![\"Strigel_1506-detail\"](\"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Strigel_1506-detail.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Dialogue Attribution<\/strong><\/p>\n Characters in fiction writing often speak\u2015let\u2019s face it, a story would feel strange if the characters never said a word to one another. However, just throwing dialogue down on a page soon becomes a chaotic mess. Authors have a number of techniques at their disposal to control dialogue and keep the reader from getting lost and confused. In the course of reading, editing, and proofreading, I seem to find issues with dialogue mechanics that stand out as a little iffy at best and downright distracting at worst. In a spell of attempting to be all helpful and stuff again, I decided to ramble a bit about dialogue attribution.<\/p>\n —\u00a0Tags, Beats, and Cues —<\/strong><\/p>\n Feel free to skip this part if you know the difference between a dialogue tag and a beat. If not, read on! There are three primary means of dialog attribution. Simply put, this means telling the reader who said what. Overreliance on any single technique makes for weak writing. Good dialogue should use a mixture so as not to create a feeling of repetition.<\/p>\n Dialogue Tags<\/strong><\/p>\n A dialogue tag (also known as a \u2018saidism\u2019) in its most basic form is the word \u2018said.\u2019 Many authors regard \u2018said\u2019 as invisible to the reader and as the ideal, perfect, only tag anyone should ever use (with the occasional permission slip granted to \u2018asked\u2019). Dialogue tags may also include other words such as yelled, shouted, whispered etc, and are separated from the dialogue by a comma.<\/p>\n Tags can be in front of, behind, or amid the dialogue:<\/p>\n \u201cMeet me at the wharf at six,\u201d said Nigel.<\/p>\n Faye said, \u201cSix? Isn\u2019t that a bit early?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHardly,\u201d said Nigel. \u201cLassiter wanted us here at five. I managed to talk an hour out of him.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Dialogue Beats <\/strong><\/p>\n A beat is an action occurring on the same line as dialogue, used to attribute that dialogue to a particular character much like a tag. Beats offer a way to connect a line of dialogue to a character with a sense of flow, especially when you\u2019re looking to convey a sense of the dialogue occuring while action happens. Beats should be separated from dialogue with periods, can occur at the beginning of dialogue, between bits of dialogue, or after:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nigel rolled down the driver-side window. \u201cOh, bloody\u2026 I don\u2019t like the look of that mist.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNeither do I.\u201d Faye shuddered, clutching her silver derringer close to her chest. \u201cSomething\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cToo late now. We\u2019re past the point of no return and all that.\u201d Nigel opened the door and got out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Context Attribution<\/strong><\/p>\n The third method of dialogue attribution is contextual. A contextual attribution connects the dialogue to the character speaking it by the context of what is going on around the dialogue or by the words themselves.<\/p>\n Examples of context tagging include:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She struggled to unstick her finger, and pointed at the dead man two feet away. \u201cWhat about him?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHisss companion killed one of my children.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat time did Doctor Lassiter say he was going to be here?\u201d asked Faye.<\/p>\n \u201cSix-thirty.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Assuming that Nigel and Faye are the only characters in the scene, the answer to the question is assumed to be from Nigel. If the answer is intended to come from the extra-dimensional being in the glove box, you\u2019d need to identify that.)<\/p>\n or<\/p>\n \u201cYou never did tell me what her name was, Nigel.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWould it have mattered?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Here, the question is directed at Nigel by name. The answer logically comes from Nigel so there\u2019s no need to tag it apart from the context.<\/p>\n She noticed the gun closer to the water did not spin as fast as the other did, though both still pointed at her. \u201cYou want me to help you so you can shoot me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat is correct.\u201d<\/p>\n With a confused face, she ventured a peek. \u201cWhy? I am the Prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cProphet not found. You are biological contaminant. CRP directive implies removal of biological contaminants from central North America. Please move to within twenty four inches of main unit.\u201d<\/p>\n She stepped out from behind the tree, still clinging to it. \u201cYou want me to get closer? Why?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPlease move within twenty four inches of main unit. Auxiliary contaminant removal system has a maximum effective range of twenty-nine inches.\u201d<\/p>\n She took a cautious step closer. \u201cWhat is a auximarry taminant system?\u201d<\/p>\n Althea jumped back as a twenty-nine inch blade sprang out of its chest and waved back and forth in the air. \u201cDetachment of biological unit component \u2018head\u2019 will result in effective contaminant removal.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n In a nutshell, if the reader can tell who is speaking a line of dialogue by the content or the way in which it is said, that dialogue is using context attribution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n — Missteps (Double tags, repetitive tags, and bad tags) —<\/strong><\/p>\n Many new authors seem to have a desire to avoid using \u2018said\u2019 at all costs. I\u2019ve worked with some manuscripts where the writer went to great and sometimes awkward lengths to avoid using \u2018said.\u2019 While I agree that long patches of dialogue where every line has a \u2018said\u2019 is dry as hell, there are some things that should be avoided.<\/p>\n Double Tagging<\/strong><\/p>\n A double tag occurs when dialogue is attributed twice. The most often situation is when a writer uses both a beat and a tag on the same piece of dialogue. As the purpose of tagging and beats are to attribute the dialogue to the speaker, more than one of them is redundant and unnecessary.<\/p>\n An example of a double tag:<\/p>\n Nigel reached into his coat and grabbed his Webley revolver. \u201cWait in the car, Faye. This is going to get nasty,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Here, the dialogue is attributed to Nigel by his going for a gun. the \u2018he said\u2019 at the end is useless.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve sometimes even seen triple and quadruple tags where \u2018he said\u2019 or \u2018she said\u2019 is used as a reflexive add-on to the end of every spoken line of dialogue. Until the paragraph changes, the dialogue all belongs to the same character. A section of dialogue only needs to be attributed once. Something like this is going too far:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Faye leapt from the car and scrambled through the fog by the headlamps. \u201cNigel?\u201d she asked. \u201cNigel? Come back,\u201d said Faye. She crept towards the roiling wall of mist where he\u2019d vanished. An hour ago, she\u2019d wanted to kill him\u2015now, she couldn\u2019t imagine losing him. \u201cNigel!\u201d she screamed. \u201cWhere are you?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n In this example, there\u2019s 4 tags: the initial beat, asked, said, and screamed. While the screaming tag conveys some additional descriptive elements and might be tolerable, the asked\/said are needless since the paragraph starts off with a beat. The above could be rewritten with one tag as:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Faye leapt from the car and scrambled through the fog by the headlamps. \u201cNigel?\u201d She paused, listening. \u201cNigel? Come back.\u201d She crept towards the roiling wall of mist where he\u2019d vanished. An hour ago, she\u2019d wanted to kill him\u2015now, she couldn\u2019t imagine losing him. \u201cNigel! Nigel, where are you?\u201d<\/p>\n Only the sound of her own frantic screaming returned from the fog.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Bad \/ Explanatory Dialogue Tags<\/strong><\/p>\n In the earnest efforts of some writers to avoid using \u2018said\u2019 as a dialogue tag, I\u2019ve seen a lot of inventive verbs used as tags. Alas, most of them don\u2019t do well. There are two primary forms of \u2018bad tags.\u2019 The first are verbs that do not convey speech and are not dialogue tags. Examples of this would be \u2018laughed\u2019, \u2018chuckled\u2019 or \u2018sighed\u2019 – all three of those are physical actions that are not speaking. More grotesque examples are physical actions such as winced or cringed. Using verbs like these as dialogue tags are clumsy as wincing or cringing (or any other physical action verb) isn\u2019t a mode of speech. People don\u2019t \u2018wince\u2019 words. So [\u201cOuch,\u201d he winced.] does not work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The second form of bad tag is what I refer to as \u2018explanatory\u2019 dialogue tags. With these, (many of which also don\u2019t work as tags because they are not ways to speak) the author attempts to use the tag to explain the meaning of the dialogue to the reader. These tags can vary in impression from seeming amateurish to insulting the reader\u2019s intelligence depending on how the reader takes them. Let the dialogue speak for itself and resist the urge to explain. Examples of \u2018explanatory tags\u2019 are:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYes, let\u2019s do that,\u201d he agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to shut down these sub relay breakers first, then we can kill the main. Once it\u2019s off, we can change all these light bulbs,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this is an awful idea,\u201d he opined.<\/p>\n \u201cI hate this place. I hate this food. I hate this stupid dress, and I hate you!\u201d she complained.<\/p>\n \u201cNo way,\u201d he replied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n When a writer thinks the reader needs to be told \u2018Yes, let\u2019s do that\u2019 is agreement – it\u2019s like they grab the reader by the ear and force their face up to the page, yelling, \u201cSee, he agreed! see! \u2018Yes means I agree!\u201d A description of how to change light bulbs is obvious as an explanation, using the tag \u2018explained\u2019 here is redundant. Also, you can\u2019t \u2018explain\u2019 words, it\u2019s not a mode of speech.<\/p>\n With the ‘opined’ tag, the dialogue is expressing an opinion already. The tag ‘opined’ is unnecessary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the last example, the character is complaining. The dialogue shows that. There\u2019s no need to beat the reader over the head to make sure they understand that a string of \u2018I hates\u2019 is complaining.<\/p>\n \u201cReplied\u201d sits on the fence. Some people find it acceptable, while it often strikes me as a weak tag. If the dialogue tagged with \u2018replied\u2019 occurs right after a question, its presence alone constitutes a reply – there\u2019s no need to tell the reader it\u2019s a reply when it is already shown as a reply.<\/p>\n Rote Tags<\/strong><\/p>\n Many editors believe that \u2018said\u2019 is the only true dialogue tag. There is a lot of precedent for this, but some writers can take this too far. When every line of dialogue has a \u2018said\u2019 on it, the text is repetitious and stale, and not a lot of fun to read.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care what this thing is, I\u2019m going to send it back,\u201d said Nigel.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, it\u2019ll kill you,\u201d said Faye. \u201cEven if you live, you… won\u2019t be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLook,\u201d said Nigel. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to follow me if you don\u2019t want to. This is Lassiter\u2019s mess. He opened the gate, and I\u2019m going to close it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going with you,\u201d said Faye.<\/p>\n \u201cNo way in hell, babe,\u201d said Nigel. \u201cYou\u2019re staying right here.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not letting you go alone. Besides, I have the amulet,\u201d said Faye.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Here, every line has \u2018said\u2019 on it. As you can see, it reads like you\u2019re falling down the stairs face first and cheek-slapping every step along the way. The supposedly innocuous \u2018said\u2019 becomes not so invisible.<\/p>\n Good tags<\/strong><\/p>\n So what, you may be asking now, do I think are good tags? Tags that convey a descriptive element and do not attempt to explain or clarify the dialogue. I have worked with a number of editors, some of whom have been strict \u201cuse \u2018said\u2019 or don\u2019t use anything!\u201d whack you on the knuckles with the ruler types, and others who seemed not to care whatsoever what tags are used. Some would argue the ideal dialogue uses only \u2018said\u2019 and \u2018asked\u2019 interspersed with beats and context clues.<\/p>\n While \u2018said\u2019 is the most accepted tag, it\u2019s also bad to overuse it (see rote tags above). When the need arises to use something else, consider words like: shouted, whispered, yelled, rasped, wheezed, and so on. Be careful to avoid words like \u2018growled\u2019 or \u2018sighed\u2019, which are sounds\/actions unto themselves and not modes of projecting words.<\/p>\n The best dialogue mechanics use a mixture of beats, tags, and context clues to keep the reader immersed and the action flowing. Be wary of overusing the same words, and when in doubt, use \u2018said.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Happy Writing,<\/p>\n -Matt<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ** Thanks to Richard Roberts for feedback \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dialogue Attribution Characters in fiction writing often speak\u2015let\u2019s face it, a story would feel strange if the characters never said a word to one another. However, just throwing dialogue down on a page soon becomes a chaotic mess. Authors have … Continue reading \n
\n
\n