Category: Writing Exercise

Writing Exercise: Dialogue Tags

Erin Penn

Rainbow of People Stock Art

Image Courtesy of renjith krishnan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Dialogue Tags

Should you do it or not?

I’m talking dialogue tags.

What on earth were you thinking?

Debate rages in the writing realm. Some point out that “he said”, “she said” has no real effect – people are trained just to glance over these cues of who is speaking. So we may as well go back to using them. Whereas for the last couple of decades “said-isms” have ruled  – muttered, sputtered, growled – but these start getting annoying after awhile.

I am from a totally different camp entirely. I like to write short, which means every word counts. Why would I use words people just glance over and do not contribute to my story. And for the longer works, again, why add something annoying or invisible when I can use description to enhance the dialogue. A writing weakness is keeping scene description and dialogue separate; once a writer gets in one mode, they tend to stick with it. But using the scene description to provide the dialogue queues instead of dialogue tags, the two required writing tools do double the work in half the time.

WRITING EXERCISE: So this month’s writing challenge is write a scene – likely you will need more than 100 words. Make the scene about the dialogue, but without dialogue tags (both saids and said-isms). The reader should clearly be able to tell who is talking. An example is below.

*****

Clifford & Rozetta 2

“Oh God, Clifford, why are you here?”

The man jerked, spinning around to see his wife. “Roz!” He crumpled the racing form and stuffed it into his shirt.

She pushed her way through the lines around the betting booths. “You promised!” Tears formed in her eyes, but the panicked edge to her near-screams were what made the crowd give them room. “You were doing so well with the 12-step.”

“Roz, Rozzie, Rozetta, it is okay hon. Just this one time. I have a sure thing.”

“NO!” Her voice broke. “No more.”

Clifford reached towards his wife but she stepped back. “It’s for us sweetie. A way for us to get our house back.”

“The house was lost two years ago.” Roz’s mascara ran in streaks. “We just got back on our feet enough to stop living in the cars.”

“Yeah, got really lucky last month.” A proud smile crossed his rugged good looks.

Her voice dropped to a hush, still audible in the crowd because everyone was quietly trying to ignore the couple. “How long have you been betting again?”

“After two trips to the Y, I realized only losers are part of the program.” The man grabbed the shoulders of her tread-bare coat. “We are winners, you and me.”

“You Lied To Me?!?” Her quiet accusation carried to the front of the line while they unconsciously moved forward as the betting lines continued to be processed.

“Honey, you weren’t ready yet.”

“No, no more lies.” She shook him off. “No more luck, no more sure thing. We’re done. I’m done.”

The last person in front of them cleared. Cliff pulled the betting form out of his pocket. “Give me a second honey.” Smiling, he turned to the window.

Roz screamed. Even the bored cashier paused pulling Clifford’s form and cash through the drop slot.

“Don’t come home. No, do come home to that shithole apartment. Me and the kids will be gone.” She stalked off, the betting lines parting like the Red Sea before Moses. Crazy beats obsessive.

Clifford shook his head in exasperation. “It is a sure thing.”

The cashier nodded his head.

“She’ll be back when I am rolling in the dough.”

(Words 366 – first published 2/19/2015; republished new blot format 8/23/2016)

Editing Rant: Be a Dear

Erin Penn

People Speaking POV Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Characters need to sound different.

After everything is written down in the initial spew of words – go back over the dialogue and decide how the characters sound. Are they from different parts of the county? Different education levels? Different jobs? How do they communicate? Is one a leader? Get a feel for who they are, write down a few quirks, then go back over the dialogue.

Character speaking quirks also applies to nicknames – not everyone uses them, and they definitely should not be the same for everyone. One book I edited had males and females, whether 70, 40 or 20, use the endearment “Dear”. Everyone. Every.single.character. Not “sweetie”, “hon”, “lovey”, “buddy”, but every affectionate diminutive between lovers, parent-child, or pals was “dear”.

People are different – do more than just hair color, eye color and height!

Patterns of speech are driven by many different aspects of a character. You can give insight to a character or situation just through dialogue. 

What assumptions would a reader make about the following?

“Hey hon, what’s ya order?”

“Sir. Are you ready to order?”

In both cases, someone is taking a food order at an eating establishment. Both start with an attention getting mannerism, followed by a request. Yet I bet you have totally different visions on how the food server is dressed, what they are holding to take the order, what the restaurant looks like, maybe even how their hair looks and what type of napkins are on the table. All from 5 or 6 words of dialogue.

Book Cover for Honestly

In Honestly, after I was finished the initial pass I went back and decided to create some differences so people could know who was speaking without any dialogue tags. Troy does not use contractions, being bi (tri or quad) lingual adds a precision to his communication. He is naturally very formal. The only time you will see him use contraction is speaking one-on-one with a child.

On the other hand Terrell’s speaking is explosive and highly related to either understanding something or sharing information. I changed some of the more complicated words he used to simpler constructs, plus adjusted the languages of those people talking directly to the young child.

As for the main character, Kassandra uses different terms of endearments when speaking with her son and her lover. I adjusted language for age of the characters, cultural backgrounds, and education levels. While doing that some of the actions of the characters changed as I discovered education levels and different upbringings. Learning how my characters talked taught me more about who they are.

WRITING EXERCISE: For you present work-in-progress (WIP) choose a chapter and review the dialogue. Or write about 200 words with two characters talking. Do their word choices match their profession? How about their age? How about whether they grew up in a rural or urban environment?

READING EXERCISE: For the book you are reading find a section of mostly dialogue. Based on the two or three pages what information do you learn about the characters based on their speaking word choices alone.

Other Cool Posts: Magical Words January 31, 2011

Erin Penn

Temple In Sunset Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of pakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Vernor’s Law

I’ve been going through the Magical Words archives, making certain I have made a copy of everything before it hits the seven-year disappear mark. And I found it! Vernor’s Law. No, not the one of “If the technological singularity can happen, it will.” but the one useful for writers.

(please note this is paraphrased) At any given time while writing, at least two of the three should be happening in a scene, preferably all three. Otherwise your writing has stalled.

  1. Develop character
  2. Advance plot
  3. Fill in necessary background information.

The most commonly known version of breaking this law is an information dump. On the other hand, the most common weakness of a new writer is the character description which just describes the character like they are in a police lineup.

David B. Coe goes into a series on descriptive passages helping writers to sharpen their descriptive skills so nothing is just an information dump. The series includes the following (with the comments being nearly as useful as the blog postings):

Part I: Settings

Part II: Character

Part III: Action

Part IV: Dialogue

WRITING EXERCISE: After reviewing the above, write 200 words or more description from your present WIP using one of the following prompts: a setting building toward action, a secondary character as described by the main character, an action scene from someone other than your typical POV character limited by that characters experience and language, or a dialogue which is particularly about character building and background information.

Other Cool Blogs: James Maxey January 7, 2011

Erin Penn

Quote from James Maxey

Image courtesy of Unsplash photographer Jilbert Ebrahimi; quote from James Maxey. Combined by Erin Penn 2016.

 Somethings just hit home too perfectly. When I read this quote in James Maxey’s blog Five Writing Mantras That Bear Repeating, I had to make a picture of it to remind me the importance of writing. Because it is worth repeating. Writing requires one to write.
Go to his blog to find out his unique spin on this topic.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write 500 words today. Blog post, book review, flash, diary entry … just write something.

Writing Exercise: Dialogue and Scene

Erin Penn

Gold Leather Texture Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Dialogue and Scene

A strange phenomenon I have discovered while editing is writers usually have scene and dialogue well integrated for the first few chapters of a manuscript, but after a while the integration fails, switching to scene description and talking heads like they were writing a screenplay. When writing the first pass, such weaknesses are acceptable, but only if the author goes back and corrects them. Many self-published book glaringly suffer from this problem. The first step is recognizing it is an issue, unless you are writing a screenplay, and the second step is fixing the situation.

Below is a generic example of the phenomenon.

WRITING EXERCISE: Try to blend the two, or go through your present WIP (work-in-progress) and see if you have a scene or two suffering from this failing and adjust. If you fix the below, please post your version to the comment section.

Don’t read other people’s versions until you do your own.

*****

Clifford & Rozetta 1

The Student Union’s vaulted ceiling crisscrossed with ancient beams, smoke-darkened from hundreds of fires before central heat was installed. The marble floor was newer, replaced in the Roaring Twenties when the college was flush with donations, but was showing wear tracks along the paths most often used by students treading the maze of comfortable, but disintegrating furniture, begged, borrowed, stolen, and abandoned by their predecessors.

Rozetta’s and Clifford’s favorite sofa was a food-stained, soda-stained, sweat-stained, and don’t-ask-stained lump from the seventies that started life most likely a bright mint green. At least, when the guaranteed to clean anything fabric cleanser had been applied to one arm as a test, that was the intense color returned.

A lead-glass project from a forgotten art student filled the center window, breaking rainbows across the room. Every year Alpha Sigma Sigma would sacrifice their pledge class to climb a 30-foot ladder to clean the fifty some prisms and glass animals. Roz moved her hand back and forth through one of the rainbows residing mid-air over her accounting book.

“You still don’t get quantity variance.” Cifford admonished. “Finals are tomorrow.”

“If I haven’t got it by now, I am not going to.” Roz replied.

“You could at least try.”

Roz shrugged. “I tried and tried and tried. At least with the homeworks, projects, pop quizzes and mid-terms, the worst grade I can get is a C+ according to the rubric the teacher handed out … and that is if I get a zero on the final. And I am not going to get a zero.”

“So did you calculate my grade yet, my lady luck?”

She said, “18% of the grade. Best case, with a 100, is a B+, worse with a zero is a C-. Zero means losing your scholarship and having to drop out.”

“It was that damned paper. Who puts a paper in an accounting course?”

“Told you just follow the rubric, but no, you missed half the required points.”

“Thought the teacher would let me slide,” he said. “She likes me.”

Roz laughed. “Ms. Catcher, letting someone slide?”

“Hey, I get lucky sometimes.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Like tonight, after you understand quantity variance.”

“How about before I understand quantity variance, but after pizza. I’m buying.”

“Deal.”

The two packed up their books and left the Union and rainbows behind.

(words 389 – first publication 2/12/2015; republished in new blog format 7/26/2016)