Strengthening Your Writing... Through Dialogue

Last week I gave a list of tips to strengthen your writing. Today I expand on one aspect of that list: dialogue.

Dialogue Attributes

Dialogue attributes are the little tags that go next to a piece of dialogue to let the reader know who said what.

In grammar school, teachers typically instruct students to find a “better” word than said when writing stories. Therefore, many characters in these stories will scream, laugh, growl, whisper, or laugh their statements. When my daughter was in first grade, she told me about a poster on her classroom door that read “Put said to bed.” It then went on to give a large list of alternates to this “boring” word.

That advice might be good for grammar school, where young writers didn't have the skill to show the emotion in what was being said through the words themselves or in the accompanying action. But for those of us no longer in the elementary grades, we need to find a better way to convey these emotions.

Consider the following snippets of dialogue.

Example #1
     Charlie hurled the chair across the room and glared at her. “Where is it, Lisa? Tell me! Where did you hide it this time?”

Example #2
     Julie crept into the room. The gunman had fallen asleep in an upright position on the sofa. Tommy slept on the floor a few feet away.

     “Tommy. Tommy, wake up,” she said.

It's not hard to figure out that Charlie was yelling in the first example, or that Lisa was whispering in the second.

You don't always need a dialogue attribute. I didn't use one in the first example above, and you probably knew Charlie was the one screaming. But if you do use a dialogue attribute, use said or asked. People are so used to seeing those words that they become virtually invisible. If you use words like hollered, screamed, chided, or lamented, they tend to take the reader out of the story.

Action Beats

Another way to distinguish who is speaking is through the use of action beats. Beats are actions that the speaking character is doing. They not only let us know who is speaking, but it helps to move the story along and can show us what emotions the characters are feeling. Refer again to example #1 above. Charlie hurling the chair and glaring at Lisa are action beats. By convention, the person performing the beat in the paragraph is the same person talking.

In example #2 above, I could have used an action beat instead of the dialogue attribute. I've expanded this snippet to include action beats in example #3 below.

Example #3
     Julie crept into the room. The gunman had fallen asleep in an upright position on the sofa. Tommy slept on the floor a few feet away.
     She inched over to her brother and shook his arm. “Tommy. Tommy, wake up.”

     He rolled onto his back and opened sleepy eyes. “Julie? How did you—?”

     “Shh!” She clamped her hand over his mouth.

In this example, the action beats move the story along, let you know who said what, and let you know how it was said.

New Speaker Means New Paragraph

A crucial way to let the reader know who is speaking is to change paragraphs when you change speakers (as was done in example #3 above). If the same character's dialogue extends more than one paragraph, use an action beat or dialogue attribute to make that clear to your reader.

Also, in a dialogue exchange between only two individuals, an action beat or dialogue attribute often isn't needed, and sometimes will only bog down the pace of the scene. Notice the difference between examples #4 and #5 below.

Example #4
     Suzie slid into her seat without a word. She hated eating in diners.

     “How kind of you to finally show up,” said Carl.

     She picked up a menu and feigned interest in the food choices. She'd rather not have to look at her ex-husband. “Nice to see you too, Carl.”

     He drummed his fingers on the table. “I already ordered for you.”

     “I hate when you do that,” she said. “You never order anything I like. You probably ordered me a salad or a grilled chicken wrap.”

     “You said you don't like the burgers here,” he said.

     “Oh? You actually listened to something I said?” She crossed her feet under the table.

     He sighed. “Would you put that menu down. I told you I already ordered for you.”

     “Did you order desert, too?” she asked.

     “I don't plan on being here for desert,” he said.

     She hid her smile before lowering the menu. “Fine, then. You can eat what you ordered for me. I'll just have a slice of apple pie.”

Example #5
     Suzie slid into her seat without a word. She hated eating in diners.

     “How kind of you to finally show up.”

     She picked up a menu and feigned interest in the food choices. She'd rather not have to look at her ex-husband. “Nice to see you too, Carl.”

     “I already ordered for you.”

     “I hate when you do that. You never order anything I like. You probably ordered me a salad or a grilled chicken wrap.”

     “You said you don't like the burgers here.”

     “Oh? You actually listened to something I said?”

     “Would you put that menu down. I told you I already ordered for you.”

     “Did you order desert, too?”

     “I don't plan on being here for desert.”

     She hid her smile before lowering the menu. “Fine, then. You can eat what you ordered for me. I'll just have a slice of apple pie.”

Which of those two examples flowed better? In both cases you could tell who was talking. But example #5 moved quicker and gave you a stronger sense of the tension and animosity between them, rather than distracting you with all the unnecessary actions and attributes used in example number four.

The Way Real People Talk

One final point. Often the best way to improve the dialogue in your writing is to listen to the way real people talk. They use contractions. They don't always speak in complete sentences. They often interrupt each other. They don't necessarily answer the questions put to them. And many times their words contradict what they're really thinking.

Now it's your turn. Do you have any dialogue tips you'd like to share?