What do you say?

[Djmac1031]

I honestly haven't read anything of yours yet.

I won't judge your writing based on fucking grammar either.

. Can't wait to discover what you DO judge it on.

I consider stuff like "she giggled" literary shorthand. Grammatically correct? Probably not. Easily enough understood? Yup.

 

[Seadog777]

The way we talk to our spouses about our days is kind of like newspaper style - just the facts. No fancy poetic descriptions, people don't talk that way. However, I enjoy reading poetic descriptions in stories. But I agree news style has a place. Sometimes if I'm getting bogged down in "writing," I try to just get down the facts in a straightforward news style and go from there.

I understand what you're saying here.

I get that "poetic descriptions" can be used, but it comes across as phony as a god damn football bat.

I'm guilty as sin of using them in my stories as well, so I can't "wax on" like a fucking yogi.

I slap myself in the face, if I catch myself going too far with it though.

I think that the best stories "ring true".

This is just my opinion though.

 

[Seadog777]

. Can't wait to discover what you DO judge it on.

I consider stuff like "she giggled" literary shorthand. Grammatically correct? Probably not. Easily enough understood? Yup.

I judge it on if I fucking liked it or not.

I don't have a checklist of things that I look for.

 

[Djmac1031]

I judge it on if I fucking liked it or not.

I don't have a checklist of things that I look for.

I'm actually considering making a List myself.

I'm thinking of calling it something grandiose and flowery, like "Things that make me vehemently withdraw from a story with extreme prejudice!"

 

[MetaBob]

Anyone who proclaims that 'said' is the be all and end of all of uttering is more than several ants short of a picnic, in my not so humble opinion.

Remember, Elmore Leonard is a writer who earned:

• 1984 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of 1983 for LaBrava.
• 1992 Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America[32]
• 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature; received during the 13th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference held at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, United States.[33]
• 2010 Peabody Award, FX's Justified[34]
• 2012 National Book Award, Medal for Distinguished Contribution

He has also had at least 30-odd of his works adapted for film or TV, so he's not exactly "several ants short of a picnic", and really is someone who knows what-of he speaks (or writes).

They are the sort of person who will look at the roof of the Sistine Chapel and moan about the grime.

Piffle.

Second, he has a lot of absolutes in this list, and I'll bet that he's broken every single one of them when needed for his own work.

Actually, he explicitly cites exceptions in four of the ten rules enumerated in that article.

Disclosure: I'm the one who brought this article to the attention of Altissimus, who I've been having a lively conversation with related to his reading of one of my works-in-progress. In doing so, I also excerpted a random page from two works I'm fond of, and whose authors I'm sure many of you (if not all of you) know:

From my 1992 paperback edition of "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman (p99-100):

“How can it hurt when the point of the weapon is still an inch away from your belly?” Domingo asked.
“I’m anticipating, don’t bother me, let me die unpestered,” He brought the point to his skin, pushed.
Domingo grabbed the knife away. "Someday I won't stop you," he said. "Inigo, set an extra place for supper."
"I was all set to kill myself, truly."
"Enough dramatics."
"What is on the menu for the evening?"
"The usual gruel."
"Inigo, go check and see if there's anything by chance in my carriage outside."
There was always a feast waiting in the carriage.
And after the food and the stories would come the departure, and always, before the departure, would come the request. "We would be partners," Yeste would say. "In Madrid. My name before yours on the sign, of course, but equal partners in all things."
"No."
"All right, your name before mine. You are the greatest sword maker, you deserve to come first."
"Have a good trip back."
"WHY WON'T YOU?"
"Because, my friend Yeste, you are very famous and very rich, and so you should be, because you make wonderful weapons. But you must also make them for any fool who happens along. I am poor, and no one knows me in all the world except you and Inigo, but I do not have to suffer fools."
"You are an artist," Yeste said.
"No. Not yet. A craftsman only. But I dream to be an artist. I pray that someday, if I work with enough care, if I am very very lucky, I will make a weapon that is a work of art. Call me an artist then, and I will answer."
Yeste entered his carriage. Domingo approached the window, whispered: "I remind you only of this: when you get this jeweled, initialed sword, claim it as your own. Tell no one of my involvement."
"Your secret is safe with me."
Embraces and waves. The carriage would leave. And that was the way of life before the six-fingered sword.

There is one adverb, "truly", and that's in dialog so doesn't count. There are hardly any dialog tags, as it should be. 1x "asked". 1x "would say", 2x "said", 1x "whispered".

From "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight", a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin:

"I don't understand why you all look like people," she said.
"We are people."
"I mean, people like me, humans."
"Resemblance is in the eye," Coyote said. "How is that lousy eye, by the way?"
"It's fine. But--like you wear clothes--and live in houses--with fires and stuff--"
"That's what you think . . . If that loudmouth Jay hadn't horned in, I could have done a really good job."
The child was quite used to Coyote's disinclination to stick to any one subject, and to her boasting. Coyote was like a lot of kids she knew, in some respects. Not in others.
"You mean what I'm seeing isn't true? Isn't real--like on TV, or something?"
"No," Coyote said. "Hey that's a tick on your collar." She reached over, flicked the tick off, picked it up on one finger, bit it, and spat out the bits.
"Yecch!" the child said. "So?"
"So, to me you're basically yellow and run on four legs. "To that lot"--she waved disdainfully at the warren of little houses next down the hill--"you hop around twitching your nose all the time. To Hawk, you're an egg, or maybe getting pinfeathers. See? It just depends on how you look at things. There are only two kinds of people."
"Humans and animals?"
"No, the kind of people who say, 'There are two kinds of people' and the kind of people who don't." Coyote cracked up, pounding her thigh and yelling with delight at her joke. The child didn't get it, and waited.
"Okay," Coyote said. "There's the first people, and then the others. That's the two kinds."
"The first people are--?"
"Us, the animals . . . and things. All the old ones. You know. And you pups, kids, fledglings. All first people."
"And the--others?"
"Them," Coyote said. "You know. The others. The new people. The ones who came." Her fine , hard face had gone serious, rather formidable. She glanced directly, as she seldom did, at the child, a brief gold sharpness. "We were here," she said. "We were always here. We are always here. Where we are is here. But it's their country now. They're running it . . . Shit, even I did better!"

Ursula uses more dialog tags than William, it's true. But as with William, there are no adverbs in those dialog tags. They are seldom needed. And all seven of those dialog tags, in this page+ of dialog, are "said".

I think you will find this typical among good writers, whether they publicize "rules" about it or not.

Food for thought.

 

[SimonDoom]

Remember, Elmore Leonard is a writer who earned:

• 1984 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of 1983 for LaBrava.
• 1992 Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America[32]
• 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature; received during the 13th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference held at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, United States.[33]
• 2010 Peabody Award, FX's Justified[34]
• 2012 National Book Award, Medal for Distinguished Contribution

He has also had at least 30-odd of his works adapted for film or TV, so he's not exactly "several ants short of a picnic", and really is someone who knows what-of he speaks (or writes).


Piffle.


Actually, he explicitly cites exceptions in four of the ten rules enumerated in that article.

Disclosure: I'm the one who brought this article to the attention of Altissimus, who I've been having a lively conversation with related to his reading of one of my works-in-progress. In doing so, I also excerpted a random page from two works I'm fond of, and whose authors I'm sure many of you (if not all of you) know:

From my 1992 paperback edition of "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman (p99-100):

There is one adverb, "truly", and that's in dialog so doesn't count. There are hardly any dialog tags, as it should be. 1x "asked". 1x "would say", 2x "said", 1x "whispered".

From "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight", a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin:

Ursula uses more dialog tags than William, it's true. But as with William, there are no adverbs in those dialog tags. They are seldom needed. And all seven of those dialog tags, in this page+ of dialog, are "said".

I think you will find this typical among good writers, whether they publicize "rules" about it or not.

Food for thought.

One has to be very careful about adverb use in dialogue or it may come across, whether one intends it or not, like this:

"I can't wait to compete in the backstroke," she said swimmingly.

 

[Seadog777]

Remember, Elmore Leonard is a writer who earned:

• 1984 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of 1983 for LaBrava.
• 1992 Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America[32]
• 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature; received during the 13th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference held at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, United States.[33]
• 2010 Peabody Award, FX's Justified[34]
• 2012 National Book Award, Medal for Distinguished Contribution

He has also had at least 30-odd of his works adapted for film or TV, so he's not exactly "several ants short of a picnic", and really is someone who knows what-of he speaks (or writes).

WHO THE FUCK CARES!!!

Renee Zellweger won an Oscar, should she really be telling people how to be actors and actresses.

Just saying.

 

[MetaBob]

WHO THE FUCK CARES!!!

Many good writers obviously do care. Whether you do or not is, of course, up to you.

As it should be.

 

[djrip]

WHO THE FUCK CARES!!!

Renee Zellweger won an Oscar, should she really be telling people how to be actors and actresses.

Just saying.

I'm sure she's better at acting than I am!

 

[Seadog777]

I'm sure she's better at acting than I am!

I doubt it.

She just swallows the right peoples cum.

 

[djrip]

I doubt it.

She just swallows the right peoples cum.

You haven't seen me act

 

[ElectricBlue]

This means that the words 'you're a goofball' were uttered (sorry, said) and then she giggled. What's wrong with that?

Strict grammar would be:

"You're a goofball." She giggled. [Two separate actions: speech, then action]

"You're a goofball," she said. [One action: dialogue with a speech tag]

I counted up my use of he said she said once, from several stories. I use a speech tag (nearly always "said" or "replied"), about 20% of the dialogue, no tag about 60% (with context or action making it clear who the speaker is), and a whisper or murmur the last 20%.

Minimalist speech tagging, with context = clarity. "Said" and "replied" become invisible, but other forms of tagging can become horribly visible. They're a sign of poor writing, to me.

 

[Seadog777]

You haven't seen me act

That's true.

I've seen her act, AND seen her in person.

It ain't like you have far to fucking go.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Repeated use of 'said' to attach dialogue to characters is facile. No competent writer does that or would even consider doing it.

By coincidence I was discussing this passage from "The Old Man And The Sea" earlier today over in Story Feedback:

"One," the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.

"Two," the boy said.

"Two," the old man agreed. "You didn't steal them?"

"I would," the boy said. "But I bought these."

"Thank you," the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

"Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current," he said.

"Where are you going?" the boy asked.

"Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light."

"I'll try to get him to work far out," the boy said. "Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid."

That style isn't going to be to everybody's taste, maybe not even to mine; I'd probably have chopped out a good two-thirds of those dialogue tags altogether. But if your position requires asserting that Ernest Hemingway was an incompetent writer when he wrote a story that won him a Pulitzer and contributed to his Nobel Prize, there might be something wrong with that position.

"Said" is one of those neutral words that don't register very much with the reader, so using it heavily is less of an issue than it would be with a five-dollar word.

Here are two good reasons not to replace "said" and "asked": 1) It's a form of telling not showing, and 2) It's lazy. Use the narrative or the dialogue itself to impart the tone of what the speaker is saying rather than a pseudo-clever Tom-Swiftyish verb.

The exception to this, IMO, is if the verb tag conveys some sensory aspect of what's being said, such as volume, such as "shouted" or "whispered." Those are perfectly acceptable verbs in the list offered by Onehitwanda, above. But I would never use "whinged" or "declaimed" or "abjured" as dialogue tags.

Yeah, this is where I stand, including the exception for sensory tags. It's particularly an issue when the speech is being witnessed by a POV character. Supposing I read something like this (exaggerated example for demonstration purposes):

"Please help!" Bob raged at me.

My reaction is likely to be "wait, why are they interpreting that as rage?" There's a disconnect between the "Please help!" that the narrator witnesses, and the interpretation that the author is putting on that speech for me. As a reader, that derails me into trying to make sense of the discrepancy.

This can be fixed by presenting me with the information that the narrator is interpreting as "rage" - Bob's face turning red, knuckles whitening, wolf-like hair sprouting all over his body, whatever the story requires. But once that information is there, the "raged" is redundant. (Same goes for things like "said angrily".)

Very often when I see this kind of thing, the author actually has conveyed the tone within the dialogue already, and then the tag just feels like over-egging it.

I'm not completely black-and-white on this. Sometimes the priority is to condense a scene, and telling might be more efficient than showing. But for important scenes, I try to do as much as possible within dialogue, and what I think of as "extended dialogue" - timing, body language, all the other things that the people in that scene would be using to give context to the words - before reaching for the fancy tags.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I doubt it.

She just swallows the right peoples cum.

"What this forum really needs is more misogynistic bullshit" said nobody ever.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

So anyone who's read my work knows that no master or anything, but....

I like to make my characters do something I call a "shuffle"

If dialogue goes on too long, back and forth, I think it looks bad... Too sparse, especially if the sentences are brief.

For example:

Abbott began, casually., "Well, let's see, we have on the bags, Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third..."

"That's what I want to find out." Costello interrupted.

"I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third."

"Are you the manager?"

"Yes."

"You gonna be the coach too?"

"Yes."

"And you don't know the fellows' names?"

"Well I should."

By this time, I think the dialogue needs something to break up the constant back-and-forth, so I have one of the characters "shuffle." He'll move around a little, or scratch his butt... Anything to break up the dialogue.

Costello scratched his head, clearly confused. 'Well then who's on first?"

The head scratch served no purpose, other than to change the monotony of the dialogue.

 

[Djmac1031]

The head scratch served no purpose, other than to change the monotony of the dialogue.

It also helps reestablish who's speaking to keep the conversation clear. I do that often as well.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

It also helps reestablish who's speaking to keep the conversation clear. I do that often as well.

Agreed, but instead of a simple dialogue tag, I added a "shuffle" and gave the character a pointless action to do.

I first noticed myself doing this during online dialogue heavy VTTRPGs. Everyone would just be writing dialogue for their characters, and I kept adding in little, pointless actions for my PC, to break up the constant stream of spoken words.

 

[Bramblethorn]

By this time, I think the dialogue needs something to break up the constant back-and-forth, so I have one of the characters "shuffle." He'll move around a little, or scratch his butt... Anything to break up the dialogue.

Costello scratched his head, clearly confused. 'Well then who's on first?"

The head scratch served no purpose, other than to change the monotony of the dialogue.

I think of this kind of stuff as "extended dialogue". You're right that it breaks up the monotony, but an even better reason for using it is that the dialogue is incomplete without it, because this kind of thing is part of how people communicate in person.

(My preference there would be to leave out the "clearly confused", which is already indicated both by his body language and by the words that follow.)

 

[HeyAll]

I've started doing this within the last year.

I only use says/asks for dialogue.

I don't remember how or why, but I got that from Cormac McCarthy, but I'm not sure if he follows that strictly.

Mainly I like the idea of letting the dialogue speak for itself, and the reader can imagine how he/she wants. If it's that important, explain it before/after the dialogue.

 

[Seadog777]

[Post Removed. Continued flaming and trolling will result in a recommendation for a temporary ban. -AH Mod]

 

[PrincessArianrhod]

That style isn't going to be to everybody's taste, maybe not even to mine; I'd probably have chopped out a good two-thirds of those dialogue tags altogether. But if your position requires asserting that Ernest Hemingway was an incompetent writer when he wrote a story that won him a Pulitzer and contributed to his Nobel Prize, there might be something wrong with that position.

I guess I could facetiously argue that winning awards doesn't automatically qualify one as competent... () While that does present an example of repeated use of said, it doesn't qualify as fitting the what is outlined in the OP; the old man also agreed, the boy asked and one line of dialogue is not qualified at all. I stand by my assertion.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Agreed, but instead of a simple dialogue tag, I added a "shuffle" and gave the character a pointless action to do.

I first noticed myself doing this during online dialogue heavy VTTRPGs. Everyone would just be writing dialogue for their characters, and I kept adding in little, pointless actions for my PC, to break up the constant stream of spoken words.

I do this a lot, but I don't dismiss it as pointless. I prefer to call it "grace notes", tiny details that can pass quickly by, but after a while, they paint a richer picture of the character.

 

[onehitwanda]

I do this a lot, but I don't dismiss it as pointless. I prefer to call it "grace notes", tiny details that can pass quickly by, but after a while, they paint a richer picture of the character.

grace notes is a fantastic way to describe these.

 

[MajorRewrite]

more than several ants short of a picnic

I hadn’t heard that one before. It would be interesting/funny to discuss the many humorous versions of this.

A few colors short of a rainbow.
A few bricks short of a load.
A few cards short of a full deck.
One fry short of a happy meal.
His dock doesn’t quite reach the water …