I for one will fight on the side of the Bookisms

He stepped forward is a good sentence. He lifted up his blah blah blah is... not. I was using those two sentences to show how ridiculous the idea that "brevity is bad" and that authors who DON'T use extra words are lazy is.

I think you should tone it down. You're being a little too aggressive, and that's one reason why I was confused about your point.

I've noticed that this has come up a couple of times... what's people's beef with omitting the dialogue tag? As long as there's no risk of the reader being confused as to who's speaking, omitting the "s/he said" is a perfectly valid way to write dialogue.

Uh, I'm not going to respond to something like:

in any fashion that tries to give credence to it as an idea. It's a ridiculous, backwards notion that, as I showed, is the exact opposite way that someone should approach the craft of writing. It's wrong. It will never create good writing. If that came off as "aggressive" then I apologize (and now it's been "thumped", whatever that's supposed to mean), but how is anyone who knows anything about writing supposed to respond to that?

Like I said before, isn't this supposed to be a place where writers can improve? You can't think in the above fashion and improve as a writer.

But OK, let me try again:

Writing something like "she choked out between the sobs" is bad writing. Unfortunately, that's not very subjective. At all. The vast majority of the world, and pretty much every actually published writer in the world, and every publisher and editor in the world, would all agree that it's bad writing.

Why is it bad writing? Because it's useless, and it's frankly insulting to the reader. The reader does not need to know about the difficulty she is having finding words, because the reader can already tell that by the fact that she's breaking down and in the middle of a crying fit. People weeping are not going to be able to find or speak words easily, and by writing that, you're telling the reader that they're too stupid to draw such a simple inference.

So when a character walks into a room, you don't describe the room as having four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. When a character smiles, you don't need to tell the reader they are happy. When a character steps forward, you absolutely don't say that they lifted their leg and moved in a forward direction in front of them. And when a character breaks down in tears (which is itself overly melodramatic and often unnecessary), you sure don't need or want to write "she choked out between the sobs".

Hopefully that gets the point across without being seen as "aggressive".

I'd hope no one has a beef with that. Omitting the dialogue tag is absolutely fine. Just, as you said, make absolutely sure that it's obvious to the reader who is speaking. You can also use an action tag, as the guy a few posts above showed, but I don't know if his examples were the best since they came off as a bit over-dramatic. Any action that goes along with a line of dialogue should be simple and concurrent.

edited 29th May '12 1:30:03 PM by jackpollock

Yeah. I think the primary point is to save the descriptive words in regard to the dialogue FOR the dialogue. That simple bit of advice is really powerful and ultimately makes you a better writer in this format.

I think people try to hard to paint a TV show in people's heads rather than using strong dialogue and written action. HOW the words are said is really important on TV; novels, not so much.

Edit: This goes along with this point. TV literally spells out everything. I think said 'bad writing' is a result from treating the written literature as a TV/Movie script. Looking at the examples I provided earlier, I think you're absolutely right. But then again, that is part of the reason I'm enjoying this discussion so much.

edited 29th May '12 1:48:27 PM by Dimanagul

I used to like Bookisms. I thought that using "said" over and over and over again sounded redundant. So I spent probably 80% of my dialogue-writing time thinking of synonyms - replied, answered, shouted, screamed, moaned, groaned, bellowed, boomed, echoed, mumbled...and so on and so forth. And then I asked a very accomplished writer to read one of my stories, and he couldn't get through it. The Bookisms weren't the only problem, but they were a large part of it. At first, I was offended, but then I tried to re-read what I had written and found he was right - the synonyms did nothing to enhance the story. They were distracting, almost obnoxiously so.

Now, i don't think it's "always wrong" to use something other than "said," but like anything, too many Bookisms divert the reader's attention from what is actually happening.

If it's important to specify that someone is whispering, or shouting, or muttering under their breath, I personally feel it's not a bad thing to use those words as dialogue tags.

For example:

"I love you," she whispered.

"Stupid rules," he mumbled under his breath.

"Help!" he shouted.

Those words (and others like them) actually give more information than a simple "said." Things like announced, explained, exclaimed, and so on, don't.

"Shouted" and similar words have always sort of been in a confusing area to me. On the one hand, something like

seems redundant - it's pretty obvious that's he not just mumbling it. But by that same token, using less emphatic words like 'said' for that kind of sentence seems sort of silly.

Dialogue tags themselves aren't strictly necessary, but in any conversation involving more than two participants, I think it's important to make sure the speaker's name appears somewhere in each paragraph.

I disagree, I think those words do communicate more information than 'said'. However, I admit that the extra information is subtle and in general probably not worth the additional distraction of the unexpected word, not when you could achieve the same effect with context.

Good point about shouted, not sure where I stand on that. I suppose it might just be something you have to put up with sometimes, I don't think people are likely to find it jarring unless it's pointed out like that.

edited 29th May '12 2:54:00 PM by Kesteven

Yeah, 'shouted' is one of those ones that can look wrong no matter how you use it. For the most part, it's common enough that you won't get crap from anyone for using it, though. Depending on perspective, it's one place I find it might be OK to break a different rule of writing and describe the main character sensing it, like//

He heard a woman shouting.
"Help! Police!"

As for ones like 'muttered' and 'whispered', they're the sort of things that are dependent on context. Sometimes, you probably can't avoid using them, because there's no other way to get that information across to the reader. In other cases, though, the surrounding scene will make it perfectly evident how the character is talking. Just to make up an example:

Bob turned away from Zangief. "Stupid asshole, why I oughta—"

"Hey," Zangief said. "You say something, capitalist dog?"

"Not a thing," Bob said.

"Good. Now get out of here and let me finish my borscht."

In this example, it's pretty obvious that Bob is saying that under his breath, so you don't need to use Bob muttered or another word along those lines. No, it's not going to kill your work entirely to let it in, but to go back to Stephen King's dandelion example, if you do, soon enough you might end up with something like:

Bob spun on his heel, turning away from Zangief, the hulking Russian. "Stupid asshole," he muttered under his breath, glancing down at the floor below him. "Why I oughta—"

"Hey," Zangief interrupted menacingly, a chilling edge to his voice. "You say something, capitalist dog?" he added afterwards.

Bob looked back to Zangief, his eyes on the violent communist. "Not a thing," he uttered, trying to keep his voice steady and hoping that Zangief hadn't heard what he had said earlier.

"Good," Zangief smirked. "Now get out of here and let me finish my borscht," he concluded, turning back to his beet and onion soup.

And then, my friends, you have bad writing.

That's the problem with useless words. Even if you take away the obviously bad stuff, like he concluded or glancing down at the floor below him, you're still left with nothing but wasteful words that spell out what the reader already knows and add nothing to the actual work. Zangief should be established as a menacing character, so you don't need to tell us that he talks in a menacing fashion. We can tell that Bob doesn't want Zangief to know what he just said, because that's obvious to anyone. And there are better ways to tell the reader what borscht is (if you need to at all), then to clumsily have Zangief turn back to it immediately after he talks about how he's going to turn back to it.

edited 29th May '12 4:22:29 PM by jackpollock

Basically, avoid the Department of Redundancy Department, ja?

I'm seconding the "this sentence is the inferior one" notion. This is straight Mojojojo-speak. Worse, it skirts the line of Purple Prose.

It would be doable if this were like a Running Gag describing one character almost as a quirkism, but reading a whole book like that sentence? A little too much for me to take thank you.

Was this even meant seriously in the first place?

No, I was using it as a deliberately over-the-top example of why "brevity is bad" is a really wrongheaded way of approaching one's writing.

...then as I noted earlier it doesn't really make a good argument for it. Anybody can make a deliberate hatchet job.

I look at "shouted" as being the exclamation point equivalent of "said," just as "ask" is the question equivalent. When you use a question mark, the person isn't saying, they're asking. When you use an exclamation mark, they're not saying, they're shouting.

@nrjxll & Kesteven - the words I chose may not be the best examples. My point was that sometimes a different word actually gives more relevant information, and other times it doesn't. Also, sometimes the relevant information is redundant or is outweighed by the distraction factor.

I like Bookisms, but I also like it when there is only one or two in a book so that when somebody growls something or squeaks something it hits you like a visceral jolt.

To each his own, though.

Personally, I think when considering whether or not to use an alternative speech tag, two things must be considered.

1. Does the dialogue/surrounding prose effectively convey the tone and intent of the dialogue in question?

2. If not, could the dialogue or the surrounding prose be modified to do so without detracting from their quality?

If the answer is no to both of those questions, IMHO it's acceptable to use a bookism, ideally a simple one like whispered or shouted.

edited 30th May '12 12:30:50 PM by Archereon

I tend to categorise dialogue tags in this way:

• 0 - said. Pretty invisible. Can be omitted in many cases.
• 1 - asked, explained, replied, declared, answered, admitted etc. Basically always redundant to the dialogue. However using "said" instead of these can easily seem very clumsy. Mostly invisible.
• 2 - whispered, groaned, roared, lied etc. Difficult to convey via dialogue only. Usually important to the emotional flow of characters.
• 3 - shouted, teased, blurted etc. Usually recognisable enough via dialogue alone. Still, they sometimes are needed to clarify.
• 4 - stuttered, scoffed etc. Rarely needed to clarify anything in the dialogue. Annoying underestimation of reader.
• 5 - snorted, sobbed, wept, pondered etc. Misuse of dialogue tags, although understandable and not entirely condemnable. For instance:
  • "Of course you wouldn't understand", Bob snorted.
  • No sane reader thinks Bob literally snorts out the entire sentence. "Snorted" here acts as short for "said in a condescending/amused way that included one or two semi-snorting pronunciations". Or perhaps "said, and snorted after that".
• 6 - smiled, shrugged, frowned etc. Ugly misuse of dialogue tags, they don't even make sense. Very lazy. Easily replaceable by "said with a smile" or "said and shrugged".
• 7 - ejaculated, pontificated, asseverated etc. Ridiculous words no one naturally uses. Immediately make the prose look pretentious and forced.

While I would on the whole agree soundly with the tiers you have set up, "ejaculated" is probably a bad example of a Level 7: There are a small number of perfectly legitimate uses for it in dialogue, though they are few and far between. (It's a good word to describe how some people say things with a quick, ejective quality, but minus the contemptuous, saliva-daubed implication of "spat out.") I would put it at about a 5.

That being said, most longer words, while fun and useful to use in other places, make really bad dialogue tags. In all serious, if you, Hypothetical Troper-Writer, feel the need to use sesquipedalian phraseology to describe how your character says something, put that description as far away from the tags themselves as you can.

Spat-out is a good example of 5; ejaculated probably belongs at 7. It's one of those unfortunate implications things.

edited 30th May '12 7:13:43 AM by Dimanagul

The usage of "ejaculated" as a description of speech is an extremely old one, if a bit stilted-sounding; religious opinion statements by the Pope outside of official proclamations are officially called papal ejaculations, for example. It's a well-established term, and not impolite in the least.

Also, you accidentally a semicolon there.

if you're going to play grammar police. Check the words you are using to do so: "Also, you accidentally a semicolon there."

Edit: Initial post was redundant. It's been said in the thread several times.

edited 30th May '12 7:35:35 AM by Dimanagul

It's a meme.

<— Can be an internet fogey at times.