He Said, She Said... advice on dialogue?

[_Lynn_]

When there are three or more people taking part, it's essential to indicate who is speaking. Sometimes you have to do it with "Robert said', etc. Often if the characters are well know the the reader, what they're saying can also be used to indicate who's speaking.

In the case of two people speaking, just set it up. If it's an argument, who's speaking will be pretty clear. Keep it tight. Only indicate the speaker if understanding who's speaking becomes difficult to follow. Then about every fourth piece of dialogue or so is necessary. Sometimes even less than that.

As to using a bunch of variants for said can work, but to me unless I have a really good reason, I stick with 'said' for one reason and one reason only. Readers don't notice it.

If you use too many tags like, 'he exclaimed', 'she gushed', 'he observed' you come of as kind of pretentious. Use sparingly.

'He observed' isn't a tag, though. A tag attributes speech to a particular speaker. A few more examples of incorrect tags are laughed, smiled, grinned, and chuckled.

Sticking with the basics, as you mentioned, works best.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Read some George V. Higgins to learn how to write dialogue, or John O'Hara. Higgins novels are 99% dialogue.

The other thing is, make your characters distinct so they arent a voice in the chorus. Write them so the reader can recognize them in the dark. Elmore Leonard does it well.

I just read IMPOSTERS by Higgins, and the book is boring I considered tossing it in the garbage. But then I realized that he captured his middle-class characters perfectly, and middle-class speech is boring. And he did some other tricks that are genius: At a ritzy restaurant one character asks for ZELLER SCHWARTZKATZ, a white Moselle wine. Zell 'Black Cat' is a cheap wine comparable to Mogen David or Boone's Farm. I doubt any expensive restaurant would have it. So Higgins revealed a bit of the characters personality with the wine request.

 

[Firebrain]

He said/she said is fine most of the time, really. Most dialogue doesn't even need tagging, unless there's a lot of it or more than two people talking. You don't even really need to "describe" dialogue that much because most of it will be inherent within the speech itself. E.g.:

"I got it!" she shouted.

The "!" indicates shouting. Why would you need to tell us twice?

"You got it?" he asked.

We know he's asking...you used a ? mark.

If you want to break things up a little, use an action. But use an action that actually tells us something instead of a line that just repeats what the dialogue said, or tells us something obvious. E.g.:

"I know. I'm sorry." He hung his head, dejected.

We know he's dejected; the dialogue implies that, as does the head hanging.

"I guess I never thought of that before." Why didn't I think of that?

Useless--it just repeats the dialogue, and adds nothing.

"So where's the juice?" She yanked open the fridge door.

There you go. That works.