Category: tags

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 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.