This week I’m
covering the last two classifications in the rubric. The first has to do with
the spoken word as depicted on the page, and the second covers the technicalities
of the written word.
Dialogue
Objective
1:
To identify who is talking without using irrelevant action or unnecessary
dialogue tags.
Notice that the
objective talks about unnecessary dialogue tags. I don’t agree with
those people who say a writer should never use them. When not overused, “said”
and “asked” are valid ways to handle attribution because they tend to fade into
the background. But words like “interjected” and “articulated” should be avoided,
as should adverbs such as in “said excitedly.” Those tags yell “look at me” instead
of disappearing on the page. Instead of “said excitedly,” show her excitement
in her actions.
That’s one way to
avoid dialogue tags. Try something like this instead:
“It’s
from Graham.” Lucy’s eyes sparkled as she grabbed the letter and tore it open.
As with any other
action, however, one used for attribution must show characterization or move
the story along. Dinner scenes can be especially hard to write because I am
tempted to have my characters pass the potatoes or pour another cup of coffee
for attribution purposes, and that gets boring after a while. It also sounds
forced.
Objective
2:
To write dialogue that feels realistic rather than dialogue that is realistic.
We all know how
people really talk. “I, uh, saw Sue yesterday at, uh, the grocery store. In the
produce section. She, uh, told me to tell you . . . Billy, stop pulling that
dog’s tail! Now what was I saying? Oh yes, she, uh, told me to say hi.” Then
there are the times when people talk over each other. And so on. Imagine
putting real dialogue in a book without losing your reader. Impossible.
If a conversation
doesn’t contribute to characterization or move the story along, leave it out. Or
maybe you only need part of it. Two friends meet for lunch and talk about
trivial things until they finish their dessert. Then Joan tells Cindy that Joan
saw Cindy’s husband with another woman. You could provide a brief excerpt from the
chit-chat or leave it out altogether and start the conversation with the
bombshell. Unless you are using the chit-chat for a purpose, that is. Maybe Joan
rushes from one trivial topic to another because she is too nervous to say what
is really on her mind. Throwing in an “um” or two can also signal nervousness.
But don’t overdo it, or you will still lose your reader.
Dialogue is one
place where you should break the grammar rules. People rarely talk in complete
sentences, for example, and the informality of their speech varies. If you have
a very formal character, you can use his perfect grammar as a distinguishing
feature. Otherwise, go ahead and break the grammar rules to make the
conversation more realistic if—and this is a big if—the reader can understand
the dialogue without slowing down to figure out what is being said.
That’s the problem
with using dialects. They can be a lot of work for the reader. I have slave
dialect in a book I am currently working on, and I tried oh so hard to get it
right. (See the blog post on writing slave dialect that is linked below, which
was written before I gave the manuscript to my beta readers.) I even cleared it
with an African American writer friend. But when I gave the manuscript to my
beta readers, they had too much trouble following it. So now I need to figure
out how to provide the flavor without the actual dialect.
For purposes of
the rubric, Objectives 1 and 2 are each worth 5% of the score, giving dialogue
a total of 10%.
Language
Use
Objective
1:
To write clearly and concisely.
Any book is
worthless if the reader can’t follow it. Writing is communication, and clarity
is key. That includes novels and short stories as well as informative articles
or blog posts like this one.
One way to NOT write
clearly is to use long, convoluted sentences filled with adjectives, adverbs,
and prepositional phrases. Another way is to use big words or allusions your
reader won’t understand.
Obviously, there
are times when you want a scene or some element of it to be ambiguous. But
those instances will be infrequent.
When in doubt, keep
it simple.
Objective
2:
To use purposeful grammar and avoid typographical errors.
Writers who break
the grammar rules because they don’t know what they are come across as
uneducated. Worse, since grammar rules exist to provide clarity, those who
break them out of ignorance may lose their readers along the way.
Notice that the
objective talks about purposeful grammar use rather than proper grammar use. It’s
okay to break the rules if you do it intentionally to achieve a certain effect.
But you should know the grammar rules before you break them.
Here is a quote
from Ernest Hemingway:
My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be
as conventional as possible. The game
of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed
on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good
deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license
to bring in your own improvements. [1925 letter to Horace Liveright, quoted in Ernest Hemingway on Writing. Emphasis in
original.]
The second half of
the objective speaks to the importance of proofreading. That should be
self-evident, so I won’t discuss it here.
For purposes of
the rubric, Objective 1 is worth 15% of the score and Objective 2 is worth 5%, giving
language use a total of 20%.
__________
TO LEARN MORE:
For more of my advice on
dialogue and language use, check out these earlier blog posts.
Dialogue:
Language Use:
