Storybites Blog

I want to thank those of you who have registered as subscribers of my site. I also want to thank you for your nice comments. But feel free to suggest a topic you’d like me to chat about. This is your site too!

In the meantime, though, I’ll rant about one of my other editorial pet peeves – dialogue tags. “What’s a dialogue tag?” you ask quizzically. Well, that was one — “You ask quizzically.” A dialogue tag is a phrase that describes 1) who is talking, and often 2) how they make the remark.  Dialogue tags are such a common part of fiction that we assume that every spoken line needs one. Right? I mean, how else would you know who’s speaking — and how?

Let me introduce you to Tom Swift.

Tom Swift is a character in a series of juvenile novels that were very popular in the first half of the twentieth century. Tom’s author (actually a series of authors) went to absurd lengths to avoid the use of the phrase “he said” followed by a mere period. Tom never just “said” anything. He retorted angrily, sang out cheerfully, pleaded earnestly… you get the picture. Today, Tom Swift is probably best known for a particular type of dialogue tag in which the tag is either a pun on the remark or upon itself.

Examples:
“Hurry!” Tom urged swiftly.
“It’s a frog!” Tom croaked.
“I can’t see!” Tom gasped blindly.

Few authors deliberately write in Tom Swifties, but many DO seem to feel that every remark needs to be followed by the speaker’s name, a colorful verb describing the speaker’s action, and an adverb describing how the action was done. None of those things are true. Consider the following. 

Mary picked up the grocery receipt. “You’ve been to the store, I see.”
“Yesterday.” Bob’s head was buried in the refrigerator.
“The date says today.”
“Fine, maybe it was today! How do you expect me to remember stuff like that?”

Without dialogue tags of any kind, you can sense tension between Bob and Mary, as well as the possibility that Bob is deceiving Mary and she suspects it. Contrast this:

“You’ve been to the store?” Mary asked in surprise.
“Yesterday,” Bob mumbled guiltily.
“The date says today,” Mary said suspiciously as she looked at the receipt.
“Fine, maybe it was today!” Bob exploded furiously. “How do you expect me to remember stuff like that?”

Nothing subtle about that – and not particularly good writing, either.

I’m not advising you to avoid dialogue tags altogether. But when you use them, consider the humble “said” and “asked,” without adverbial decoration, and use your character’s remarks and actions to tell the story.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.