Rosy, I see your point of view.

I pulled out many of the books I have read over the years, before I studied writing methods, and I have found it both ways, dialogue with and without tags. It never bothered me as a reader before now.

When I am really into a story, I don’t see the individual words, I only see the story happening in my head.

I do think speech tags are a bad idea in writing dialogue, and I plan to use less of them. Especially, words that are seldom used, which can jar the reader. Words that act like speed bumps. Common speech tags that are seen often tend to be invisible to the readers eye. I know I don’t see them when I am reading. I think they bother the agent, publisher, and author, more than they affect readers.

Azel

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There is one word that sets my teeth on edge when I see it in a story. ‘He wolfed down his food.’ That word ‘wolfed’ will knock me right out of the story for a few seconds.

Words that act like speed bumps.

What a great way to put it - not just about dialogue tags, but about other places where you want the reader to speed ahead, and then...

Of course, sometimes you do want the reader to really notice and feel each word. But that's different.

Emma

I agree with Rosy. Trying to express everything with facial expressions, gestures, and so forth, comes over as laboured, and there is nothing at all wrong with saying something in astonishment. I would much rather someone 'said in astonishment' than 'said, as her eyebrows shot up'. The first is far more expressive, to me. The second is awkward - all one can think of is flying eyebrows. I also find Terry's example of tapping fingers very awkward. It would dislodge me entirely from a story if I read it - I would think 'here is someone who is worrying more about his dialogue tags than about telling his story'.
You need to bear in mind your point of view, but also your tone of voice, and the rhythmn and flow of your story's own language. No rules should be taken as gospel. Style should adjust to the novel you are writing.

Rosy,

Thanks for calling me fashionable -- it's been over forty years since my last and only attempt to be fashionable, which was to buy a pair of chisel-toed shoes. They might have been effective but I think the fact I was still in short trousers at the time kind of nullified the effect somewhat.

Anyway, I don't think anyone's talking about Good and Bad. I was just trying to make the point that dialogue tags are usually too prescriptive. This is certainly true when they specify emotional content but I think it can also be true when they describe tone or volume. No, there's nothing wrong exactly, with saying that someone spoke 'softly' for instance. But I think it's much more effective if the way you've built the scene and the dynamics between characters, and your word selection in the dialogue, lead to the reader seeing for himself that this was probably said softly. Nothing beats discovering things for oneself. Also, as I said before, the less you specifically tell the reader, the more ambiguity or magic or suspense is created.

So, I don't agree that colourful speech tags convey the necessary information neatly and succinctly -- mainly because that's what your dialogue is supposed to do. And if it isn't, then dialogue tags will just irritate the reader.

I'm sorry to bang on about magical ambiguity, but I think it's important. If a writer tags every bit of dialogue, and is not selective in the actions they describe, the story soon becomes cartoonish. Everything is made obvious; which is great for cartoons, since their humour mostly comes from glorifying the obvious. But a good prose story should use the advantage of non-specific imagery it has over film, say, to provide room for the reader's personal interpretation.

Terry

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Leila,

I wasn't suggesting that everything is expressed through facial expressions and gestures -- I thought the obvious thing here is that most of the expression is taking place in the dialogue.

As for my example -- okay, it's not a good one, but maybe you could try to look at the spirit behind it. I was talking about selective use of which gestures to describe. That example was trying to show that the right selected gesture can indicate that what the character is saying is not what he's actually feeling. Which to me is more satisfying for the reader than if you added a dialogue tag like, e.g. "No, that's fine, really; I don't mind waiting," he lied. Again, this allows no ambiguity: the writer is simply telling the reader the character is lying. But a tapping finger could mean he's part lying and part impatient, for example, which is closer to how people actually do feel a lot of the time: ambiguous; not entirely one way or another, even if there is one particular mood uppermost.

Also, again, I'm not talking about rules; that's just an easy label with which to dismiss an argument.


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Sorry, that last bit came out sounding harsher than it was intended -- I should have used a prose tag . . .

Reminds me of Casey's good advice, which I have pinned to the wall:
"avoiding 'tell' to the point of having your characters constantly making facial or body movements, like some hyperactive puppet"

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"hyperactive puppet" - I just love that :)

Love the sound of the shoes, Terry! And I didn't mean to suggest you were a slave to rules. It's just that for me as a reader (agreeing with Naomi and Casey?) I find that constant little insertions of actions/mannerisms (rather than - to me - simple and invisible speech tags) quickly become an irritant.

Rosy

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I would much rather someone 'said in astonishment' than 'said, as her eyebrows shot up'. The first is far more expressive, to me. The second is awkward - all one can think of is flying eyebrows.

Precisely.

I also think it's to do with the obsession in commercia fiction with making books like TV. On TV we see the facial expressions and the mannerisms, so because our audience are nowadays more used to watching telly than reading, we have to try to replicate the viewing experience. (It's the same with the obsession with having masses of dialogue and letting it speak for itself, at the expense of more traditional - old fashioned? - internal monologue, or descriptive passages - both of which I also love, as a reader, and don't get nearly enough if in modern commerial fiction). I say, b*llocks to having to be like TV. On TV we see someone's eyebrows shooting up or their fingers tappug but we absorb it seamlessly, visually - we don't need to be told it in a stage-directiony way which in a book (for me) interrupts the flow. A book is a book and we have more tools, and they include being able to point out in simply language when someone is whispering or moaning or pleading or whatever.

Especially true of children's fiction, Rosy, where the child is far less likely to pick up the meaning of the little mannerisms unless it is spelt out for them with the inclusion of 'he tapped his pen impatiently'. Children tap their pens for all manner of reasons, from being deliberately annoying, to being bored, because the pen has run out of ink, or they have a nervous tick...

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...but mainly because they are bored.

Rosy, you raise some good points. I agree that too much commercial fiction these days tries to ape TV and film techniques. This isn't just publisher preference, though; I think it's because younger writers have been brought up getting the majority of their fiction from visual media. I see a lot of ms which are very cinematic, the problem being that the author is often unaware that when he describes an action in prose, it gives it added significance. But a lot of the time, they're just painting the filmic image they have in their minds without -- to them -- the actions having any special significance. This is what I meant about prose writers having the gift of being able to give significance to the actions they show. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: that any action written about arbitrarily will automatically be given significance by the reader. Hence, when a writer describes a character, say, standing under a lamp, eyes shadowed by his wide-brimmed hat, smoke from his cigarette lazily curling in the light, etc, it implies that the character is consciously doing this for effect. Even in film, this kind of image is a cheat, since people don't really know what they're going to look like standing under a lamp. But you can just about get away with it in film, because the director can pretend it's just an image amongst many. But to draw attention to it in prose, is to underline it.

As for eyebrows shooting up, etc, Ansible magazine each month has a section called 'Thog's Masterclass' -- here's one from a recent edition, including some great examples of how not to use dialogue tags from Robert Jordan:

Thog's Masterclass. Dept of Evolutionary Theory. 'It will be interesting to see whether Nature perpetrates the dinosauer [sic] and marsupial blunders again, or whether she's learned by experience.' • 'We can trace how the vegetable became animal, but nobody's yet discovered what impulse makes the mineral organic.' (Clive Trent [Victor Rousseau Emanuel], 'Human Pyramid', Spicy-Adventure Stories, April 1941) [DL] • Metaphor Dept. 'When I heard you'd freed yourself, I put out the breadcrumbs and waited for the wolf to come knocking.' (dialogue from Smallville, Oct 2007) [DG] • Dept of Er Um. 'I could see from the crown of the hill where I stood that the city was dead. There was no sign of life in it. The people of Palmira's kaygan could be seen, moving slowly and steadily along its streets.' (Gardner F. Fox, Escape Across the Cosmos, 1964) [AR] • Eyeballs in the Sky. 'Her eyes ... rolled a little in her sweet face, wildly, as if she had lost all control over their muscles. Her eyes rolled with insane movement and then went backward.' (Ibid) • Tom Swifties Dept. '... the wetlanders, he thought dryly ...' '"I'll have Somara send for some water," he said drily.' (Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos, 1994) [CL] • Dept of Time Units. '... modify the laser, he told himself. Get its pulses down into the petasecond range. The shorter the pulses, the more power in each pulse.' (Ben Bova, The Aftermath, 2007; as any fule kno, 1 petasecond is nearly 32 million years) • Gutsy Simile Dept. 'The thought felt like a tapeworm lodged in the gut of his mind.' (Brian Ruckley, Winterbirth, 2007) [PP]

Terry

Haven't read all this through - flying visit sorry. But just wanted to put in a vote of solidarity with Rosy and Leila. I so agree with this statement:

Trying to express everything with facial expressions, gestures, and so forth, comes over as laboured, and there is nothing at all wrong with saying something in astonishment.

I think Lammi said something ages ago that seemed to sum it all up for me. That it's all about rhythm and flow. And I'd add to that pace. Obviously lots of laboured tags draw attention to themselves. But so do lots of laboured gestures and it seems to me that some writing goes too far in this direction. Also, sometimes you want to build pace and tags can be quick and unobtrusive, whereas endless description of body language can be slow slow slow and overegg things - make it seem too important.

So, not one way or the other, but just what Lammi said - depends on the rhythm. And mix it up and not too much of this or of that or anything can get grating. This is why I don't like the "avoid at all costs" talk. Rules should never be separated from the context or what you are trying to do. In my opinion.

To get away from talk of rules or what's good and what's bad, I think the point is that a writer should be conscious of what he's writing. So, if he chooses to describe an action, he knows what effect he's aiming for in doing so. Where dialogue tags are concerned, I have to say that most of the time they show pretty clearly that the writer is not fully conscious of what he's doing. You get the feeling that he's not confident of the piece of dialogue he's just written and so slaps on a tag to try to keep the reader in line.

I agree that it all comes down to rhythm. But a good sense of rhythm depends, at least in part, on first understanding technique and being conscious of what you're writing. There's a tendency we probably all suffer from, which is to 'wing it' and hope no one will notice. That's fine for a first draft, maybe even necessary, but a finished piece should be so consciously constructed that the reader is swept along by the rhythm without even being aware of how it's been achieved.

Terry

Though I think sometimes hearing the rhythm is about letting yourself read it as a reader at some point too. Overthinking something can make it stale and forced. I am not saying that you shouldn't think hard about it. But if you think too hard about something in isolation you sometimes lost that sense of rhythm and flow and need to let yourself stand back and see it in context and hear it in context too.

I agree, and realise I didn't explain myself very well. Good rhythm in writing is about producing a flow and running with it. But for that flow to be authentic -- i.e. to stand up to close inspection at a later date -- it has to be based on good technique. Once technique has been learned it can be forgotten about, at least to a degree. So, yes, overthinking is not a good idea.

It's similar in sport, where someone with a lot of experience and skill performs in a way that looks natural, magical and smooth. But if you ask them to tell you how they do it (and I've done this in the past), they then have to stop and think about it. And, if they decide to help you, will have to work out the interim steps you'll need to take to reach the same level of skill -- steps that are likely to be anything but rhythmical while you're learning them. If they happen to be a good teacher too, and understand your particular abilities, shortcomings and strengths, they'll design a learning course that may not even include much they did themselves. Which is why not all sports people, or writers, necessarily make good teachers.

Terry

Just want to weigh in on the side of 'naff dialogue tags'. I'm with Rosy on this one - don't see the problem, use loads of them, love 'em.

I must admit, until I joined WW - pretty recently - I had no awareness of this whole 'dialogue tags/adjectives are a no-no' thing. I never read any books about writing theory or did creative writing courses - what I learned about writing, I learned from reading, and I have never found adjectives at all intrusive or objectionable as a reader. So when this discussion has come up on WW I've always felt like the big writing dunce and kept my head down, and it was a great relief to find someone as erudite and successful as Rosy championing them.

I think they're a really efficient and elegant way of getting loads across in one single word. For example:

'Who ate all the cake?'
'I did,' she said defiantly.

'Who ate all the cake?'
'I did,' she said sheepishly.

Two completely different meanings are conveyed by one single word instead of a whole load of bodily tics. I really don't see the problem with that. If it's okay to describe the expression on a person's face or what they're doing with their hands, why isn't it okay to describe their tone of voice?

why isn't it okay to describe their tone of voice?

It is. My problem with fancy dialogue tags is when it's not tone of voice, but an authorial comment. If you've got a narrator who comments, that's fine. But if you haven't, then I always find myself thinking, 'who says she's whatever?' Maybe she isn't.

For example:

I passed her the plate of cakes. 'No, thank you,' she said hesitantly. doesn't bother me at all, because the hesitation is something the 'I' would hear and can therefore tell us. Though purely as a matter of style if I, in my writing, wanted to say this I'd probably cast it as I passed her the plate of cakes. She hesitated, then said, 'No, thank you.' because the hesitation comes before the speech. If it comes in the middle I'd write it as I passed her the plate of cakes. 'No... thank you,' she said [with an optional 'shaking her head' or some such if the pace and rhythm of the paragraph wanted it]

But

I passed her the plate of cakes.
'No, thank you,' she said self-denyingly.

I think doesn't work - how does 'I' know she's self-denying? Maybe She's not hungry. If you're trying make a point about 'I''s character in thinking She's self-denying (+smug?), then not a lot of readers are going to pick that up unless you make it clearer.

Obviously when you're using third person an omniscient narrator, 'the author' if you like, can tell you that She is denying herself. I guess that, again, it's a purely personal thing that I always want to know where a narrator stands in relation to the action: again, who thinks she's self-denying? Can I (as reader) rely on them? Should I be thinking it's not true, and if so what's that telling me?

Which may be the kind of thing you want your reader to worry about, or it may not be...

Emma

Interesting, Emma. Maybe it's because I like the omniscient voice that I don't mind adding adverbs which 'tell' the speaker's mood or tone, then. Becuase it is true that when I am very embedded in one character's POV, I tend never to add a speech tag or adverb which they could not observe (as you say, it would be inappropriate, in those circumstances, to say something about the inner state of mind of the interlocutor). I find myself saying 'said X, with apparent insouciance' - but that gets rather clumsy!

Rosy