my editing hat and picked up my blue pencil I would make sure that my professor felt like he had just graded a thousand papers. Memaw might complain about slaving over the hot stove for hours, but it would be dialog and the other characters (and the reader) would know that the exaggeration came from her and not the writer.

Of course, it might not be exaggeration. Memaws do spend a lot of time at the stove...

[MontiLee]

I think you're confusing a few things but we'll tackle them separately.

Feb 19, 2010 13:05:58 GMT -5 Stout Roost said:

On the one hand, sure you can't actually hiss out words, but on the other they do a pretty good job of describing how the person is saying something.

Actions describe how a person is saying something. If you've done your job as a writer your audience can well imagine how a character is speaking, either by the character or the reaction of the characters they're speaking to. Some writers don't even use dialog tags - and those stories flow like warm honey. Like any tool, tags should be kept handy, but when over used (the catch-all duct tape) or used when not appropriate (duct tape to hold the crib together) it speaks of mild incompetence.

As to the second point:

We're writers, we know we communicate most effectively with lies. It's how we reach out 'truth'. It's not the tip of the turd that stinks, it's the whole thing.

Actually we communicate most effectively with the Truth. While the overall packaging is a tale of our imagination, how the characters speak and react had got to be true, or the audience won't buy it.

Readers can tell when you're trying to hard, or are being lazy, or simply don't know what you're doing. When the dialogue looks forced or the action looks contrived, all of the dialogue tags in the world won't make it look any better.

Look - you can build up this pedestal build on straw and dreams that all you need to write is make up a bunch of lies and call yourself a writer, but in reality you need insight and skill and a some grasp of what makes people tick - and not just your characters, but your readers.

Dan Brown speaks to disaffected conspirators as well as readers who need to feel just a little bit superior to the smartest guy in the book. That's why his work sells, despite the fact that it's poorly written.

Stephanie Meyers speaks to women (and not a few men) who miss that creepy stalker romantic love that the 50's and 60's told women was necessary to land a man and therefore true love.

I don't point to those two as exceptions to the rule - but to illustrate how they fall lock-step. Sure the plot is loose and the writing makes your teeth ache as your brain erupts into small bleeds, but the actions of the characters, how they interact, what they say - is real. Scary but true. When the reader can connect to the characters, regardless of how outlandish the sparkly situation, you've created a bond.

[Stout Roost]

Feb 21, 2010 11:55:22 GMT -5 MontiLee said:

I think you're confusing a few things but we'll tackle them separately.

Feb 19, 2010 13:05:58 GMT -5 Stout Roost said:

On the one hand, sure you can't actually hiss out words, but on the other they do a pretty good job of describing how the person is saying something.

Actions describe how a person is saying something. If you've done your job as a writer your audience can well imagine how a character is speaking, either by the character or the reaction of the characters they're speaking to. Some writers don't even use dialog tags - and those stories flow like warm honey. Like any tool, tags should be kept handy, but when over used (the catch-all duct tape) or used when not appropriate (duct tape to hold the crib together) it speaks of mild incompetence.

As to the second point:

We're writers, we know we communicate most effectively with lies. It's how we reach out 'truth'. It's not the tip of the turd that stinks, it's the whole thing.

Actually we communicate most effectively with the Truth. While the overall packaging is a tale of our imagination, how the characters speak and react had got to be true, or the audience won't buy it.

Readers can tell when you're trying to hard, or are being lazy, or simply don't know what you're doing. When the dialogue looks forced or the action looks contrived, all of the dialogue tags in the world won't make it look any better.

Look - you can build up this pedestal build on straw and dreams that all you need to write is make up a bunch of lies and call yourself a writer, but in reality you need insight and skill and a some grasp of what makes people tick - and not just your characters, but your readers.

Dan Brown speaks to disaffected conspirators as well as readers who need to feel just a little bit superior to the smartest guy in the book. That's why his work sells, despite the fact that it's poorly written.

Stephanie Meyers speaks to women (and not a few men) who miss that creepy stalker romantic love that the 50's and 60's told women was necessary to land a man and therefore true love.

I don't point to those two as exceptions to the rule - but to illustrate how they fall lock-step. Sure the plot is loose and the writing makes your teeth ache as your brain erupts into small bleeds, but the actions of the characters, how they interact, what they say - is real. Scary but true. When the reader can connect to the characters, regardless of how outlandish the sparkly situation, you've created a bond.

I think we're splitting hairs only in that I'm looking at it black and white. A metaphor isn't truth, it's a lie. Fiction is make-believe. Even if you're writing a biography there is an embellishment of some kind in there. Sure, if your character shoots someone there's every likelihood that person dies. That's truth. The lie is that these two people even exist. That's all I'm sayin'.

[micah]

Interesting, very interesting. Lies, truth, and the nature of what it is that we write. Who knew a rant about dialog would end up here?

Sure, as fiction writers what we are putting on the page (or the screen or whatever) is not truth in that it did not actually happen. I think that it is important that even the most fantastic of fictional situations hold a kernel of the truth. This is where that old saw about writing what you know comes in to play. No one want to read a book about an author who is struggling to pay his bills while trying to write a novel about an author who is struggling to pay his bills... That's just too much damn truth.

However, even in the midst of the completely unbelievable (say, a zombie uprising), people still act like people. They misinterpret what their loved ones say and get hurt. They let their greed and self interest overcome their good sense and make foolish decisions. Their actions are motivated by the same things which we encounter every day. If we write these portions properly, if we make the readers believe the 'mundane' portions, then they will be more willing to accept our more fantastic portions (zombies, demons, and little green men).

Sometimes this means giving up some of the less important but equally fantastic concepts, like having someone hiss, gasp, or pout a phrase.

[Stout Roost]

Everything in moderation. I think there is room in good writing to have someone hiss something, but just as someone said above, too much and it overpowers the story. One of the best things I ever learned was every rule in the English language is meant to be broken. My 9th grade teacher hammered home how you never begin a sentence with 'and'. And guess what I do on a regular basis?

[sjp]

Feb 22, 2010 15:44:58 GMT -5 Stout Roost said:

Everything in moderation. I think there is room in good writing to have someone hiss something, but just as someone said above, too much and it overpowers the story. One of the best things I ever learned was every rule in the English language is meant to be broken. My 9th grade teacher hammered home how you never begin a sentence with 'and'. And guess what I do on a regular basis?

Ah, and there's the trick. If you don't know the rules and you break them, then it just becomes sloppy writing. When you KNOW the rules, and are certain WHY you're breaking them, then suddenly you are a writing genius. Strange how that works out, isn't it?

As for me personally, I just hate writing dialogue tags at all. It's not a matter of me hating "hissed, gasped, etc." I barely noticed ANY of those when I read, myself. But I hate writing them. I hate having to spell out to my audience who is talking when, by the flow of the scene, it should be fairly clear. Even when I have three people in a scene talking, I still try to keep it clear through action and the personalities of character, not through saying things.

Speaking of dialogue tags and the fun that can be had with confusion...I don't know if anyone has read Jasper Fforde's books, but one of his series is practically a giant joke about writing and literature, with characters literally able to jump into works of fiction...and characters to jump out. When confronting a character suspected of being "completely fictional," the heroes confound the character by removing the dialogue tags from what they're saying, as "only a real person would be able to tell who was talking from context, whereas the fictional character would be lost."

Needless to say, they confuse the fictional person pretty easily. But it's a very amusing way of pointing out how much tags are overused, and how the reader can figure out who is talking without needing them.