Today, I’d like to answer a question from a reader.
Shena asks, “I’m writing a story and I have five people who are carrying on a conversation with each other. How do I go about stating each person’s line without constantly using, he said, he replied or using the person’s name to say this person said after the sentence without it being an overkill of redundancy?”
Thanks for the question! You’re right to be concerned about repeating speech tags too often. It’s really a balancing act: on one hand, you don’t want to repeat too often, but neither do you want the reader to get lost. You have limited options, however, and you’ll have to work hard to keep this conversation interesting.
Speech Tags
Speech tags are the “he said” and “she said” that often accompanies dialogue. Notice that when you use HE or SHE, they are pronouns and will refer to the person immediately preceding. That’s important. The pronoun antecedent must be the right person. In the case of five people talking, you’ll probably need to use the character’s name often.\
James said, “Get lost.”
Jim said, “No way?”
Jill said, “Why?”
In the example above, notice that the job is even harder when character’s names all start with the same letter. Make sure your novel is populated with characters who have unique names that stand in contrast to one another. Not Jill and Bill, because they rhyme. Not James, Jim and Jill because they all begin with the same letter and are all one syllable. Instead, choose something like this: James, Brianna, Marguerite, Ally, and Bob.
Actions in the Midst of Dialogue
Dialogue rarely stands alone, though. When you add actions to dialogue, it’s sometimes called beats. This isn’t the same as action beats in a scene, but instead just means the small actions that are interwoven with dialogue. Sometimes those are the same, but sometimes not.
Dialogue beats are the small actions. Scenes demand actions, not just interior thoughts. What are your characters doing? Changing a light bulb.
James took the light hub out of the package and said, “Get lost.”
Reaching in, Marguerite gently took the package from him and said, “No way.”
Ally stuck out her lip in a pout. “Why?”
Notice here that Ally has an action, but has no speech tag. Sometimes, you can just omit the speech tag, if a character does something right before or after the dialogue and it’s clear that it’s this character speaking.
This still sounds boring, though. Part of that is because we repeated the structure too exactly in the first two sentences. They have an “action and said,” structure, which doesn’t really work here. Vary the structure of your sentences, sometimes putting the dialogue first, last, or even in the middle of the action.
Bob shook his head in disgust.
James tore open the light bulb package and snarled, “Get lost.”
“No way.” Marguerite’s voice was soothing and gentle. She took the torn cardboard from James and patted his shoulder.
Ally stuck out her lip in a pout. “Why should I get lost?” She hesitated and added, “I don’t want to.”
Bob grunted, “Why? Isn’t it obvious?”
“James is just upset,” Brianna said, “But that doesn’t mean he should get his way.”
Notice the variety here.
- There are some actions without dialogue.
- Dialogue occurs at the end, the beginning or the middle of the dialogue.
- After some dialogue, there’s a longer section of actions.
- I’ve used two substitutes for “said”: snarled and grunted. I don’t like using very many substitutes. Many writers explain that “said” disappears and readers don’t notice it. If you use an alternate word, it should add something important to the story.
Character Tics and Tags
Finally, it’s possible to use character tics or tags to good effect. Perhaps, poor Ally stutters. And James has a high pitched voice.
Bob shook his head in disgust.
James tore open the light bulb package and whined in soprano, “Get lost.”
“No way.” Marguerite’s voice was soothing and gentle. She took the torn cardboard from James and patted his shoulder.
Ally stuck out her lip in a pout. “W-w-why should I get lost?”
“Especially you!” James squeaked.
“W-w-why?”
Bob threw up his hands. “Why? Isn’t it obvious?”
“James is just upset,” Brianna said to Ally, “But that doesn’t mean he should get his way.”
You can start to see how dialogue can be enliveded with actions, sentence variety and small characterizations. You can devise many more ways to distinguish one character from another and use those traits in creating interesting dialogue. Try varying the character’s typical word choices or dialect. Within a larger conversation, too, you might have one character addressing another, as in Brianna’s aside to Ally and Marguerite’s intimate moment with James.
What’s your favorite way to keep complicated dialogue straight, yet keep enough variety to be interesting?
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Verily, Kath, thou hast strucketh ye nail firmly on ye head. Forsooth.
I remember once reading a novel in which a cave-dwelling cro-magnon uttered the line, "I haven't got a problem! He's the one with the problem!" The author would have had to work very hard after that to win me back; and she didn't.
What John said! I like having modern touches in an ancient world setting too. In Ithaka there's a slogan chalked on a tavern wall which reads POSEIDON RULES!
Well, why not?
Have you seen that wonderful Blackadder episode -
"The wise woman? The wise woman? Three things must ye know of the wise woman. First... she is a WOMAN! And second ... she is wise!"
I think the key to slang, especially when writing YA is to use it to enhance the feel and attitude of your characters but otherwise find different ways of creating genuine voices. I just finished writing a YA set in 1983/1984 punk rock California. The slang we used back then is practically archaic and also confined to a relatively small group of people, so I concentrated more on how my MC thought about situations and how she reacted rather than filling her mouth with lots of Californianisms.
Nice to have the 'hath' 'hast' stuff sorted out.
Very timely and helpful post from my point of view, Kath! I'm just wrestling with this in edits. Firebrand has 16th century characters but like your Halewyn, they transcend time. And what's more, the narrator is telling us in English (looking back quite a while, too) what he'd originally have said in Gaelic.
So while I avoided 'OK' and yelled out loud when I caught myself describing a moon like a 'floodlight', I am going to let him use the word 'thug', and I'm still swithering over 'stroppy'. (Anybody know how old that is...?) I don't mind an anachronism or two - as you say, so long as I know they're there...
Kath, you would have got away with 'exploded' in your Troll saga. Some Norsemen might have been to Iceland and see the volcanos and geysers there. Also, caught whales can explode if you don't cut them up in time.
Don't be too hard on Aragorn, though. He's in a very formal situation when giving that speech. I don't suppose our coronations here have less high-flown language.
Lollity, Nick, I'm trying to get the image of that exploding whale out of my head now...
When I was a kid I didn't notice how pompous and highfalutin' Aragorn is in the Return of the King (I must have liked pompous and highfalutin' then). It was only when I went back and read it a few years ago that it hit me between the eyes. It seems so unlike him and I wonder if Tolkein ever regretted it. It seems especially unlike delicious Viggo, hem hem.
I've read Dark Angels, Kath, and 'take me to your leader' didn't jar for me a bit! As in, I didn't go 'ooh, tut-tut, Kath', but then get to the end and think 'ah, I see: that's all right then'!
Another curious thing is that books set in Ancient Rome seem to get away with modern-sounding dialogue more than most. Robert Harris's 'Pompeii' is a case in point (all right, not strictly Rome) and his other Rome books, are a case in point. The characters use entirely modern idioms and yet it works. I wonder why this is. Perhaps it's because we think of Rome as an advanced civilisation, a forerunner of our own (just lacking in iPhones) and so 'modern' is its mood.
Mood is what it's about, ultimately. The words and phrases we associate with certain contexts. A story set in the age of Beowulf, by contrast, would probably avoid all Latin-derived words if it possibly could.
Thanks Fiona! And no, I wouldn't expect or want it to jar or to be a puzzle for the reader, but I did feel I had that freedom with this character to be playful if I felt like it. In fact his 'voice' changes dramatically at one point later in the book.
Love the exploding whale, Nick, and point taken. I did in fact think of puffballs which explode, and I may in fact have used the word once or twice - but the point is valid and in general it's a good principle.
Very interesting post, Katherine.
Nick, I think Rome gets away with a more modern idiom because it's a totally different language, so one can happily find a modern equivalent: no one is expecting you to write in Latin. With periods where they spoke an older form of English, it's easy to get caught in a slightly stilted compromise between modern and archaic forms.
Oh and Kath if you would only add the difference between "-eth" and '-est" then perhaps people who want to do "olde Englysshe" in ads etc would not make such prattes of themselves!
It is one of my pet peeves!
I have a peeve too - people who pronounce the 'Y' in 'Ye Old Tea Shoppe' as if it were the modern letter 'y', when we all know that it's actually a thorn, and that the word should be pronounced 'The'.
Charlie: I have to confess I was one of those dumbies who pronounced the "Y" in Ye. I didn't know it was a thorn. Thanks for the tip. It's amazing what you pick up around the place. I learned something new today!