Friend Friday

Allyson Valentine Schrier has the best laugh of anyone I know. And she laughs a lot! Which is why I love hanging around her. And nothing makes me happier than turning my blog over to her today while she talks a bit about her new novel and about writing!

 

How (Not) to Find a Boyfriend and 

the Four Phases of Dialogue Tag Evolution

by Allyson Valentine

When I work with middle and high school aged kids in the classroom I see a trend in the use of dialogue tags reminiscent of my own early attempts to produce compelling prose. Loud dialogue tags. The kind that draw more attention to the tag itself than to the dialogue it describes.

“Get away from my dog!” Janna shrieked.

“He was going to bite me!” Aidan blustered.

“He only wanted to say ‘Hi,’” Janna reprimanded.

I call this the Look at me I’m a dialogue tag! phase.

By the time they’ve gone to their first SCBWI meeting or read their first book on craft, most burgeoning writers have already entered the second phase of dialogue tag evolution: He said, she said. By this point they understand that it’s rarely necessary to use any dialogue tag beyond the tried and true standard, said.

“I don’t understand any of the stuff Mr. Peterson talked about in math today,” Stacia said.

“What? It was easy,” said Kirsten.

“That’s because you’re a math genius,” said Stacia.

“No, it’s because I stayed awake,” said Kirsten.

Better, but eventually all of those ‘he said, she said’ tags clutter up the works. The evolving writer comes to understand that a reader’s time is precious and our job is to not waste it with unnecessary words. To that end, writers enter phase three: Look ma! No tags!

The above example simply becomes this:

“I don’t understand any of the stuff Mr. Peterson talked about in math today,” Stacia said.

“What? It was easy,” said Kirsten.

“That’s because you’re a math genius.”

“No, it’s because I stayed awake.”

‘Invisible tags’ as they are sometimes called work well when only two characters are engaged in the conversation. Throw in a third character and pretty quickly the reader loses track of who is who. Also, long runs of tag-free dialogue can get pretty dull. Aside from any emotion the words between the quote marks convey, there is little happening, which causes the pace of the writing to drop three notches on the snooze meter.

Enter phase four: Speaking with action. When I was in grad school at Vermont College I began to truly understand the importance of reading excellent writing to get a sense of how to improve my own work. One of the things I took away from all of that reading was that the most steadily-paced, captivating runs of dialogue involved action instead of tags to show who is speaking. Let me show you what I mean with an example from my own work.

In this scene from How (Not) to Find a Boyfriend, Nora, the protagonist, has just returned home from cheer practice where she is greeted by her little brother, Joshie and the family dog, Copernicus. Joshie is reporting that Nora’s love interest, Adam, stopped by while she was out:

“That guy was biking by and he stopped to play soccer with me again,” Joshie reports.

My breath catches. “Adam?”

Joshie nods like he’s trying to shake something loose. “He’s nice. You should marry him.”

“First I’d need to go out with him.”

Joshie shrugs. Copernicus scratches. Apparently he has no four-legged wisdom to share today. Joshie switches gears. “Want to play with me?”

I’m wiped out, but maybe a little soccer wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Maybe a certain bedimpled guy would happen by twice in one day and I’d have a chance to redeem myself here, where I’d have the home field advantage.

“Okay.” I look around the yard, the centerpiece of which is a little blow-up pool littered with Popsicle sticks and dog hair. “Where’s the ball?”

Compare that with:

“That guy was biking by and he stopped to play soccer with me again,” Joshie says.

“Adam?”

“He’s nice. You should marry him.”

“First I’d need to go out with him.”

“Want to play with me?” Joshie asks.

I’m wiped out, but maybe a little soccer wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Maybe a certain bedimpled guy would happen by twice in one day and I’d have a chance to redeem myself here, where I’d have the home field advantage.

“Okay, where’s the ball?”

My writerly advice is this: Strip tags out of those long runs of dialogue and explore how you can enrich the writing by using action to demonstrate how your characters are relating to one another and to their world. I will go back to my evolutionary roots and close with a final thought:

“If I figure out a fifth phase of dialogue tag evolution I will ask Kirby to allow me to post an update,” Allyson promised earnestly.

 "Thank you for stopping by, Allyson," Kirby replied gratefully. "I wish I could stay longer," she said apologetically, "but I am running out to my local indie bookstore to buy a copy of your new book which just came out today."