5 Ways Your Dialogue Annoys Your Readers

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Make sure your dialogue is helping your story, not chasing readers away.

I read a lot of first drafts, and one area that frequently needs work is the dialogue. It’s understandable since we often need to write the dialogue before we know what the character’s voice sounds like. Think of it as placeholder dialogue—it’s there to remind us what the character needs to say, but it might not be the way they ought to say it.

For example, the character might be too formal, or say something too on-the-nose about how they feel, or they sound like every other character in the room. The dialogue is more “this is the information the character needs to convey” and less “this is what the character says based on how they feel right now.”

How to Handle Multiple Speakers in a Scene Without Confusing Your Reader

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Too many cooks might spoil the soup, but too many speakers will clutter the scene.

Before I dive in today, here's a heads up that I'm guest posting at Writers in the Storm today, chatting about 10 Ways to Get a Stuck Story Moving Away. Come on by and say hello.

I love dialogue. It’s the easiest thing for me to write, so there’s usually a lot of it in my books. When it’s just a few people talking it’s no trouble at all keeping the speakers clear, but the more character I put in the room, the harder the dialogue is to write. 

Wait, let me clarify that.

The dialogue is still easy. It’s the keeping everyone straight without overwhelming readers that makes me want to scream.

Formatting Dialogue in Fiction: He Said, She Said

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Dialogue is more than just writing down what your characters say--it's also using the correct punctuation and structure so readers understand who's speaking and how. 

I once had a debate with someone over the proper structure of a dialogue tag. She felt that you should always write "said Bob," because you wouldn't say "Ran Bob up a hill." I felt it could go either way. "Get thee to a nunnery" sound fine, right?

So, which is correct: "Bob said," or "said Bob?"

I checked with my linguist expert, and she says there's nothing grammatically wrong with "Bob said." Which verb-noun pairs you use determines how odd it sounds to you.

Tag! You're It: Talking About Dialogue Tags

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Let's talk about talking!

Dialogue tags are part of any story, but sometimes it can be a challenge to figure out how to keep them from feeling repetitive. "Said" gets old fast. Nodded, shrugged, frowned, smiled can only be used so often. Having a character push back their hair or clench their hands clogs up the narrative after a bit and can even feel melodramatic. Too much stage direction feels clunky, not enough makes a scene unclear.

Dialogue tags work best when they're invisible--either by not drawing drawing attention to themselves or by blending in and doing more than just identifying the speaker. The harder they work, the less work you have to do to craft the scene.

You could eliminate them altogether, but then you might end up with something that looks like this:

"Are they still out there?" Bob peeked out the window.

"Doesn't look like it, but I can hear something groaning."

Jane frowned. "Maybe it's not a zombie. Maybe someone is hurt and needs our help."

"You want to go out there?" Sally pointed outside.

"No. But I wouldn't want to leave someone out there either."

"Maybe I can get a better view from the second floor."

"But that means going outside!"

"Yeah, it does."

Hey, Who Said That? Polishing Our Dialogue Tags

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Dialogue reads quickly, which is why it speeds up the pace in most scenes and why readers who skim blocks of exposition stop skimming when they hit that dialogue. It's usually where the action is or where something happens. But even if we just read the dialogue, we can easily skim the tags, especially if they're of the "he said" variety. They're supposed to be invisible, and if we know who's speaking we might not even pay attention to them.

Which can be a problem in revisions if you're skipping over entire sections of your novel. Since dialogue is so critical, it deserves more attention, not less, so it's worth taking a little extra time to make sure it's worth stopping to read.

He Said Adverbidly

The most common edit we do is probably to eliminate adverbs in our dialogue tags. Check your tags to make sure any adverbs you use are there for good reasons, and there isn't a better way to dramatize the adverb instead.

"Speechtags are of the Devil," He Said

By James R. Tuck

JH: Today, I'd like to welcome a great guy to chat with us about, well, chatting. Or more specifically, tagging our chatting. James R. Tuck will share his tips on writing dialogue tags.

James was born and raised in Georgia and grew up enjoying all the South had to offer. Good food, adventure in mild winters and hot, muggy summers, excellent music, and good church folk. His debut novel Blood and Bullets releases today, and you can find more of his hero, Deacon Chalk, in his e-book novella That Thing at the Zoo. You can also find his short story, He Stopped Loving Her Today, at One Buck Horror.

Take it away JT...