by: Karen Funk BlocherThe other day, the Fantasy Writers Support Group on Facebook had a post (which I can’t find again) that complained about Microsoft’s spelling, punctuation and grammar checkers, while ignoring a more egregious problem later in the sentence. I don’t remember the alleged problem in the dialogue itself, which as I recall was actually fine. But the sentence ended something like this:
“This is merely example dialogue,” Fred frowned. The following have the same problem. Do you know what it is? “I do this all the time,” Cathy smiled. “People are weird,” he chortled. “Aren’t you done with these examples yet?” she glared and crossed her arms. The words at the end of each of these sentences are speech tags, but very bad ones. The purpose of a speech tag is to identify which character is speaking, if it’s not already clear from context. If characters are very distinctive in their way of speaking and the sorts of things they’re likely to say, speech tags can and should be kept to a minimum. Sometimes they’re needed, though. The simplest form, [he/she/character name] said, is generally considered the best, because the reader picks up the vital info and moves on, not really even noticing the speech tag. Other verbs can be used, though, as needed. Maybe she yelled, screamed, moaned, whimpered, or just asked, argued, objected or pointed out. But compare these verbs with the ones in the examples above. You can use words to ask or argue or object. You can also yell words, murmur or whisper them. You can even moan or whimper them. But you’d be hard pressed to laugh out words, and you certainly can’t frown them. Maybe she said it with a smile. Maybe he said it happily. But if you resort to those -ly adverbs, you’re venturing into an area that’s frowned upon in modern writing. It reminds people of what are called Tom Swifties, named for a character from a Stratemeyer Syndicate series of kids books from the early to mid-20th Century: “I love hot dogs!” Tom said frankly. “Glazed donuts are the best!” Gloria said sweetly. Children’s books from that era (especially Stratemeyer’s Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins and yes, Tom Swift) are full of these, usually without the wordplay. They also report that characters expostulated, chortled, laughed, exclaimed and so on. Some of these speech tags were technically correct (you can certainly exclaim words), some not. All are very much out of favor now. Still, you often do want to get more information into your dialogue. But how? My advice is to add some “business” for the character to do, but keep it out of the speech tag itself: “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Del said. He set down his fork. “Enough of this. Let’s get going.” You can even use business to get in those non-verbal actions, and dispense with the speech tag entirely: Cindy’s voice quavered. “Don’t you understand? I can’t do that. I just can’t!” Bill laughed. “Get used to it.” (Notice that this example suggests Bill’s callous attitude, especially if he’s responding to Cindy above. We don’t have to say outright that he’s being cruel or unsympathetic to Cindy.) Good dialog, or a good bit of business, can often convey the emotion, with no need to report the laughter or tears, sadness, surprise or other reaction directly. The cliche is “Her eyes widened,” which I personally hate but resort to occasionally. My advice is to try to “see” what is going on at that moment in your scene. Is someone playing with his food? Absent-mindedly stroking the cat? Pounding the table? Downing the mead in one gulp? Then report on that. But for Nancy Drew’s sake, don’t let your characters frown their words. More on this: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/speech-tags-writing/ https://ali-stegert.com/2014/10/25/no-said-is-not-dead/
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