September 2016 - Ann Henry Editor and Author

He Said, She Said

It has been suggested that said is the most beautiful word in the English language, and that is certainly true for writers. Said is short, simple, straight forward and, best of all, unobtrusive. This is what you want when you are writing a section of dialogue since, most of the time, what’s important to the story is what is being said as opposed to how it’s being said.

Take a look at the following bit of dialogue:

“Kyle, is that cat dead?” asked Serena.

“I doubt it. He’s probably just sleeping,” replied Kyle.

“Should I try to wake him?” inquired Serena.

“That might be a bad idea,” commented Kyle.

“Why?” responded Serena.

“Because that would startle him, and then he might scratch you,” explained Kyle.

“My dad always did say to let sleeping cats lie,” remembered Serena.

“A wise man, no doubt, but I think you mean dogs,” laughed Kyle.

There are several aspects of this passage that are likely not only to annoy the reader but, worse yet, to jolt zerm out of the story altogether:

1 – “More exotic” verbs are used in place of the usual said.

2 – These verbs, which denote that someone is speaking, precede rather than follow the name of the speaker.

3 – The name of the person speaking is used in every single line of dialogue.

4 – Every line of dialogue includes such a dialogue tag.

5 – The verb laughed is used inappropriately in its dialogue tag.

6 – All the dialogue tags are at the end of each line of dialogue.

Readers gloss over the words “she said” and “he said,” their brains pausing for only that fraction of a second needed to note which character is speaking before moving on to the next line in order to get on with the story. Using other words to stand in for said on a regular basis is jarring to the reader.

It can also be annoying to the reader when the word said or one of its stand-ins precedes the noun or pronoun that indicates who is speaking. Note that the title of this article is “He Said, She Said,” not “Said He, Said She.” There is a reason for this. The usual convention in the English language is to put the noun/pronoun before, not after, the verb in a declarative sentence. It is generally considered advisable to break that convention rarely if ever and then only if you wish to emphasize the verb – and how often do you really want to emphasize the word said? – or to improve the flow of the prose.

In the above dialogue example, there are only two people involved in the conversation, Serena and Kyle. Therefore, it is unnecessary (think serious overkill here) to make note of the speaker for each separate line of the conversation. Quote marks at the end of one paragraph and the beginning of the next indicate that the speaker has changed, and since there are only two speakers in this passage, we can easily keep track of who is responding to whom – at least for half a dozen lines or so – once it has been established as to exactly who the speakers are, that there are only two of them, and which one of them is speaking first. If, on the other hand, this type of conversation goes on for very long, you should indicate who is speaking from time to time so that the reader won’t become confused, especially when picking up the dialogue again following a short narrative break.

And remember that you can use those nifty little pronouns, he and she, to denote speakers rather than incessantly repeating their names. Again, the reader will gloss over those little pronouns but still pick up on the needed information without being stopped in zirsh tracks by a looming capital letter signaling a character’s name.

As for laughed, that verb should be reserved for when a character is actually laughing, not talking. Have you ever tried to laugh and talk at the same time? It’s not easy, is it? In fact, it’s nearly impossible. So unless your character is some kind of super hero or alien who can easily perform this feat, I recommend that you let your characters say their words rather than laugh them.

Breaking up the monotony of writing all the dialogue tags at the absolute end of each “line” of dialogue can improve the reading experience. If your character is speaking more than one sentence before the next character speaks, consider using a dialogue tag (if desired or needed) between two of those sentences rather than saving it for the end of that section of speech.

I’d like to add one more note regarding the verb asked used in the dialogue example. To say that someone asked rather than said indicates a question has been raised rather than a statement made. On the other hand, a question mark used at the end of the portion of the sentence in quotation marks also indicates a question, so technically it would be redundant to use the word asked in the dialogue tag. However, this dual notation is quite common and generally accepted or even preferred, allowing us writers to feel free to use it.

And so we can improve our dialogue passage by revising it like so:

“Kyle, is that cat dead?” Serena asked.

“I doubt it,” he said. “He’s probably just sleeping.”

“Should I try to wake him?”

“That might be a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Because that would startle him,” Kyle said, “and then he might scratch you.”

“My dad always did say to let sleeping cats lie.”

“A wise man, no doubt, but I think you mean dogs,” Kyle said with a laugh.

Enough said.

Creative Writing

Don’t Ruin It

When you have a good thing going in your fiction – especially in a series – don’t ruin it by suddenly changing or deleting that special element. Readers like it and have come to expect it. They feel disappointed (and possibly even betrayed) if you suddenly change your tactics.

If you ever watched the TV series Home Improvement, you may remember that one component of each episode was that the audience was never allowed to see the full face of Tim’s next-door neighbor as it was inevitably partially hidden by a fence, a ski mask, or a Santa Claus beard. This was an element that dawned on the audience slowly and built up over a period of time. Now one waited anxiously in anticipation through each episode in hopes of getting a glimpse of the neighbor’s full face. And then, one night… there it was! With no fanfare whatsoever, we saw the full face of Tim’s neighbor over that same fence that usually hid it, and instead of feeling triumph and satisfaction, we felt only let down and deflated.

Why? Because that anticipation of expected near-success but ultimate denial of satisfaction had become part of the charm of the show for us. It worked. So why did the writers abandon that ploy? I have no idea. The next week they were right back to covering part of the neighbor’s face again, but it was too late for those of us who had seen the previous week’s episode. The magic was gone.

This is true for books, too, especially in the case of series novels where the same characters continue to play a part in the ongoing story. I really got a kick out of the character Ranger in the Stephanie Plum series written by Janet Evanovich, but after many books in which Ranger hardly ever said anything to Stephanie except, “Babe” (which could mean anything from how can you be such an idiot to you sure look sexy tonight to you got my car blown up again?), Ranger suddenly became much more talkative and, in my opinion, much less charming as a result. I also began to look forward to the inevitable destruction of Stephanie’s car in each succeeding book—how will it happen this time? fire? bomb? bullets?—and would again be disappointed if Stephanie’s vehicle were to survive an entire novel without suffering some sort of bizarre demise. (Couldn’t it at least drown?)

Think of it this way: What if Columbo showed up to solve a murder wearing a new trench coat instead of his battered old raincoat and never once turned back on his way out of the room to say, “Just one more thing”? The murderer would no doubt feel great relief, but the viewers, I think, would not. They would most likely feel cheated instead.

Once you have established that your private detective never gets paid, never gets the girl, and never gets the credit he deserves, think twice about suddenly granting him great success: it may just lessen your own.