Dialogue tags:
Dialogue is important in both fiction and non-fiction, though a more important part within a novel.
Recently I’ve read one or two books where the dialogue is fantastic, but I don’t know who is speaking. Why?
There seems to be a fashion for omitting speech marks.
For me this appears pretentious. As a reader, I want to know who has said what. I don’t want to have to keep going back to search, or work out who is speaking. Especially if it’s a long conversation between two people.
The book where this was a case throughout, and the author even left out nearly all punctuation, was ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ by Bernadine Evaristo. I wondered how well it would have been received, had the author not already been established. After a few pages, I was about to give up, because it was annoying me so much, but I persisted, and in the end, was glad that I did, because it is a great story. The other book I’ve read recently that also does away with speech marks, is ‘Still Life’ by Sarah Winman, whose other books I love. Therefore, I stuck at it, and it is a beautiful book, but there were places where I had to read through a section several times to work out who was speaking.
So, as far as I’m concerned, speech marks for dialogue are a must. The writer should make it easy for their readers to read, and enjoy what they are reading, rather than having to check-up where they are all the time.
Also, it is important to know who is speaking. Therefore, if you have a long conversation between people, which includes their reactions, at times, and you are not attributing dialogue to characters each time, it gets confusing.
Example:
“I’m sick of this, you’re always telling me what to do.”
“No, I don’t. But sometimes you need to be told how to do something.”
“See, you’re telling me now. It’s like you don’t listen to me.”
“I’m listening now, aren’t I?”
“But only to make your case in the argument.”
“We’re not arguing, it’s a discussion.”
“A discussion. One that you always seem to be in charge of.”
If this continued for a whole page or more, you would probably get confused as to who is speaking.
If you use ‘she said’, ‘he said’ all the time, it can sound tedious.
“I’m sick of this, you’re always telling me what to do,” she said.
“No, I don’t. But sometimes you need to be told how to do something,” he said
“See, you’re telling me now. It’s like you don’t listen to me,” she said
“I’m listening now, aren’t I?” He said.
“But only to make your case in the argument,” she said.
“We’re not arguing, it’s a discussion,” he said.
“A discussion. One that you always seem to be in charge of,” she said.
Adding tags only every so often can aid the reader in their understanding.
“I’m sick of this, you’re always telling me what to do” she said, putting down the hammer.
“No, I don’t. But sometimes you need to be told how to do something” he said.
“See, you’re telling me now. It’s like you don’t listen to me.”
“I’m listening now, aren’t I?”
“But only to make your case in the argument.”
“We’re not arguing, it’s a discussion.”
“A discussion. One that you always seem to be in charge of.” She waved the hammer at him, pretending to hit him instead of the picture hook she intended to attach to the wall.
Adding in some action and the occasional dialogue tag helps readers from becoming confused as to who is speaking.
Another mistake people tend to make when writing dialogue, is to add adverb tags to convey emotion and tone.
“I’ve had enough,” Joe shouted menacingly.
“Don’t be such an idiot, Jack” Fran said contemptuously.
You need to show their emotion by brief actions or descriptions.
Joe kicked away the chair he’d been sitting on, and walked towards Fran. “I’ve had enough,” he said, clenching his fists.
If the words in the dialogue tell the story well enough, all you need is he said, she said. The latter are purely added so you know who is saying what.
Stephen King (whose book ‘On Writing’ is excellent), gives some great examples of what he calls pulp fiction:
“Put down the gun, Utterson!” Jekyll grated.
“Never stop kissing me!” Shayna gasped.
“You damn tease!” Bill jerked out.
Always read through your manuscript to make sure you haven’t used too many adverbs. I’m not sure I always get this right either!
Appropriate language and tone of voice in dialogue:
Another important thing to remember is – does the use of language, tone of voice and use of colloquialisms, fit the age, gender, social background and context of the character speaking?
I recently read the manuscript of one of my mentees, who is writing a novel set in Haiti, where some people speak French. Reading through her work, one of her characters spoke with incorrect grammar, and initially (because she hadn’t done this before), I was going to tell her it was wrong, but then I realised, that if that character spoke French as her first language, she may well make some grammatical errors in her English.
On reflection, I don’t think the latter is what my mentee was doing, but it would be interesting, if not a pain for her to go through this character’s dialogue and see if there were other occasions where she give her character grammatical mistakes.
I know I’ve mentioned before, that some of my characters (in my novel), used swear words in their dialogue, when in difficult situations. My editor thought I should change it, because it ‘might upset readers’. Readers know how some people behave, and swear words, whether you use them yourself, or agree with their use, are used by many people. The words were a ‘real’ reaction that those characters would have had. I kept them.
Dialogue to match your characters is very important.
When I write, I always ‘perform aloud’ my dialogue conversations – anyone seeing me talking to myself, acting out a scene would probably want to lock me up! But it helps me check that they sound like authentic conversations