Wulf Moon's SUPER SECRETS: 

“Write Smart Dialogue!” Moon exclaimed emphatically.

Said. Said is such a simple verb, it's beautiful. Said is so perfect, nothing else has to be said. It's like the gray man walking through the crowd: bland, unobtrusive, invisible. Only if you stop and study the crowd do you notice he's even there. And that doesn’t sit right with hopeful writers. New writers don't like plain clothes. That gray man must be up to something sneaky. They want to spice up that invisible man, put him in some platform shoes, chartreuse lederhosen, a duster with pink polka dots, and a purple pimp hat with a flowing white feather. Dy-no-mite! You just shook that invisible dude up and pimped his ride! He’s now so pimpalicious, you don't see anyone else in the crowd. Only him.

And that's the problem. Unless your character likes to talk to himself (or a volleyball!), dialogue is the conversational exchange between two or more people. When these people open their mouths to talk, we see what's going on inside of them through the context of the exchange. There is a tempo to dialogue, like an intense tennis match, back and forth, poing, poing, poing. The last thing you want during that match is for an announcer to step onto the court and shout through a bullhorn, "See that? Bobbie Jo hit that ball with ferocity! Hear that? Billie Jean rebounded it angrily! Oh no! Bobbie Jo retorted with finality!" Please, please, please, announcer, just get off the court and let us watch the dynamic exchange. You think you are helping by dressing it up, but you are KILLING all the fun!

Saidisms. These are dialogue tags that replace the word said with descriptive verbs and adverbs. Because the writer doesn’t trust the reader to grasp the dialogue’s context, the writer spices up tags with things like Jack snorted or Jane uttered. Worse, writers may even stack them, such as Jack snorted derisively, or Jane uttered whimsically. For one thing, unless you’re a horse, snorting is already derisive. Don’t restate the obvious. For another thing, to tag a sentence of dialogue with Jack snorted means Jack spoke the sentence while snorting. Try snorting as you say this line: “You’re a despicable fool!” Jack snorted. Can’t be done. Not without making a fool of oneself. Let’s not make our characters look foolish, either.

This is a common dialogue faux pas for new writers. Even successful bestselling authors can have a hard time with it. They don't trust the reader to deduce the emotions taking place between the characters as they speak. They HAVE TO TELL YOU through emotive dialogue tags. For readers, this can make them feel that they’re being patronized. While the writer thinks they’re helping the reader understand the emotional subtext of what’s being said, they’re actually alienating their readers. So much so, most readers are going to shove that book back on the shelf and never pick up a book by that author again. And if they just happen to be a first reader or editor at a magazine, they'll mark it R, slap a form rejection on it, and send it back. Amateur dialogue is the mark of...surprise! amateurs...and editors are in the business of buying professionally written stories.

Wait! Don’t throw in the towel! Writing skillful dialogue is easy to learn. And when you learn to write smart dialogue that bounces back and forth like a tennis ball in a match at Wimbledon, it’s going to be an exciting game for your readers to watch. You’ll create dialogue that reveals the emotional subtext between your characters without ever needing to state it. And that, my friends, is pure magic!

"I'm going up that hill to fetch a pail of water!" Jack shouted.

"It's a long way to the top," Jill snorted.

"I don't care. I'm doing it!" Jack retorted emphatically.

"Do you really think you can make it?" Jill queried, doubt in her eyes.

"I'll show you!" Jack exclaimed, stomping up the hill.

"Fool boy," Jill whispered quietly, "you're going to break your crown."

Ever seen dialogue like that? Ever written dialogue like that? 'Ahem, ah, no, never in my life, har-har, silly amateurs.' Come on, we've all written dialogue like that, once upon a time. But if we're still doing it, we need to stop. It's not professional. And professional all the way is the only way a story wins... and sells to a respectable market. Well, if we're mere mortals. Some famous writers might get away with this, but usually, they made their name long ago in an era when alternative dialogue tags were tolerated. But no more. Not for you and me.

Go ahead. Get out your red pen. Change that annoying dialogue above into something more palatable. Line out those adverbs and replace them with said. Done? Now doesn't the dialogue read much cleaner? Let’s take a look. 

"I am going up that hill to fetch a pail of water!" Jack said.

"It's a long way to the top," Jill said.

"I don't care. I'm doing it!" Jack said.

"Do you really think you can make it?" Jill said.

"I'll show you!" Jack said, stomping up the hill.

"Fool boy," Jill whispered, "you're going to break your crown."

Okay, you got me. I kept the saidism whispered. You could say "said with a whisper" but whispered is simpler. Doesn't this example flow better? See how the dialogue already implies determination, doubt, stubbornness, uncertainty? Do we really need to spell out every emotional implication? No. It's overkill. And your savvy reader will think it's condescending. Also, note the placement of said. Said follows the person it attributes. Placing said before the name will date you. Said Jack? Old world. Jack said? Modern world, and we want to be cutting edge new world writers!

However, this piece still has a problem. Said is normally like punctuation— just like a comma or a period, said is practically invisible. But when you start stacking saids in dialogue, said creates an echo. It’s no longer the invisible man because it has been repeated too much. Every time the gray man pops his head out of the crowd, he becomes visible. In this mission, he's supposed to be going commando. Or incognito. You choose.

As we look to the edited example, are there any sentences where it's obvious who is speaking? If it's obvious, do we really need to gild the lily? Not if we're lean mean professional writers! Go grab that red pen and line out any tags that are obvious. We don't need them. Done? You sure? Or do you need to use your Phone a Friend? No? Okay, here's what you should have come up with:

"I am going up that hill to fetch a pail of water!" Jack said.

"It's a long way to the top," Jill said.

"I don't care. I'm doing it!"

"Do you really think you can make it?"

"I'll show you!" Jack said, stomping up the hill.

"Fool boy," Jill whispered, "you're going to break your crown."

Do we need to follow Jack's quoted words with 'Jack said'? No. The action beat beforehand clearly shows that it’s Jack that is speaking. We need no more.

Want to see how this works? Here's an example in one of my stories where I employed beats. It's the opening of "Weep No More for the Willow" published in Deep Magic, Fall 2019. The scene opens on the deck of a Spanish galleon sailing through Caribbean waters. While an old sailor named Sanchez dips a ladle into a water cask, Captain Capricho scowls at a storm on the horizon as he consults with his first mate, Salvador...

“There it is again.” Capricho pointed at a surreal column that plumed in the distance. It transformed from peaceful blue into wicked flickers of scarlet. He shielded his eyes with a hand, squinted. “Have you ever witnessed its like?”

The burly Salvador hissed when he spotted it. “No. Never.”

The column continued shimmering on the horizon in bizarre shades of arterial red.

“Lightning perhaps?”

“No lightning does such things.”

“Waterspout?”

“A twister glowing with blood light?”

Capricho lowered his gaze, turned to the old sailor at the water cask. “You, Sanchez? You have traveled this sea longer than any of us.”

Sanchez brought the dented dipper to his lips and drained it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, sighed, and squinted a rheumy eye at Capricho with suspicion. “Thought you didn’t want me tellin’ my stories.”

Capricho frowned. “I said hold your tongue because the men are twitchy from yesterday’s squall. They are a superstitious lot.”

“By all the saints, they should be after seeing that beast of a storm slice our flotilla apart.” Sanchez waved the dipper. “You want to hear about my watch last night?”

Salvador grunted a quick “No” but Capricho held up a hand. “Does it have bearing on this phenomenon?”

“Course it does!”

“Make it brief.”

In this excerpt, all dialogue is tagged exclusively by beats. If you were to read on, you'd find only one 'said' in the entire scene between Capricho, Salvador, and Sanchez. The beats aren't contrived. They add motion to the dialogue and convey character and setting details without stopping for lengthy exposition. Using beats in dialogue can kill many birds with one stone, not the least of which is wasting a lot of space with repetitive he saids, she saids. A string of those sound like a kid hammering the same key on a piano over and over. Painful.

So you’ve learned the beauty of that unobtrusive verb said, you’ve weeded out saidisms that can annoy your readers, and you’ve broken things up by attributing dialogue through action beats. You are now a ninja warrior, your dialogue as sharp as the edge of a katana. You can glide dialogue in and out of prose like a nimble assassin. Ready to scale walls and conquer the publishing industry with your newfound skills?

Not so fast, Grasshopper.

Unless you’re Tom Clancy or James Michener, lengthy infodumps toss extraneous details into your story that can bog down the pacing of your plot. What’s a writer to do, you need this information in your tale! I know, what if we get two characters to casually talk about the information our dear reader so desperately needs? I bet no one’s ever thought of that before. Brilliant! 

Actually, it’s been done. So much so, it has its own monikers. It’s called Maid and butler dialogue, or my personal favorite, As you know, Bobs. 

What is an "As you know, Bob?" It’s when a writer has two or more characters state information they already know for the exclusive benefit of filling in the reader with information they may not know. There’s no way these characters would normally have such a conversation, but the writer needs to get the information into the scene, so he opens their mouths and makes his puppets do an infodump. Here, let me present Bob and Bill, two experienced divers topside on a rescue ship:

"We need to get that trapped diver to the surface, Bill!"

"Well, as you know, Bob, at that depth, the air in his tank is compressed seventy-five percent by the pressure."

"Right! And as you know, Bill, he's going to have to release air all the way up or his lungs could have an air embolism, or worse, pulmonary barotrauma— the pulmonary overpressurization syndrome that can cause your lungs to burst if you fail to expel the expanding air during your ascent."

"Right you are, Bob. Plus, we also have to worry about nitrogen narcosis."

"Yes, Bill, a drowsy state induced by breathing air under higher than atmospheric pressure. Did you know the nitrogen can be forced into his joints, causing excruciating pain and even death?"

"That I did know, Bob. I watched the same episode you did of Jacques Cousteau when his son died in this very manner. Good thing we have a hyperbaric chamber on our ship for just such emergencies, Bob."

"Yeah, Bill, we are two smart hombres."

“That we are, Bob.”

Well, that was fun to write and no doubt painful to read. But it makes the point. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Writers should not create unnatural conversation just because they feel the need to drop information into the story. This practice was common in the era of science fiction pulp stories. Back then, stories could get published with glaring "As you know, Bobs," often accomplished by having a knowledgeable male scientist lecture an ignorant layperson or reporter. Editors didn’t call them out on it. But do this today, you will not pass Go, you will not collect a contract and two-hundred dollars. 

This doesn’t mean we can’t be sneaky and slip a little info in through naturally occurring conversation. But there’s the danger— if the reader doesn’t feel the information would drop naturally, they’re going to cry foul even if they don’t know what name to call the foul by. And is all that information really necessary? A little dab will do ya. Trust your reader. I say again, Trust your reader. Chances are, they know more than you do.

One final note to a melody that could go on and on. When out in public, it’s important to listen to people as they talk. Be an eavesdropper. A Seattle dock worker will likely speak more colorfully and forcefully than a University of Washington marine biologist. We need to be certain the words and concepts our characters speak accurately reflects their age level, their education level, their social circles, the regions they come from, their lifestyles. If not, our characters’ dialogues won’t ring true, and readers won’t believe the words coming out of their mouths. This can be a challenge for writers because we have an affinity for words, and it can be especially hard for those that are highly educated. They can lean into diction many characters would never use, having them speak in more sophisticated sentence structures than would seem natural for, say, an unassuming Cuban fisherman that’s spent his whole life on the sea. Finding good beta readers or a skilled freelance editor can do wonders in weeding out this issue. 

If the writer does their job right, the reader should be able to identify who is speaking by the fullness of a character’s personality flowing through the words they speak. And when a writer appreciates the simple beauty of the word said, annoying saidism tags will be avoided. Beats will do double duty, filling in character actions during the dialogue while silently identifying who is speaking. Clear, naturally flowing dialogue will be the result.

Editors are in the business of buying great stories that will please their readers. They know good dialogue when they see it— it’s an essential marker of professionally written stories. Mastering dialogue is critical to being published and enjoying a reader fanbase that gobbles up your work. When that day comes when readers pull your book off the shelf, as they thumb through the pages or that digital sample, they won’t be cursing you, they’ll be praising you for a job well done. They’ll reward you by pulling out their wallet. Why? 

“Because you wrote smart dialogue!” Moon said.

DreamForge Anvil © 2022 DreamForge Press

Wulf Moon's SUPER SECRETS: “Write Smart Dialogue!” Moon exclaimed emphatically.   © 2022 Wulf Moon