Marlo Garner
Professional Book Editor
Book Editing Associates ~ Editing-Writing.com ~ ChildrensBookEditors.com
He Said, She Said: Basic Tips for Writing Dialogue
“Hey there,” whispered Wordy Bird. “I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.”
“Who? Me?” asked Mr. Penpusher.
“Yes, you.” Wordy Bird frowned. “Who else?”
He gulped. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“I think it’s necessary,” said Wordy Bird, leaning in conspiratorially, “even though we’d both love to avoid it. After all, it’s tricky to talk about—” She snapped her head away and gazed at the monologues puffing out of the Fiction Factory behind him. They were particularly long and convoluted this evening.
“You don’t mean…” Mr. Penpusher’s mouth slowly dropped open. He grabbed a plate of pickled herrings and thrust it hard toward her. “Here, wouldn’t you like some? They’re scrumptious,” he squeaked.
Wordy Bird took a deep breath and swept aside the fish. She slowly nodded her feathery head. “Yes, my dear friend, it’s high time we talked about dialogue.”
Dialogue. We all know it’s important. It connects characters to each other, and it gives their interactions life. It makes a scene interesting and engages the reader. And of course, it helps show—not tell—who each character really is, what they think, and how they feel.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive treatise on what makes great dialogue. It is simply a discussion of some of the basic dialogue issues I very frequently encounter while I’m editing client work and teaching my writing students. What your characters say is up to you. But here are some things to avoid when you’re writing it, some things that will help you self-edit as you revise and develop your manuscript.
Identify the speaker early, especially in dialogue for young people, not at the end of multiple sentences of speech. This is especially pertinent when you have multiple characters in a scene, each of whom might conceivably be speaking. Sometimes, when there are multiple sentences of dialogue without a dialogue tag, if there’s any ambiguity about who might be speaking, I often I assume it is one character and then get an odd little shock to find it was someone else. It makes me stop, backtrack, and readjust. It’s jarring. You don’t want anything in your manuscript that catapults the reader out of the story, even for a moment.
Avoid verbose dialogue tags such as responded, interjected, inquired, questioned, and queried. Use said most of the time. Said will disappear into the dialogue, not stick out like the awkward guy at the party, poking the reader in the brain and saying too loudly, “Hey, dude, did you know I’m a dialogue tag? I’m, like, a totally awesome dialogue tag. I mean the same thing as said, but I’m a different word for it! You better believe I’m a hit with the laaaaadies.” That’s what those kinds of dialogue tags always shout to me, and most editors and agents will agree. The dialogue tag’s primary function is to just show us who is speaking. Let them mostly sink away into the background.
Avoid superfluous dialogue tags. Second or third or fourth dialogue tags when the same speaker is still speaking are usually superfluous.
“But I like pickled herrings,” said Mr. Penpusher. “Especially red ones. You’ll like them, too,” he continued, stuffing several in Wordy Birdy’s beak. “Won’t you try some?” he asked. “Yummy!” he said.
You almost always only need one to identify the speaker near the beginning of his/her speech. The exception is when the speaker’s manner of speaking and/or their emotional state suddenly changes dramatically, for example:
“But I like pickled herrings,” muttered Mr. Penpusher. “Especially red ones. You’ll like them, too.” He stuffed several in Wordy Birdy’s beak. “Won’t you try some?” he squealed.
Sometimes, you won’t need a dialogue tag at all.
Wordy Birdie chewed thoughtfully on the herrings, but something tasted off. She very discretely disposed of them by coughing daintily into her handkerchief. “So, as I was saying about dialogue… shall we discuss the importance of grounding it?”
Ground Your Dialogue. Let us see what the characters are doing, with what, and where they are as they speak. Nonverbal communication, such as body language, as well as the character’s general behavior and interaction with their environment and other characters can give the reader strong cues about their emotional state, what is important to them, and even what they might be trying to avoid.
But avoid “turning and looking.” It is rarely necessary to tell us that Character A turns and looks at Character B when A speaks to B. That is implied. It’s only worth noting if there’s something interesting or remarkable about the way A looks at B while they’re speaking to them, otherwise just leave the “turning and looking” out.
What can be interesting and important is if a character doesn’t look at the person they’re speaking to. That can say a lot about what’s really going on between them, and/or draw attention to whatever is happening around them.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” said Wordy Bird, twirling around in the sunshine. “Aren’t you glad we had this chat about dialogue?”
“I am.” Mr. Penpusher stared long and hard at the herring. He tossed it over his shoulder. It plopped into the pond, scattering the floating autumn leaves. “I suddenly feel much better. That wasn’t so hard after all.”
Wordy Bird watched the bubbles rise to the surface of the murky water and smiled. “I’m glad we agree,” she said.
Copyright 2013