What’s a flashy dialogue tag? Something exactly like “she advised sagely.”
The post title is an example of a fumblerule; a piece of advice that goes against itself.
In writing fiction, it is best to avoid flashy dialogue tags like “she growled angrily” and “he moped sullenly.”
Why? And what should we write instead?
*Image credit: Ebenezer Landells – https://www.abbottandholder-thelist.co.uk/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81100198
What’s wrong with flashy dialogue tags?
My examples consist of an “interesting” verb (e.g., growled) and an adverb of manner (e.g., angrily). Flashy dialogue tags might have a problematic verb, a problematic adverb, or both.
What’s wrong with adverbs of manner?
Adverbs of manner are good to avoid in general, not just in dialogue tags. For example, instead of saying “she walked slowly down the lane”, it would be better to say something like “she trudged down the lane,” if she’s encumbered by 50 lbs of camping gear, or “she strolled down the lane,” if she’s enjoying the breeze on a fine spring day. Adding “slowly” doesn’t express much. If the manner of walking doesn’t matter, then we can just say she walked and leave it at that.
But then why do people sometimes recommend adding adverbs to enliven descriptions? Maybe it depends on the starting point.
(1) It was a sunny day. John walked home from school. He did his homework. He ate dinner with his parents. It was delicious. He watched TV for a while. Then he brushed his teeth and went to bed.
If that’s what we’re starting with, then, yeah, sprinkling as many more words as possible all over the place is an improvement:
(2) The bright yellow sun was shining merrily, and the little blue birds were rapidly flitting through the warm spring air as John walked sadly home from school. He plopped down at the old brown wood dining table and grumpily completed his odious homework. Then he hungrily consumed a delicious dinner of crispy fried chicken, fluffy mashed potatoes, and steaming green beans. After thoroughly clearing his plate, he lay resignedly on the wide new sofa in front of the big blaring TV until it was time to vigorously brush his teeth and wearily collapse into his soft comforting bed.
That’s way too many -ly adverbs… and maybe we don’t need quite so many adjectives either! I’d be impressed if a kid wrote it, but I wouldn’t want to read 200 pages of a novel written like that. Heck, I wouldn’t want to read 5 pages of a novel written like that. The first version of John’s day was blah blah blah blah blah, but the second version was boopity-boopity-boopity-boopity-boopity-boopity-boopity-boopity-boop, and in the scheme of things, that’s still pretty boring. I don’t know what I’m supposed to pay attention to because everything from the sun to the bed has been emphasized with extra words. Let’s try again?
(3) Warm sunlight glinted through the leaves as John trudged home from school. He finished his homework without asking for help, and during dinner, shoveled his mashed potatoes into his mouth without any of his usual chatter. When the last of the fried chicken had disappeared, he shuffled off to the living room and plopped down on the sofa to watch some TV. The minutes seemed to drag. Eventually, it was time to brush his teeth and get ready for bed.
I believe readers can imagine John better (and care more about whatever his problem is) in the third version, which has fewer adjectives and adverbs than the second version.
When people say “show, don’t tell”, they probably mean “stop describing things in a way that’s unsubtle.” Good writing has exactly the right level of subtlety for the target audience.
What can go wrong with verbs in flashy dialogue tags?
For one thing, the verb might be physically implausible. “Monday morning is never a good morning” is not, strictly speaking, something that can be growled. Dogs growl. Saying someone growled something is an attempt at a metaphor, but let’s maybe avoid using it this way. We could instead, for example, write that Susan obviously hasn’t had any coffee yet today because “she growled at me when I wished her a good morning.” This way, readers can imagine Susan said something that sounded discontented, but they don’t have to imagine her trying to speak using dog sounds. “Hissed” is another tempting animal sound verb that should be avoided, or used very, very sparingly, as a dialogue tag. There must be dozens of this category of verb.
barked, croaked, groaned, howled, roared, panted, squeaked, squealed, whined, whimpered, bleated, yelped, peeped, cooed, purred, cackled, hummed, snorted, screeched, caterwauled (!!!)
Similarly, the verb may be logically implausible. “You never buy me flowers anymore” is not, strictly speaking, something that can be moped. We can say something while moping, but not by means of moping. There are many other verbs that describe things people do but not ways in which they express actual sentences.
babbled, chatted, chattered, yakked, bantered, chortled, chuckled, giggled, guffawed, jested, tittered, smirked, wept, bawled, motioned (???), swooned, flirted, blushed, gagged, cringed, grimaced, grinned, shivered, scowled, scoffed, raged, fumed, hesitated, faltered, doubted, sneezed (!!!)
The verb may be syntactically misused. We can write “he uttered a curse,” but it is not good English to write: “Egad,” he uttered. This here is the distinction between transitivity and intransitivity, fwiw, and there are countless verbs that must be used in particular ways and cannot be left dangling naked and alone at the end of a dialogue tag.
corrected, refuted, rebutted, restated, disputed, reassured, appealed, assured, cajoled, convinced, formulated (!?), directed, soothed, goaded, insulted, provoked, ridiculed, welcomed, reminded, spoke, pestered, informed, imparted, imitated, conversed, described, coached, consoled, wished, expressed, flattered, thanked, burst, approved, denied, mocked, refused, cursed, condemned, chastised, badgered, bickered, vacillated, challenged, defended, taunted
The verb may be redundant. Much as we don’t need to write that she “trudged slowly” or “whispered quietly,” adding the word “yelled” after “Get your hands off my lunch!” doesn’t contribute anything, given that there’s already an exclamation mark there. And if the owner of the lunch is in the break room in the office, he probably didn’t actually yell. Or if he did, we can show that he was raising his voice to an inappropriate degree by showing other people’s reactions. (“Sheesh, Tom! Do you want the director to hear you all the way up on the fifth floor?”) In Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger manages to imply that the unreliable narrator had been yelling even though (or perhaps because) the narrator denies that he was.
In all these cases, what writers are trying to do is add information about what’s going on. However, (usually) the dialogue tag is not a good place to do that. Readers of dialogue should be paying attention to what the characters say, not to the surrounding apparatus. Dialogue tags that draw attention to themselves distract from the content of the dialogue.
I mean, if we see something flashy, we look at it. It’s better to save the fireworks for things we really want to emphasize.
What do good dialogue tags look like?
Basic words like “said” and “asked” are usually the most appropriate. These words are practically invisible, which is generally what we want.
And in fact, we don’t need very many “he said/she said” dialogue tags at all. We only have to use dialogue tags if it isn’t already clear who’s talking.
To see what normal dialogue looks like, it should be easy enough to pick up a recent mainstream bestselling or literary novel and analyze how an established author marks dialogue.
I’m looking at Heinlein’s 1961 (ok, not so recent) award-winning novel Stranger in a Strange Land, and I’m seeing “added,” “echoed,” “directed,” “hedged” and even “he said grimly” amid many instances of “said,” “asked,” and “answered,” and much of the dialogue just alternates with no tags, or is embedded in a paragraph of narration describing someone’s actions. Conclusion: Specific verbs may be relevant, and adverbs aren’t absolutely forbidden, but tags are sparse and subtle.
Why are people tempted to use flashy dialogue tags?
The short answer is that using flashy verbs and adverbs seems more creative. (Heaven forbid we use the same word twice.) The longer answer is, because it *is* more creative if used sparingly, especially compared to using “said” everywhere.
So maybe a decent overall strategy is, yeah, okay, fine, learn how to put a bunch of “creative” stuff in, but then learn how to take most of it out again… then learn to just not put so much in in the first place.
There are times to be creative, and times NOT to be…
Use your imagination, by all means, but keep your goal in mind and get the job done without needless fuss. I would be willing to bet that no book into which a publisher has invested thousands of dollars contains a single instance of “he vocalized loquaciously.”
- Don’t let dialogue tags overwhelm your dialogue.
- Use appropriate words; avoid “creative” substitutes.
- Beware of using too many adverbs (adjectives too).
In short: use fireworks with caution! Use them wrong, and they can blow up in your face.
