Rosie, yes, I think you've nailed the difference: from inside one head, you can only write what they'd observe. And the issue for the writer, then, is to know at any moment exactly how far inside any character the narration is, and how far it can see everything, and, on from there, how much it can comment on that everything.

The thing is, at the moment (never say never...) I always amwriting from a character's PoV. It's mainly because I'm completely addicted to the problems of Voice, with a side-order of the fun of trying to convey things the narrator doesn't know they're conveying.

'said X, with apparent insouciance'

Yes, that's the kind of problem you get. But then you get problems of one sort or another with any approach, don't you.

Emma

<Added>

Maybe you should blame it on my drama background. I'm addicted to all the things that you can't do in writing a play...

I agree (with Terry? I think) that knowing what to put in and what to leave out is one of the hardest things about writing. From the point of view of writing detective fiction, I think the show and tell approach works very well. The whole point there (I think!) is that the reader sees, and hears, and sometimes even smells, everything the detective does, and has to try and work out what is going on. To take the drumming fingers example - was the person drumming fingers because they were impatient at being asked stupid questions, or trying to mask the fact that they were lying in their answers? This is where that ambiguity Terry mentioned can really work.

In my pseudo-intellectual way, I like to think of the detective as a metaphor for the writer, trying to make sense of a disordered world, constructing a narrative that makes sense, and trying to persuade others of the validity of that narrative.

From a reader's point of view, I think the fun is seeing what narrative you create from the same disordered events, and finding out whether it is the same as the detective's.

There are always stylistic considerations as well, though. A writer may be trying to strike a certain tone, and that may lead to using devices that might be considered bad form. (Narrative tags, for example.) It may sound a cop-out, but if the writer is doing it deliberately, for a deliberate effect, I think it is valid, whether or not I agree that the effect in question is one worth going for.

<Added>

I think I meant 'show not tell', or something. I had a late night.

I feel the need to resist the implication that anyone advocating the sparing use of dialogue tags or adjectives suffers snooty, authoritarian tendencies, while anyone who uses them with uninhibited abandon is an unbrainwashed, free-thinker, who isn't going to be brow-beaten by a load of old grammar-obsessed fogies. To suggest this debate is split between intellectuals and dunces is not accurate and simply avoiding the point. The point being, do you want to be the best writer you can be, or do you just want to get by? Not that there's anything wrong with getting by, I hasten to add, at least not if you, say, are an out and out commercial writer producing work where the prime objective is to get the reader from A to B as fast as possible, striking all the expected plot and character bells along the way.

If you're the latter, then this kind of thing --

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

-- is fine. It signposts exactly what a character is feeling, which means the plot can move swiftly forward to whatever emotional result the scene requires so we can move on to the next one absolutely clear about the journey we're on.

However, if you're interested in good writing -- and, just so we're clear, I don't mean intellectual, academic, university-approved, writing; I mean 'good' as in the writer guiding the reader towards the satisfaction of making his own extrapolations of mood and intent, rather than smashing him over the head with a big tag mallet labelled 'DEFIANTLY' or whatever -- then, you might find this more effective:

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

Why? Here's a few reasons:

1. Assuming the author has done a good job of drawing these two characters, the reader will enjoy inferring how 'she' means 'I did'.
2. It allows for the fact that when people say things -- especially if they're being challenged, as here -- their response is rarely totally one thing, e.g. here it could well be two thirds defiant, one third guilt, which 'defiantly' doesn't allow for.
3. It makes the writer stop and wonder if the reader will infer accurately from this simple statement, and if he thinks maybe not, will have to go back and do some more work on building the character -- which will be a good result all round.
4. As others have said, there is probably a POV issue here, too, in that by tagging her response you're indicating that this is in either her POV or omniscient POV. However, even if it's in her POV, we should still know her character well enough to guess how she's saying this.
5. By not spelling out a character's exact tone/mood/emotion/intent, you leave room for some mystery in your story. Of course, such mystery is anathema to a thriller novel, but, as said before, that takes us back to why you're writing in the first place.

And again, just to be clear and to avoid polarising debate, no one's saying it's wrong to use a dialogue tag. What some of us are saying is that the writer should use any device for a specific reason and only if necessary. With tags, the major point is that if you've done your job in building the character well (macro) and written a particular line of dialogue he makes well (micro), you won't need a tag and, to repeat, the reader will be much more satisfied -- because he hasn't had to be told what a character's feeling, he's sussed it for himself. And that, surely, is one of the greatest rewards of reading.

Terry


<Added>

In my pseudo-intellectual way, I like to think of the detective as a metaphor for the writer, trying to make sense of a disordered world, constructing a narrative that makes sense, and trying to persuade others of the validity of that narrative. From a reader's point of view, I think the fun is seeing what narrative you create from the same disordered events, and finding out whether it is the same as the detective's.

That's a brilliant way of putting it Roger. The only thing I'd argue with is that it's 'psuedo-intellectual' -- it's not; it's common, writer's, sense.

Also agree with your last point, that whatever a writer does should be for a conscious reason. As I think Emma said some time back, the suspicion you get when you see a page full of dialogue tags is that the writer isn't in control of his materials.

Terry

At this point, Terry, I find it hard not to get evrty resent6ful of the implication - in fact the clear statement - that those of us who choose to use a lot of dialogue tags and adjectives/adverbs, aren't trying to write 'well'. I like to think I aspire to write the best prose I can - and I take the decision to use dialogue tags because I find them more elegant than repeated bits of stage-direction action - ther irritating finger-tapping, etc.

I don't think turning the discussion into one of 'good' versus 'bad' writing is very constructive, to be honest. It's surely a matter of personal style.

Rosy

Well, I'm back in the dunce's corner with my mallet.

repeated bits of stage-direction action - ther irritating finger-tapping, etc.

I agree. Tone of voice is just as empirically observable as finger-tapping, eyebrow-raising, etc. It's entirely possible to infer how someone is feeling from the way they say something - not always of course, but sometimes.



<Added>

I see what you're saying, Emma, where what's being inferred can't be known by the listener - that's different, and I agree it's undesirable.

It's entirely possible to infer how someone is feeling from the way they say something - not always of course, but sometimes.

Sidewinder, I think you're absolutely right. (So you can put that mallet down. Slowly. Gently. That's right... Well done ) I think the 'sometimes' is crucial here. This debate gets complicated because if you wrote, 'She said sarcastically' we'd all have pretty similar ideas about her tone of voice - inflection, volume, and so on - so you could say this is a straightforward tone-of-voice tag, and tone-of-voice tags I think we're all agreeing are often a clean, economical way of conveying something.

But 'sarcastically' also implies something about the character's intention and generally psychology, which is another matter altogether, and much more subjective. Then, but not till then, you need to know who's deciding she's being sarcastic, and what, as it were, their authority (author? narrator?) is to make that judgement on the reader's behalf. And as a reader we might not agree, or want to make our own decision about it? That would depend on the book, I guess. Some of writers like making readers do some of the work... <laughs in a sadistically schoolmasterly fashion>

Emma

Rosy, I think you're partly missing my point. You say, 'those of us who choose to . . . ' i.e. if you're consciously choosing to use tags, lots of adjectives, etc, then fine; you must have a reason. But, as I said before, when there are a lot of tags and adjectives present, the suspicion is that it indicates the author is not fully conscious of what he's doing.

And, look, let's be sensible about my finger-tapping example. First, it's not a 'repeated [bit] of stage direction' -- it's not really helpful to escalate -- it was a solitary example. And it was making the point, not that lots of stage directions are a good thing -- they're not -- but that a prose author has the facility to select an action to make a point (in this case, that the character's actual feelings might be different to what he's saying).

Sidewinder -- yes, eyebrow-raising is a pantomime gesture, but that's not what I was advocating. I also was not saying tone of voice is less observable than actions -- I've been saying that tone of voice is very important, but that it should come through in the actual dialogue, not have to be signposted by the author. The equivalent signposting for actions would be to say something like, 'He tapped his index finger repeatedly, showing that he was feeling impatient, contrary to what he'd actually just said'. Which of course is silly.

But in the end, we'll just have to disagree. Rosy, you don't need to feel resentful; I don't. If you're happy with the way you're writing, fine. I'm not attacking the way you're writing. I just happen to believe that bald telling of meaning to the reader is not as satisfying as providing a subtle but rigorous weave of clues, tones, suggestions and hints that allow the reader to make his own discovery of your intentions.

Look, I went to art college for the foundation year, in which my drawing improved massively. Our tutors told us at the start that we would have to re-learn how to draw, but first we'd have to learn how to observe better. They were right. All of us up to then drew objects and people with a black outline dividing, say, flesh from the world around it, or to show a smile or whatever. But apart from this not being how things actually look, it also had caused us to focus too narrowly on a scene. We looked for the immediate easy outline, in other words, and then reproduced it so anyone looking at our work would do the same thing. Instead, the college taught us to draw without using black outlines, just tone differences. We had to draw everything around a model, say, before we drew the model herself. Gradually, the way we looked at the world changed: we realised that what we take as clearly definable boundaries actually are not -- they're suggestions, gradations, in which the surrounding tones and colours play as big a part as the main subject.

So for me, tags and too many adjectives are like using black outlines. Maybe they get across the point quickly and effectively, but they work better for cartoons than for emotive tone studies. But, again, I guess it's down to choice: some people prefer Andy Warhol and others prefer Turner. I know which I find most rewarding.

Terry


<Added>

I've just realised you may be interpreting this as me saying you don't know how to observe. Apologies if I gave that impression; it wasn't my intention. The story about art college is purely me talking about my own inability to observe accurately. Of course, I thought I already did, but my tutors were able to demonstrate that wasn't the case. My own journey with writing has been very similar. I started out by drawing black outlines around everything, then was lucky enough to work with a great editor who, with tremendous patience, showed me that, basically, less is more, providing of course you select the most effective 'less'. So, just to be clear, this is not an attack on anyone, it's just me talking about what I've learned in my quest to write better. If you don't agree, that's fine; just ignore what I'm saying.

A fascinating conversation. I think the problem with any discussion of the so-called 'rules of good writing' is that rules, by their nature, take a black and white perspective whereas reality is a lot of shades of grey.

I don't mind adverbs added to dialogue tags provided they're not indicative of an overly lazy approach to writing and not done too often. I do think the repeated use of them in a 'telling' manner - such as saying someone said something sarcastically without there being any other indication that the character was indeed being sarcastic - can sometimes be a little bit lazy on the writer's behalf (but not necessarily, as sometimes a quick pace is needed). And if the word 'said' is pretty much always accompanied by an adverb then the writing can start sounding repetitive (just as the over-use of anything can make it sound repetitive).

But loads of published writers certainly use them, so I see no reason for completely avoiding them. I quick flip through Zadie Smith's 'On Beauty' has unearthed these examples from just two pages:
'Your pops, the professor ...' he said slowly.
'You came by ...?' began Zora uncomprehendingly.
'Fat ladies need love too,' said Carl philosophically.
'Important meeting,' said Carl ruminatively.

It would therefore seem that both writers and editors of prize-winning, best-selling fiction don't think adverbs in dialogue tags are a no-no, so I'd recommend not worrying about them and doing whatever feels right and natural for your own writer's voice.

I'd recommend not worrying about them and doing whatever feels right and natural for your own writer's voice.

Well said, Daisy!

Rosy,You say, 'those of us who choose to . . . ' i.e. if you're consciously choosing to use tags, lots of adjectives, etc, then fine; you must have a reason. But, as I said before, when there are a lot of tags and adjectives present, the suspicion is that it indicates the author is not fully conscious of what he's doing.

You see, I agree with this. But I don't see that avoiding something at all costs IS thinking about it or choosing to not use it so much as treating it as taboo. This is the thing. We need to know the whys and the context. To choose rule of thumb rather than know how something can indicate lack of thought and then think about it, is surely a bad idea.

HAven't read entire thread sorry.

when there are a lot of tags and adjectives present, the suspicion is that it indicates the author is not fully conscious of what he's doing

Terry, this is the bit I find quite unnecessaily judgemental of those of us who embrace speech tags and adverbs. If you say it looks as if we don't know what we're doing then that must be tantamount, surely, to saying it is bad writing: that if we (Noami, Snowy, Leila, me) choose this technique it will look as if we didn't choose it, it will just look sloppy, as if don't know what we're doing. In other words, we're writing badly.

(But probably best to ignore me today - in mad rush, and general bad temper, and no time to make my arguments more coheretly. Sorry, therefore, if this seems abrasively defensive.)

Rosy

I was the person who started this discussion on dialogue tags, and I have learned quite a bit by reading the different posts.

And concerning this little post:
[I quick flip through Zadie Smith's 'On Beauty' has unearthed these examples from just two pages:
'Your pops, the professor ...' he said slowly.
'You came by ...?' began Zora uncomprehendingly.
'Fat ladies need love too,' said Carl philosophically.
'Important meeting,' said Carl ruminatively.]

‘He said slowly’ I find okay, but ‘uncomprehendingly’, ‘philosophically’, and ‘ruminatively’,— I consider the worst type of writing I can imagine. It’s even bad for a commercial novel. And I don’t care if it is a best seller. I would have never cross my mind to put them in any dialogue even before this discussion started.

I understand that Daisy was only showing us an example, so I am not slamming her post. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. Now, no matter how bad I think my writing is, I will always be comforted by the fact that it’s not as bad as Zadie Smith’s.

This is just my humble opinion, of course.



Azel

The other thing I think about this current fashion against dialogue tags and ‘telling’ adverbs, is that it is just that – a fashion. I was thinking about Jane Austen – ever my model of succinct, sharp, nuanced and elegant prose – and hardly to be accused of crass telling rather than the dropping of subtle clues for the reader.

Does the sainted Jane give us a couple of short phrases of Mr. Darcy speaking, and then break it to tell us that he looked down at his waistcoat and flicked off some imagined fluff, before his speech resumes? Does she have Lizzy saying a few words in reply, and then tell us that she tossed her curls or stabbed at her embroidery with her needle, before carrying on and telling us the rest of what she has to say? No. She gives the speeches in full, and attaches tidy little tags to tell us tidily and invisibly who is speaking, and also, where necessary, how they are speaking it.

Here are the speeches from the first dialogue scene in Emma.

‘Especially when one of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome creature,’ said Emma playfully….
‘I believe it is very true, my dear indeed,’ said Mr. Woodhouse with a sigh. ‘I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.’
‘Emma knows I never flatter her,’ said Mr. Knightley, ‘but I meant no reflection on anybody…’
‘Well,’ said Emma, willing to let it pass, ‘you want to hear about a wedding…’
‘Dear Emma bears everything so well,’ said her father…
‘It is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion,’ said Mr. Knightley…
‘And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,’ said Emma…
‘Her father fondly replied, ‘Ah! My dear…’

Or another random exchange from a later chapter:

‘Yes,’ said Mr. John Knightley presently with some slyness, ‘he seems to have a great deal of goodwill towards you.’
‘Me!’ she replied with a smile of astonishment. ‘Are you imagining me to be Mr. Elton’s object?’

Talk about dialogue tags with every speech! Talk about ‘tell’! Admittedly he mainly uses ‘said’, but there re plenty of examples of ‘cried’ and ‘returned’ and ‘resumed’ and ‘replied’ and ‘declared’ and ‘announced’ and ‘interrupted’. Would the speech tag police would tell us that it reads like thoughtless writing?

So maybe when we include speech tags and description of how things are said, we aren’t writing lazily or unthinkingly but just in an old-fashioned way? Maybe, you will argue, things have moved on. But personally, I refuse to believe that something which was a basic building brick of good writing then has to be bad writing now.

Rosy

I think that's deliciously economical - typical Austen, too, with her absolutely peerless control and flexibility of PoV. In the first piece there's no speech-verb except 'said', only two adverbs which are both 50% sound and 50% interpretation, one action shown ('with a sigh' and though in Emma's PoV, 'willing to let it pass'. And as it happens, not tell-y at all, I would say. Besides, telling isn't a crime, whatever the wretched writing books say. It's a tool. Just one you need to know how to use properly, as with any tool.

I'd agree with Daisy a while back that it's the auto-tagging of 'said' (or whatever) with an adverb which doesn't work, and is very common, just as auto-anything (such as auto verb + adjective) tends to read weakly.

Emma

Jane Austen's writing is just delicious! And yes, that extract really does evidence how using an adverbial dialogue tag can be so economical and precise.

I blame Hemingway for all this minimalistic show not tell nonsense, and I never have been able to get on with Hemingway.

Interestingly, Raymond Carver, who has been held up as the icon of minimalist writing, has recently been discovered to have been minimalist due to his editor's intervention. It will be interesting, when the original versions of his stories are published, to see whether he used adverbial dialogue tags!