Christian Speculative Fiction discussion

Howdy everyone,

As I continue work on the first draft of my next novel, I got some feedback from a critique group and it's left me wanting your opinions on something. As many of my topics here show, lately I've been trying to work on improving my fiction prose, and I really appreciate everyone's input and insights as I try to determine what the "ground rules" are for good fiction prose, and what's more a matter of personal taste and writing style (and I know the line can often get blurry).

So in this critique group, one of the pieces of feedback I was given was that I didn't need so many dialogue tags--e.g. "she said", "he said", etc. and that readers should be able to tell who's saying a line of dialogue purely from how it's said. This is really a question with two parts, so I'll break it down.

1) My relationship with dialogue tags has been a complicated one. When I first started writing fiction, I used them a lot less, like so (examples are actual excerpts from my writing):

Miette puffed out her cheeks and looked away. “That wasn’t my fault.”

Kieri pulled away a clump of leaves and saw, nestled in a tangled crook of roots, a clump of sumptuously round, golden-brown mushrooms. “Fraa, are these them?”

“Eh?” The Graling let up on Miette and turned around. “Ayyy! These, they are the brown-caps! Well done, child of honor!” She gave Kieri a hearty pat on the back. “The best fried mushrooms, these make them!”

At some point, I then decided this lack of dialogue tags made the speakers too unclear, and I went waaaaay overboard with dialogue tags, such that literally every line of dialogue was tagged:

Mr. Hawkins blinked. “I’d never considered that,” he said, “but now that you mention it, the idea does make an awful lot of sense! It’s too bad we’ve already come so far on Laelaps, but I’ll have to try your hypothesis on one of my next sculptures!”

Hermes’s piezo array sparked in delight. “Happy to help, sir!” he said.

That's an excerpt from Thunder Girl, and when I got it turned into an audiobook and heard the prose out loud for the first time, I realized that all those dialogue tags sounded really repetitive. I also had an editor for Earthkeepers who pointed out the same thing, and specifically told me that if you start a paragraph talking about a certain character, if there's dialogue in the same paragraph, readers will generally assume that dialogue belongs to that character.

So in the manuscript I'm working on right now, I've been trying to put that principle into practice, and I find it does make the prose flow a lot better. However, I'm feeling a little iffy about the recent feedback I got to really cut back on dialogue tags, and that the content of a line of dialogue should be enough to distinguish who is speaking. As a reader, I find that in scenes with more than two characters, no matter how distinctive their dialogue is, I still feel confused about who's speaking if I'm, say, just presented with lines of dialogue alone.

Here's a case in point where I took a multi-character conversation from something I wrote and removed the dialogue tags completely:

The others looked relieved, except for Zoltan. “Who’s Professor Mebow?”

“Someone who knows somnomancy. Celice recommended him to me. He should be able to sort all of this out.”

“And you’re trusting him with this?”

Isengrim clapped a paw on his friend’s shoulder. “Please, Zoltan. I know you’re rather distrustful, but this Mebow fellow may be the only one who can help Pharazon.”

Zoltan shifted uncomfortably. “Perhaps, but I’m just not sure it’s wise to let someone simply waltz into your subconscious.”

“Well, I’m not about to let Skoll help me." In the awkward silence that followed, Pharazon swallowed his bite of salad, and then said, “Zoltan… what made you decide to trust my family?”

This question seemed to catch the Kyrii off guard, and he looked around at the motley collection. An embarrassed grin worked its way up his muzzle and he tugged at his beard self-consciously. “Well, it wasn’t easy. But… I’d say, when it came down to it… I reached a point where I knew the only thing stopping me was my own stubbornness. They’d proved themselves worthy of my trust. My heart told me so. Just listen to your heart, Pharazon.”

“That’s the same advice everyone keeps giving me."

“That’s ‘cause it’s good advice.” Blynn bit into a variberry, getting rainbow-coloured juice everywhere.

“Yeah… yeah, it is. Thanks, guys. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

For me, reading this passage gets confusing, because yes, I can kind of tease out who's saying what from context clues, but when more than two characters are involved, it's just a lot quicker and easier on me as a reader to be told who is saying what so I don't have to stop and try to figure it out, you know?

On the other hand, I feel like maybe you can get away with not using dialogue tags if it's well-established who the paragraph is talking about so there's no mistaking who the dialogue belongs to. What do you think?

Here's a bit of prose I wrote just yesterday where I'm trying to figure this out:

“Oh snap!” Kee said, doing a back handspring off of her treadmill. “I wonder what happened!”

“I think we were set to warp this morning,” Mireya said as she put down a 200-kilogram barbell. “Something must have gone wrong.”

Do I really need the "saids" here in this case? Would it read just as clearly like this:

“Oh snap!” Kee did a back handspring off of her treadmill. “I wonder what happened!”

“I think we were set to warp this morning.” Mireya put down a 200-kilogram barbell. “Something must have gone wrong.”

I'm still trying to figure this out, so any feedback is greatly appreciated!

2) Distinctive dialogue. I agree that characters should not all sound exactly the same. This isn't realistic. But I also feel that it's unrealistic to try so hard to make every character sound completely different that they basically turn into exaggerated caricatures of their personalities. Sometimes, people sound the same, especially if they're from the same background, are family or friends with each other, co-workers, have similar personalities, etc.

Sometimes, characters may sound one way most of the time, but have an aspect of their personality that causes them to speak differently depending on certain circumstances. For example, in the novel I'm working on right now, there's a main character who usually likes to sound tough and brusque, but when she encounters someone in need, her dialogue tends to change to reflect her generous, protective side. There's also a character who puts up a lot of emotional barriers and comes across as gruff and no-nonsense most of the time, but there's a scene where she finally just breaks down crying and shows a more vulnerable and sensitive side to herself.

These are important aspects of both characters, and I'm not going to make them one-dimensional just so they read a certain way all through the story to avoid using dialogue tags. That's like the character development equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As another example from the story, a lot of the plotline deals with the formation of friendships, so the characters start to pick up figures of speech from each other as an indicator that they're bonding with each other, as happens in real life. Again, that's not something I want to get rid of just for the sake of having as few dialogue tags as possible.

And, as far as I know, there is no form of media where it is not indicated clearly who is speaking. In visual media, one can generally both see and hear who is speaking. In audio such as radio plays, characters have different voice actors or a single actor/narrator gives them different voices. In prose, characters are not visually nor aurally depicted, so I think dialogue tags are often necessary to just make a quick note of who is speaking, for the reader's sake.

Audiobooks are an interesting animal because they aren't radio plays, they are someone reading prose aloud. That means everything in the prose gets spoken out loud, even bits of prose that are not necessary for an audio format. (This is especially true if the narrator is big on character voices and is good at making characters sound distinctive aurally.) So sometimes, prose that makes sense on paper sounds clunky out loud, but that makes sense because they're really two different types of media, and a straight translation from text to speech will not always make the most sense aesthetically.

Thoughts? Opinions? Am I overthinking everything again? :)

Over thinking? Maybe a little.

I wholeheartedly agree that if there are more than two people talking, you're going to need a lot more dialogue tags. I prize clarity over "style."

But when it's two people, I'll start off with a tag for each, and then go back and forth about three times each before I give another dialogue tag, just to remind the reader who's who in case they got lost.

Here's an example from my own writing:

“More like foolishness, isn’t it?” she asked, . . . “What prince would fight through a swamp when he can just as easily go to a very nice castle?”
“This is a very nice castle, ladyship.”
“I mean one not surrounded by a swamp.”
“It’s a very nice swamp.”
“Not for a horse, and a man in full plate armor.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so.”
“The sucking muck and all.”
“Yes ladyship.”
“Indeed.” She took a sip of milk. “And at my age, no one will want me.”
“That’s not true, ladyship.”
“It is.”
“No one young,” Glump said, tugging on the brim of his hat. He didn’t like this conversation. “But there are elderly gentleman who would do very nicely for ye.”
“But I wouldn’t do nicely for them.”

People will often omit dialogue tags if they want to speed up or heighten the tension of a scene, as well. It speeds the pace at which the reader goes down the page. If I put "Glump said" and "Princess Amelia said" after ever line up there, it would have slowed down the scene.

One thing (I think it was my editor) pointed out to me is that people don't really read/see dialogue tags, but gloss over them, and may not pay a lot of attention to them unless they're confused, so put in as many as you think you need for clarity.

But whenever in doubt, consult the masters. Hemingway was a master of dialogue, especially concerning the Iceberg Theory, which he applied to everything. Try checking out his Nick Adams stories, or perhaps The Sun Also Rises for scenes with many people.

And as Shakespeare once wrote, "To thine own self be true." Do what you feel and like the best.

I agree, dialogue tags are there for clarity more than anything else, so when there's a three-way conversation, you'll need more than a straight back and forth.

Also, Tom Chiarella's Writing Dialogue might be a good reference for you if you're wanting to develop memorable and unique voices for your characters.

Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, the excerpt I shared with the critique group was a conversation between four characters, so I don't think the straight dialogue thing would have worked there. Come to think of it, I don't really write many scenes where it's just two characters not doing much but talking to each other. I'm not sure how I would handle that prose-wise nowadays.

And I agree about glossing over dialogue tags, I do the same thing when I'm reading and I think they're very useful for clarity. They sound clunky out loud, yes, but some aspects of written prose make more sense to the eye than to the ear.

I personally use a lot of dialogue tags because I get very confused about who is talking without them. I have read a few books about writing from famous authors and then tend to error on the side of more tags. Also, there is a debate about whether you have to always use "said." Don't go too weird, but changing it to "mumbled," "shouted," "repeated," or "stated" can make it a bit more interesting.

Concerning writing unique tones of voice, this is a struggle many authors have. It is very hard to write different accents, but I try to play with that at times. My editors go nuts over the spelling though. Another option is to think of the education level of your characters. They do not need to speak in correct grammar if they have no education. A person with lots of education would use longer, Latin-based vocabulary and very correct grammar. Also, consider how people express themselves. A very chattery person says lots of unnecessary things. A quiet person may say things in extremely short phrases. The younger characters will have simpler sentence structures. Then there is the formal language of royalty and vulgar language of the street person. Playing with the way someone says something is a great task for your second or third draft and can be extremely fun to experiment with. For me, this is what makes classic literature pop.

Lara wrote: "I personally use a lot of dialogue tags because I get very confused about who is talking without them. I have read a few books about writing from famous authors and then tend to error on the side o..."

Thanks for your input!