Category: said

There’s a little maxim you may have heard– work smarter, not harder. If you haven’t, what it means is some folks solution to every problem is to throw 100% of their effort at it. They’d throw 110% at if that was possible. But it’s not.

Meanwhile, another type of person will look at the problem and figure out how much effort it actually needs. Do we want to do the time and work to dig through the mountain when we could go over it? Or around it? And then we can save all that effort and energy for somewhere we actually need it rather than burning out early on problems we could’ve just, well, easily gone around.

I mention that so I can tell you a few stories. There’s a theme. Trust me.

A bunch of you know I worked in the film industry for about fifteen years. Mostly television, some movies. Some of it’s even stuff you’ve heard of.

An all-too common problem I saw from beginning directors (and let’s be honest– also from plain bad directors) was an urge to make every single shot special. Every one had to be Oscar or Emmy-worthy. Didn’t matter if it was a wide shot, a close-up, a master, or coverage. Didn’t matter where it fell in the story. Didn’t matter what the day’s schedule looked like. Every shot of every scene required hours of set up and rehearsals and discussions and little tweaks and adjustments.

Now, on one level, yeah, this is sort of the director’s job. To make it all look good. But there’s a lot of nuance there. I can make an individual shot look good, sure. But does it fit with the last good shot? Does it fit with the rest of the scene? Is the editor going to be able to cut these shots together in a way that works within the filmic, visual language we all know on some level? Heck, does it even fit in the story I’m telling?

Plus, well… this is going to be an awful shock for some of you, but there are a few capitalist aspects to filmmaking. Yeah, sorry you had to find out this way. Making a movie costs money. It has a budget, and one way that budget’s expressed is in how long you have to shoot something. Spielberg can take a week waiting for the absolute perfect sunset his heroes can ride off into, but I’ve got today and it took us too long to get to this location so I might get two tries at this if I’m lucky and that’s it.

Anyway, what this meant for the crews I worked with was we’d get stuck with a new (or bad) director and they’d spend hours on the first two or three shots of the day. Like I mentioned above, it didn’t matter what they were or were they fell in the story. These folks would spend the whole morning working on whatever scene happened to be first up, and then we’d come back from lunch and surprise we still have 83% of today’s schedule to shoot in the last six hours of the day. So we’d rush through all that stuff—again, no matter what it was—and then come in the next day and, well, usually watch them do the whole routine again.

And this was really bad, from a storytelling point of view. The final film or TV episode would end up uneven because there was all this visual emphasis on random scenes that didn’t need it and often very little on scenes that did. Heck, once or twice I saw folks spend all this time on a random “pretty” shot and it wouldn’t even get used because there was no way to cut it in. These directors were so focused on making individual shots look amazing—no matter what that particular shot was—that they didn’t stop to think of the film as a whole.

Okay, this actually reminds me of another fun story (still semi-related). A few years after I got out of the industry, my beloved took me to an Academy screening of Pacific Rim (yeah, she’s super cool) and Guillermo del Toro was there talking about the movie. One of the things he stressed was even though he knew large swaths of the movie were going to be mostly computer-generated, he didn’t want any sort of wild, impossible “camera moves.” You know, the ones where the camera’s essentially whizzing through the air and then it loops down under the monster’s armpit to come back up between punches from the giant robot and then it circles around the two of them before pulling back for the panoramic shot of the city in flames as they fight? We’ve all seen some of those, right?

Yeah, del Toro didn’t want any of that in Pacific Rim. He understood those sort of visuals becomes distracting very easily, and once the audience is thinking about them they realize how impossible these moves are. And suddenly a big chunk gets lopped off their willing suspension of disbelief. They become consciously aware they’re just watching a movie rather than getting drawn into the story. That’s why the CGI camera shots in Pacific Rim are all set up as if actual, physical cameras are there doing regular, normal shots.

Now… I told you all this so I could tell you about Krishna Rao.

I worked with Krishna on a show called The Chronicle, back when the SyFy Channel was called the Sci-Fi Channel. Krishna started out in the crew (one of his very first film credits is on John Carpenter’s Halloween) and over the years worked his way up the ladder (seriously check out his list of credits), becoming a director of photography and quite often a director as well. Which is how I knew him. He had a loose rule he tended to follow when he was filming an episode. Honestly, I’m not sure he ever even put it into words, because it didn’t really click in for me until the second or third time I worked with him.

Krishna would only really plan on one pretty shot a day. That’s it. Once a day we’d have a complicated move with the camera dolly or some other elaborate shot that required lots of set-up and rehearsal. Everything else would be simpler, workhorse stuff– masters, overs, some coverage if it was needed. And I’m sure a few folks reading that may have some thoughts about “real” directors or the lack of art in American television or whatever. But here’s a few things to keep in mind.

Krishna made his schedule pretty much every day. Because he didn’t overload himself trying to do too much, he could make sure all his material fit together just how he wanted. He still had at least seven solid, very pretty shots per episode—that’s a cool shot every six minutes in a standard 42 minute television episode. And because he was being careful about using them, they always landed where they’d have the most visual impact.

And, sure, like any rule, sometimes he’d bend it a bit. He wasn’t against doing something fun or clever if he could do it quick. Sometimes we’d do two pretty shots in a day, maybe because of stunts or special effects. But these were always the exception, not the rule.

And his episodes always looked fantastic,

Okay, all interesting, but what does it have to do with books? With, y’know, our kind of storytelling? We don’t deal with visuals.

Y’see Timmy, something I’ve talked about a few times here on the ranty writing blog is pointless complexity. In structure. In dialogue. In vocabulary choices. I’ve seen stories with the most confusing non-linear structure just because the writer… felt like using non-linear structure. There are folks who scoff at using pedestrian words like blue or house or said. They spend all their time figuring out how to bury their story (or hide the fact that they don’t actually have one) behind layers of complexity.

To be clear, I’m not saying any of this stuff is inherently bad in and of itself. Personally, I love a story with a clever structure, an author who knows how to use their full vocabulary, and some twisty-turny character motivations. But a key thing is that when they do this—when they make a choice that isn’t the basic, workhorse choice—is that it’s actually making things better. This added complexity is an improvement, not an affectation.

And one other thing to consider. Sometimes… we need the simple stuff. We need the workhorse to just come in and deal with this paragraph or page. Because if I try to make every single sentence/ paragraph/ chapter the one that gets me an award, what I’ve really done is make a flat, monotone manuscript. If every single line is the utterly amazing artistic-piece-of-beauty one, they all have the same weight. Nothing has emphasis. To paraphrase one of great modern philosophers, once everything is super… nothing is.

So think about where you’re putting your effort. And how much of it you’re putting there. And how much you might want somewhere else.

Next time, I may blather on about the Children of Tama. Haven’t talked about them in a while.

Until then, go write.

Okay, so last time I talked about using said. Just plain, basic said. It’s the workhorse that makes all those other dialogue tags special and not just static on the page.

This time I kind of wanted to go the other way and talk about not using said.

In fact, let’s talk about using nothing at all.

One thing about dialogue is it’s almost always between two people. A binary system, if you will. Ninety-something percent of the time, it just goes between me and you and back to me and back to you.

Think of it like playing pickleball. Too hip? Okay, think of it like playing tennis. Except we’re just lobbing the ball back and forth and back and forth. And the ball (our dialogue) can only ever be between two players, right? Even if there’s four people on the court, right now it’s only going between me and you and me and you.

Now because of this back and forth aspect of dialogue, there’s a lot of times I can skip tags altogether. If I know it’s me then you then me then you, well, you know who speaks next, right? And who speaks after that? And then the next logical person is…? Honestly if it’s just the two of us and I speak first, there’s only one other person who can be speaking.

Tell you what. Here’s a little peek at the first chapter of God’s Junk Drawer…

———————–
Kyle moved toward the front of the bus. “Why’d you even sign up for this if you’re dumping him?”

Olivia let out a long sigh. Let her shoulders slump. “It was a surprise. He signed us both up without telling me. And I’m not dumping him.”

“Yeah?”

“No.” She finally stood up. Slung her coat into her armpit. “Dumping implies we’re in a relationship.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“He thinks you are.”

“Having sex a couple times a week isn’t a relationship. It’s just having a workout buddy you see naked sometimes.”

“So it’s not working out anymore, I guess?”
—————————

Barely any dialogue tags there at all. But it’s still pretty easy to follow, right? Back and forth, back and forth. When you got to the end, was there any confusion who got in the last word?

Even if I’ve got a bit with more than two characters in it, it’s pretty much always me to you to me to you. If someone else chimes in (or, to keep our metaphor, I knock the ball to someone else)? Then it’s me to you to me to her to me to her. Back and forth. Back and forth. Always a binary.

Sticking with our tennis metaphor just a bit longer, here’s an easy rule of thumb. If I’m sending the ball back to the same character who just sent it to me, I probably don’t need to identify them. I can skip the dialogue tag. But if someone new hits the ball, I should say who they are.

Here– let me give you one more bit from that same chapter of God’s Junk Drawer…

—————————
Olivia adjusted the backpack’s strap on her shoulder. “We should probably get going.”

Logan jerked his head at the far side of the parking lot. “I think I might hit the bathroom.”

“Better be quick,” she told him, “or we’ll have to leave you here.”

“We’re not in a rush.” Kyle shook his head. “So fucking dumb.”

Logan shot him a look. “Seriously, stop saying dumb.”

“Whatever. You both know we don’t need to be there exactly at sunset. It’s not like the universe is going anywhere.”

Olivia shrugged. “Maybe the part he wants to show us is.”
—————————

Three people talking, but when you hit that line starting with “Whatever” were you confused?

Now I’m not going to lie. This is a bit tougher to pull off. I’ve got to have a good ear for dialogue and my characters need to have a strong voice. I also need to have a good sense of timing—how long can I keep that ball in the air before I need to address who just hit it? We’ve all had that moment, right? We’re reading a long stretch of dialogue with minimal or no tags, and then there’s suddenly that jarring moment of “Wait… he’s saying this?!?” And then we work backwards up the page trying to figure out where the rhythm broke and we lost track of who was saying what.

And I won’t lie. It’s not unusual for me to get a note or two from editors or copy editors as they go through a manuscript, just checking if we need to clarify who’s speaking at a given point. It’s worth pointing out, though, that one time when they were asking for this clarification it was because they’d deleted a line of dialogue… and now the rhythm was broken. It was back and forth and back and back and forth and back. Of course it seemed confusing now.

We don’t need that many tags. Again, this isn’t true 100% of the time. Not much is when you’re writing. There’ll be times when people are arguing—maybe lots of people—and shouting over each other and I want to use more dialogue tags. Just to be safe. But these are going to be the exceptions.

So trust your tennis game. Or writing game. And see how often you don’t need to use dialogue tags.

Next time, I’d like to talk to you a bit about, well, how to deal with things. One specific thing.

Until then, go write,

Okay, quick-ish.

I’ve mentioned before that I started writing very young, and at some point—maybe late high school or college—I finally understood that the key to being a successful writer was all about vocabulary. Not using common words and only using extraordinary ones! The thesaurus was my best friend. Using a rare word just showed what a good writer I was, and using an obscure word… well… clearly the money and awards were going to be rolling in. Once I finished something.

One of the places I… okay, wait, let’s just be honest. This is a horrible way to approach writing. Just awful. I shouldn’t be trying to make my writing hard to understand or read. If people need to pause on every sentence and try to work out a word’s meaning from context… that’s not great.

That said, one of the places where I did this a lot was dialogue. Somehow I got it in my head that only losers used the same dialogue tags on the same page. There were thousands of better words out there, and I was going to use every. Single. One of them.

As I’ve also mentioned before, the first time I got to sit down with an editor to talk about my writing, his opening words to me were not “this is amazing, let me give you twenty bazillion dollars” they were, in fact, to just use said. Stop with all the muttering, mumbling, grumbling, stating, shouting, hollering, whispering, gasping, declaring, ejaculating (oh yes), exclaiming, and calling out and just use said. Said, he told me, is invisible.

There are a lot of folks out there who will try to convince you said is pedestrian or boring or flat. That it’s what lesser writers use because they can’t think of anything else. I mean, there’s dozens of lists on the internet—many from writing teachers!—of “better” dialogue tags to use.

But the truth is, said doesn’t slow writing down. It doesn’t trip people up. It’s what most professional writers use. It’s a solid workhorse that lets me save those other dialogue tags for when they’ll actually matter, when it’s important that readers hear that mutter or shout or exclamation.

Plus…

Okay, let’s have another moment of brutal honesty. When we start out as writers, a lot of our dialogue is… not good. It’s awkward and on the nose and kind of flat on the page. Mine definitely was. So I think sometimes we latch onto those other dialogue tags because they help us get the point across. They’re sort of like an adverb or adjective for the whole sentence, in the sense that they’re not inherently wrong, but I also probably wouldn’t need them if my dialogue was stronger

So some people are a bit… shall we say, reluctant to let go of the idea they should always use much, much more than said.

Don’t worry about them. Just use said most of the time. I can use the other ones too, sure, but I try to think of them like exclamation points. The more I use them, the less powerful they become.

And I want my writing to be powerful.

Now, just to be contrary, next time I’d like to talk about not using said.

Until then, go write.

I know I said I was going to talk about the first time I met Yakko Warner, but then Bryce asked a question in the comments and I thought, hey, that’s a fantastic idea for a topic. Let’s do that instead.

Bryce wanted to know…

As someone who has had numerous Audible exclusives, can you speak on the difference (if one even exists) between writing something intended to be read silently in your head versus writing something intended to be read aloud? Obviously any book can be read aloud. But when you know or expect that most of your audience will be listening to a narrator tell the story, recorded onto mp3’s, coming through little speakers we shove in our ears, how does that change the storytelling?

So let’s talk about this a bit.

I guess the first thing would be establishing what counts as an Audible Exclusive. Weirdly enough, somebody asked me about this on Bluesky the other day, and it’s a bit of a tricky question because Audible likes to slap that label on a lot of things. For example, I did two books– Dead Moon and Terminus— that were exclusive to Audible in the sense that, for six months, the only place you could get them was through Audible. No ebook. No print. No foreign editions. Nothing else. But after that six months… they spread to other formats.

But there are also Audible exclusives where “exclusive’ just means the audiobook isn’t available anywhere except Audible. For example, The Broken Room and Paradox Bound both had print and ebook versions (from Blackstone and Crown, respectively) that came out the same day as the audiobook. But Audible is sort of a one-stop place, so if they produce an audiobook you’re not going to see it show up on other sites.

Does all of that make sense? Cool. I just wanted to be clear on that moving forward, because it kind of addresses one aspect of the overall question. There’s a lot of storytelling out there that’s always aimed at audio only (a narrative podcast, for example), but it’s kind of rare to be writing a book that’s just for audio. They tend to reach other formats.

So here’s some things I’ve learned that can make my writing better in either text or audio format.

And, as always, these aren’t hard fast rules. They’re more like guidelines. There’s always going to be an exception, a time they don’t apply. But if I’m mostly finding exceptions… maybe I should take another look.

I’ve mentioned repetition here before. It can be a powerful tool, but as I’ve said if I’m not careful repetition can go from clever to annoying really fast. And because our brains don’t process listening and reading the same way, I’d guess in audio format I can reach that tipping point… maybe ten-fifteen percent faster? Like anything artistic, there’s going to be a degree of personal taste/ tolerance in there. But something that’s pushing that line in text will probably step right over it in audio. Which should make me ask, hey, why am I right up against the “annoying” line, anyway?

On a similar note… I’ve become aware of words that rhyme. Talking about the lair over there. Yakko said he was dead. Within sentences or between sentences. Sometimes these rhymes can unintentionally create a weird rhythm, so I tend to look for those and nix them. Unless, y’know, I was trying to create that rhythm. And again, it’ll be just that little bit more in audio. If it’s questionable in text, it’ll definitely stand out when we hear it.

Similar-but-different thing…I also keep an eye out for sound-alike words. There’s words we’d pass over without a second thought in text because they’re spelled differently, but when we’re just hearing them… they can hit a little differently. For example, there was a place in God’s Junk Drawer where I’d used gate and gait in the same sentence without thinking about it. I think it was on my second pass with the editor when I realized how—out loud—this could create a little mental stumble because we’d be hearing the same thing twice. It’s repetition and rhyming combined. Also, this is probably the most “audio only” thing I’m going to mention.

Another thing I’ve become aware is how long sentences can get, and how awkward they are as they get longer. In audio and text, somebody has to read all this. And keep track of it. And actually remember the beginning by the time they get to the end. That sounds a bit silly, I know, but I’ve seen people pride themselves for page-long, grammatically correct sentences (and some that are even longer). Every time my reader has to re-read something (or back up to hear it again) they’re getting knocked out of the story and it’s becoming less immersive.

And let’s talk about a big one. Dialogue. To be specific, dialogue tags. I’ve said before that I‘m a big, big believer in said, and that’s still true. Said is borderline invisible in text. Readers will absorb it and move past it without a thought.

But… when we’re in audio format, this isn’t quite as true. Again, our brains don’t process listening and reading the same way, so hearing said again and again can become repetitive and distracting.

Now, this isn’t to say audio is a good place for all those other dialogue tags. Quite the opposite. I think they might be more distracting in audiobooks because now we have to deal with the aspect of performance. Someone’s actually saying this dialogue out loud, so there’s going to be a slight disconnect if they don’t hiss, shout, exclaim, chortle, whisper, gasp, and so on. How weird would it be for be to say Yakko mumbled when the narrator just… read it? Because a big part of the narrator’s job is making everything clear and understandable.

But y’know what? When I got to work with an audiobook editor, it made me think about how often I need dialogue tags at all. And not just when I’m writing for audio. For text, too.

Y’see Timmy, one thing I became aware of is how often dialogue is a binary, going back and forth between two characters. Back and forth, back and forth. Which means I usually only need one or two dialogue tags at the start and then we’ll be able to follow the conversation. I talked about this at length a while back so I won’t take up too much time on it here, but if anyone wants an update or a refresher, just let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.

Another thing I became aware of was ways to tag dialogue without, well, dialogue tags. If a character has a minor action, I tend to group it into the same paragraph as their dialogue. Something like this…
—————–
Kyle shrugged. “No, but I need to earn a few points with Hideko. She owed Barnes a favor, he needed people who knew the telescopes and the camera rigs to make sure some dumb undergrad didn’t destroy them.”
—————-
See? It’s very clear Kyle’s the one talking, right? Even though technically none of the dialogue is attributed to him.

Also, congratulations! You just got to read part of God’s Junk Drawer nine months early!

To wrap up, you may notice, a lot of these tips/ guidelines come down to breaking the flow. I think flow’s very important in a book, and possibly more so in an audiobook. We’ve introduced a new element—the narrator—between me and the audience, which is one more chance for somebody to pause or trip up and get knocked out of the story. And every time my reader’s knocked out of the story, it’s a chance for them to remember something else they should be doing. Like folding laundry. Or taking out the recycling.

And that’s not a good thing.

Hey, speaking of God’s Junk Drawer… you can preorder it now! Go down to your local bookporium and ask them to reserve a copy for you. Maybe two, just to be safe. If you’re ordering online, get at least three.

On a related note, this Saturday the 15th (tomorrow, as I write this) at 1:00pm I’m going to be at Mysterious Galaxy with a few other authors from Combat Monsters. We’ll be answering questions and scribbling in books. So come by and… y’know, ask questions. Get books scribbled in.

Next time, barring reader requests, I’ll be talking about the first time I met Yakko Warner.

Until then, go write.