He Deflected, She Retorted (aka “He Said, She Said” or "Basic Tips for Writing Dialogue")

Image from FFFOUND!

            “Hey there,” whispered Wordy Bird. “I think it’s time we had a little chat.”

“Who? Me?” asked Mr. Flippinflapper.

“Yes, you.” She frowned. “Who else?”

He gulped. “Do you think that’s wise?”    

“I think it’s necessary,” said Wordy Bird, leaning in conspiratorially, “even though we’d both love to avoid it. After all, it’s tricky to talk about—” She snapped her head away and gazed at the steam wheezing out of the Fluff Factory. It was particularly pink and puffy this evening.

“You don’t mean…” His beak slowly dropped open. He grabbed a plate of pickled herrings and thrust it hard toward her. “Here, wouldn’t you like some? They’re scrumptious,” he squeaked.

Wordy Bird took a deep breath and swept aside the suspicious looking fish. She slowly nodded her featherbrained head. “Yes, my dear friend, it’s high time we talked about dialogue.”

Dialogue. We all know it’s important. It connects characters to each other, and gives the interactions between them life. It makes a scene interesting. And of course, it helps show—not tell—who each character really is, what they think, and what they feel.  

This is not intended to be an exhaustive treatise on what makes great dialogue. It is simply a discussion of some of the very basic dialogue issues I very frequently encounter while I’m editing and teaching. What your characters say is up to you. But here are some things to avoid when you’re writing it, some things that will help you self-edit as you revise and develop your manuscript.

Identify the speaker early, especially in dialogue for young people, not at the end of multiple sentences of speech. This is especially pertinent when you have multiple characters in a scene, each of whom might conceivably be speaking. Sometimes, when there are multiple sentences of dialogue without a dialogue tag, if there’s any ambiguity about who might be speaking, I often I assume it is one character and then get an odd little shock to find it was someone else. It makes me stop and backtrack and readjust. It’s jarring. You don’t want anything in your manuscript that catapults the reader out of the story, even for a moment.

Avoid verbose dialogue tags such as responded, interjected, inquired, questioned, and queried. Use said most of the time. Said will disappear into the dialogue, not stick out like the awkward guy at the party, poking the reader in the brain and saying too loudly, “Hey, did you know—I am a dialogue tag. No, really, I am. I mean the same thing as said, but I’m a different word for it! How about that? The laaaaadies love it.” That’s what they always shout to me, and a lot of editors will agree. The dialogue tag’s primary function is to just show us who is speaking. Let them mostly sink away into the background.

Avoid superfluous dialogue tags.

“But I like pickled herrings,” said Mr. Flippinflapper. “Especially red ones. You’ll like them, too,” he continued, stuffing several in Wordy Birdy’s beak. “Won’t you try some?” he asked. “Here,” he said.

Second or third or fourth dialogue tags when the same speaker is still speaking are usually superfluous. You almost always only need one to identify the speaker near the beginning of his/her speech. The exception is when the speaker’s manner of speaking suddenly changes dramatically, for example:

“But I like pickled herrings,” mumbled Mr. Flippinflapper. “Especially red ones. You’ll like them, too.” He stuffed several in Wordy Birdy’s beak. “Won’t you try some?” he squealed.

Sometimes, you won’t need a dialogue tag at all.

Wordy Birdie chewed thoughtfully on the herrings, but something didn’t taste right. She very discretely disposed of them by coughing daintily into her handkerchief. “So, as I was saying about dialogue… shall we discuss grounding it?”

Ground Your Dialogue. Let us see what the characters are doing, with what they are doing it, and where they are as they speak. Nonverbal communication, such as body language, as well as the character’s general behavior, and how they interact with their setting and other characters can give the reader strong cues about their emotional state, what is important to them, and even what they might be trying to avoid.

It is rarely necessary to tell us that Character A looks at Character B while A is speaking to B. That is implied. It’s only worth noting if there’s something interesting or remarkable about the way A is looking B while they’re speaking to them, otherwise just leave the “turning and looking” out. What can be interesting and important is if a character doesn’t look at the person they’re speaking to. That can say a lot about what’s really going on between them, and/or draw attention to whatever is happening around them.   

“Isn’t this wonderful?” said Wordy Bird, twirling around in the sunshine. “Aren’t you glad we had this chat?”

“I am.” Mr. Flippinflapper said, staring long and hard at the herring. He tossed it over his shoulder. It plopped into the pond, scattering the floating autumn leaves. “I suddenly feel much better. That wasn’t so hard after all.”

Wordy Bird watched the bubbles rise to the surface of the murky water and smiled. “I’m glad you agree,” she said. 

The Wretched Curse of Rhyming Verse!

The curse will give you ugly spots,
The curse will give you twitches,
The curse will make you quite confused
And give you heaving glitches.

Your words will come out backwards
And you’ll maybe lose the plot.
By then of course it’s much too late,
Diagnosis: Published? Not!

Symptom #1: Ugly spots. Imperfect rhymes are a pox on a rhyming text.

A good rhyming dictionary will help you find the best, most meaningful rhyme, and here’s an excellent online resource. There may be no rhyme for what you want to say, so try saying it differently. Or say something different.

Symptom #2: Twitches: irregular and jerky meter makes one dizzy.

There is perhaps no clearer evidence to an editor that you have the Curse than an irregular, changing and awkward meter. Try reading your text aloud into a recording device. Have someone else read it to you. This will help you define where the problems lie.

Symptom #3: Confusion: Um, are you talking to me?

Many authors who write verse find they have an issue with changing POV (Point of View), feeling compelled to suddenly and inexplicably address the audience directly or change narrators in order to make their lines rhyme. Just as quickly the urge retreats and the author returns to the initial POV, but by then the damage has been done.

Symptom #4: Heaving Glitches: You won’t know whether you’re coming or going.

Structural changes are an enormous problem for the rhymers: for example, changing from rhyming every second line to rhyming every line. Or every third line. And often within the same stanza. Structural changes should be carried out with intent. They should be repeated. They should say something about the narrative, pace, or emotional changes occurring within the story. More on rhyme schemes here. 

Symptom #5: Speaking backward: Sayeth to me, what art thou trying to?

Rhymers also must be wary of using words and phrases with either inappropriate or obscure meanings… or back-to-front phrasing… or archaic speech patterns… simply because they rhyme.

Symptom #6: Completely losing the plot: What were you trying to say again? At this point you know that the curse is in an advanced and possibly incurable state.

Diagnosis: Spurned, returned and possibly burned.

But look at it like this. Editors are people too. They receive many texts. Many of them are in poorly-written verse. They are familiar with the Curse of Verse, well-‘versed’ in its symptoms. And they do not have the time, money, or inclination to affect a cure. And even if yours is good, the editor may simply have had too much exposure to the bug. They may have become immune to anything that even resembles Rhyming Verse.

Prevention and Cure: First, take a deep breath. Don’t be dismayed. You’re not alone. The curse is prevalent and catching, but it is absolutely curable.

You do have something worthwhile to say. You know that a story needs a beginning, middle and end. It is really difficult to write rhyming texts that are consistent in meter, rhyme, style, and that still portray what the writer wants them to portray.

And maybe there’s no reason to write your text in verse. Rhyme lends itself to texts that are humorous or light-hearted in nature or that are designed primarily to entertain. Prose might suit your story better. You may consider re-writing your text in a combination of prose and verse with a rhyming ‘refrain/chorus’ repeated with minor variations. This may free your writing style, allow you to avoid all the other symptoms and retain your character and narrative development.

The best picture books work like a poem (whether they rhyme or not).Owl Moon by Jane Yolen is a great example. Martin Waddle’s Little Bear books show a different, equally successful approach for a younger audience. These each have a certain metre, cadence and lyrical quality and even some rhyming elements through the text. Bursts of rhyme can be used with intent, as does Maurice Sendak inWhere the Wild things Are.

Pick up your pen and just begin again. Just start writing in prose, and don’t stop, you’ll be free.

Recovery: is usually speedy. You’ll feel better. And so will your audience.

Rhythm and Soul

During my run this evening, listening to the rhythm of my sneakers pounding the pavement, and passing a pair of swans sitting still on a perfectly still lake surrounded by autumn foliage, I started to think about rhythm in writing.

Years of editing and writing and reading picture books have instilled in me a keen sensitivity to the rhythm and cadence in the language I read, write, and edit. I think rhythm is important not only in texts for the very young, but in any matter which uses the written word to convey ideas, thoughts, feelings, tone, drama etc. The rhythms and cadence of individual words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs can have a profound psychological effect on the reader—and yet they do it almost by stealth, with subtlety.

I frequently relate to my writing students the story of a client I once worked with. She had written a picture book text about the plight of an endangered species of eagle. Her language style of choice was (as happens so often in first drafts of picture books from new writers) rhyming verse with a jaunty and galloping meter. This stylistic choice had, as you can probably imagine, the unfortunate effect of taking what was a serious and soulful subject and making it almost comical—which was absolutely opposite to the writer’s intention. And as so often seems to happen when rhyming verse gets out of hand, the narrative went completely off-track…the story quickly became something that didn’t work at all or even quite make sense.

When I pointed out to her that perhaps a galloping meter did not fit the flapping of eagles’ wings, the swooping and soaring, or the serious tone of the subject matter, she rewrote the text in a more lyrical prose style. It was quite extraordinary: it was as if she had been set free and so, too, the eagles in her story. She quickly came back to me with a piece that exactly evoked the soaring of eagles, their swooping, the beat of their wings and so forth in its rhythm and cadence. The entire tone of the piece had changed—and it not only worked now, but had become something of incredible beauty that absolutely achieved what it set out to do. Through attention to rhythm, it had acquired the soul it was seeking.

This is a fairly overt example of the effects of rhythm. Those who study picture books and spend any significant time trying to write one will soon understand the importance of rhythm, become hyper aware of it, start to intuitively incorporate it, play with it, and use it to great effect. Rhythm and cadence are so important in texts for the very young, which are primarily designed to be read aloud.

But, more subtle are the effects of rhythm and cadence in the written word for older readers (including adults). It’s easy to get caught up in plot, character development, and narrative arc in longer works—and these are, of course, essential. But I encourage the writers with whom I work to really think about the sound of language in each sentence they write, and it’s something I pay great attention to in my own work. Each sentence, I believe, should have an appropriate rhythm and a cadence and tone that suit the context and soul of what is being conveyed.  

Short, sharp sentences, for example, tend to increase tension, speed up the pace, and add drama. In many cases longer, more fluid sentences, create a calmer and more reflective tone. Of course, there are exceptions to these examples (just as there are almost unlimited ways to use rhythm and cadence). But my point is that rhythm and cadence can have very powerful effects, and writers would do well to pay more attention to them and then milk them for all they’re worth.

The key? Read your work aloud. Your manuscript may not be designed to be read that way, but try it anyway. Listen to how the language sounds. Tweak it until the rhythm and cadence complement and complete what you’re trying to convey. Then have someone read it back to you.

One day, when you’re doing your first live reading of your newly published book, you’ll thank me.