Line Editor Search and Destroy

A Few Tips on Dialogue

There was a time when "search," meant read the whole manuscript over, with bleary eyes, until you'd rousted out every time you called the hero Ephraim when his new name was Zebediah.

(That was back when you were walking five miles to school, uphill in the sleet.)

No more. What do you think that Control-F function is for, anyway? Oh, sure, you know a few uses, but do you really use the thing for your line editing?

Assuming you have already done a spellcheck, and have let the grammar checker have its way at least about lost quotation marks, the next thing to do is to search for comma quote space (," ). Yes, every one. What comes after the comma quote? Is it, "he said?" Fine. Leave it, at least for now. Is it, "she said blushingly?"

Okay, here's a problem. You have to do a wildcard search in Word, or use the "many characters" code in WordPerfect to find every single place where you've used "X said ___ly," and change almost all of them.

"My babies!" you cry.

Kill 'em.

For the most part, the dialogue itself will tell the reader how it was spoken. Not always. There are times when the words contradict the tone.

            "I murdered my father," he said casually.

Or:

            "I'm really looking forward to it," she said dolefully.

Even those examples seem a little lame, though. Usually – almost always – there's a better way to show how the words were spoken. How about a little background business?

Here's our casual man:

            He held up two almost identical ties, trying them against the pinstripes of the suit on the hanger. "I murdered my father, of course," he said, and dropped the rejected tie onto the dresser.

And our doleful woman:

            She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah," she said, "Right. I'm really looking forward to it."

You're also going to look at the places where you don't have, "said," but some other verb instead: shouted, intoned, chirped, fluted, shrieked, purred, whispered, hissed, oiled, and on and on.

You got it. Most of those have to go. Especially the ones you like best. There is a place for verbs that tell how something was spoken, but it's a small place, and it only has room for a few words.

            "Caroline," he said.

            "Caroline," he whispered.

            "Caroline!" he shouted.

Or maybe he has a cold. "Caroline," he croaked.

But for the most part, with some exceptions, you don't need fancy verbs to tell how something was spoken. You can use "said" a thousand times, without its being as noticeable as a habit of substituting other words. By the time your characters have chuckled, screeched, murmured, sneered, bellowed, and hissed their way through half a chapter, the writers will be wincing at every quote. You'll have a kind of written tic, distracting to the reader and impossible to ignore.

Now you have a lot more times when you've used "said." If you think there are too many, check to see if you've missed opportunities to show who's speaking in other ways.

You may not need to attribute the speech. If only two people are talking, quite a few speeches can be left unattributed, because it will be obvious from paragraphing and tone of voice who is speaking. Just don't leave out so many that the reader has to count back with his finger.

Or you can add a bit of stage business. Your characters aren't sitting still on facing chairs with their hands in their laps, are they? They can do things while they talk.

            "Hold this, honey." He handed her the drill. "Now if I lift the cabinet, can you put a hole right there?"

            She stood up with a scrape of the heavy chair. "I don't see why you're asking me these questions. I wasn't the one who wanted Hagar dead."

            "Margaret!" He fell on his knees. "Will you marry me?"

            "Get up! What's the matter with you?" She tugged at his hands. "People are looking at us, Daniel!"

            See? You can tell who's speaking, and what's happening, right?

The thing is, the purpose of dialogue is to move the plot on while giving the reader a sense of the characters. Readers can enjoy the way the characters talk, but they shouldn't be forced at every step to notice you, the author, back there manipulating the puppets. If I enjoy the way Nora Roberts writes dialogue in her J.D. Robb books, and I do, it's not because I think, "Wow, that Roberts is good; look at all the neat words she uses." No, actually, I'm more likely to think, "Hey, here comes Dallas, reaming someone out again," and I settle down to enjoy.

It's kind of a miracle, how that black type on white paper stands up and becomes human beings. And it's natural, when trying to pull off that miracle, that we think we can use all the help we can get.

We can't easily believe that, "he said," is enough. But if the words inside the quotes are right, it is.

Photo: "Shift Key Close Up," by Richard Lau.