He said/she said

Many new authors are fond of substituting more lively words for that simple, all-purpose word said when they attribute dialogue. Popular examples include laughed, chuckled, growled, gasped, moaned, hissed, and spat, all of which are impossible to do while you’re trying to say something intelligible. I especially like the word gushed: “She has made me the happiest man in the world,” he gushed. When a character does that, I think, Who is this guy, Old Faithful? Somebody who has just barfed on my shoes?

What people actually do is say a sentence, laughing, gasping, growling, etc., either before or after it. You’ll look more professional if you stick with plain words like said, asked, cried, called, whispered, and shouted and then amplify how the person delivers his dialogue: “Stop, you’re killing me!” Tom said, laughing so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. Or you could try it this way: “Stop, you’re killing me!” Tom said. He laughed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. If you’re writing in the first person, you could also say: “He won’t be coming back,” I told him (or “he/she told him,” if you’re writing in the third person).

Wanting to use more descriptive verbs when you’re attributing dialogue is tempting, I know, but simple words like said are functional. They’re almost invisible because they’re used so frequently. The reader flies past them, so the reading experience is not disrupted. Unusual words are intrusive, making the reader aware of the author.

Another danger of finding alternatives for said is the tendency to use transitive verbs improperly. For example, you may write, “Blah, blah, blah,” Julia interrupted. Interrupt may be used as both a transitive and an intransitive verb, but it’s transitive when its used to mean “to break in with questions or remarks while another is speaking.” Therefore, the transitive verb interrupted must have an object: Julia has to interrupt someone. So you have to write, “Julia interrupted her,” or something similar. A better solution, however, is to stick with said, using the abrupt end of the other character’s speech (shown via the em dash) to communicate the interruption. Example:

Julia whirled on him and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you—”

“Damn right you know better,” Mark said, “so let’s just drop the subject.”

A better way to play the dialogue attribution game is simply refraining from using them. When only two people are talking, readers have no trouble determining who’s speaking if you start a new paragraph at every speaker change. To see samples of how few saids you can get away with, read a novel or two by Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker.

I'll bet you a million bucks that neither one of them ever used the word gushed.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Passive-aggressive

In most cases, use the active voice of verbs instead of the passive voice. The passive voice moves the object of the verb to a superior position as the subject of the sentence, relegating the proper subject to an inferior role.

Example:

Jewelry is often stolen by burglars. [passive]

Burglars often steal jewelry. [active]

Passive forms often use the verb was:

          Oxygen was discovered in 1774 by Joseph Priestly. [passive]

          Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen in 1774. [active]

In the examples above, the proper subject—the doer of the action—often gets lost in the shuffle. Or, you might say, the actor has been removed from the action.

The active voice is almost invariably more vigorous, direct, and vivid and therefore keeps the action in sharper focus for the reader.

You don’t have to change every passive construction to an active one. For instance, various stock locutions such as The project was abandoned and The Romans were defeated are perfectly acceptable.

Also, the passive voice is useful when the doer of the action is unknown or unimportant:

The lock was broken sometime after four o’clock. [Who broke the lock is unknown]

In 1899, a peace conference was held at The Hague. [This sentence comes from an essay by E.B. White. In this case, the doers of the action—the holders of the conference—are unimportant to White’s point.]

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Don’t dangle your participle at me, buddy!

Writers must make sure that descriptive phrases modify what they’re supposed to modify. Scribes must pay particular attention to sentences that begin with verbs that end with -ing and -ed (participial phrases), which often lead many writers to construct sentences with a misplaced modifier called—oh, horrors!— the dreaded dangling participle. Other types of misplaced modifiers, including dangling elliptical adverb clauses, may be camouflaged so well that they’re hard to spot in your own writing.

Here’s a sentence that contains a misplaced modifier (a dangling participle):

Walking through the cheering crowd toward the dressing room, people slapped Tony’s back.

The modifying phrase Walking through the cheering crowd toward the dressing room is misplaced because it modifies the noun that follows it—people—instead of the person who walked through the crowd—Tony. That is, Tony walked through the crowd, not the people. Rewrite this way:

As Tony walked through the crowd on his way to the dressing room, people slapped his back.

Some sentences with misplaced modifiers, especially dangling participles, are hilarious. I found this howler in the dining column of a local newspaper:

Stuffed with ham and served with black beans and rice, Mom would never recognize her Saturday night special.

Poor Mom!

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Show, Don't Tell

Writers should have the word Show tattooed on the back of their left hand and Don’t tell on the other, and they should chant those words like a mantra while they work. What do I mean by Show, don’t tell? As Chekhov said (Anton Chekhov, not the guy on Star Trek), “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” To take a larger view, we could modify show, don’t tell to scenes versus exposition. That works, too, because the concept is the same. That is to say, writers should build stories as a succession of dramatic scenes (showing) connected by whatever essential information the reader needs (telling). The most acceptable form of telling, however, is always couched in the thoughts of a point-of-view (POV) character, as in writing something like this:

David knew that he could blame his father for his sudden attack of conscience. All through his childhood, that domineering man had drilled into him lessons about . . . blah, blah, blah.

By writing "David knew," the writer is telling readers that the information that follows comes via the POV character's thoughts, not from an off-stage omniscient narrator.

Showing draws the reader into the story by providing mental images; telling asks the reader to sit still and listen while you drone on. Showing offers dramatic effects; telling does not.

All writers struggle to comply with this basic rule to one extent or another. Those who do more showing than telling are way ahead of the game, while those who tell too much are cheating their readers and risking losing them. When the author tells the story by using point of view-less narration (omniscient exposition), the reader is one step removed from the action and the characters because the author places himself in the middle. As a result, the reader becomes an observer and a recorder of information, simply taking in the data, and his emotions are not engaged. Therefore, much of the impact and immediacy is lost because readers can react emotionally only to an act. “People read fiction for emotion, not information,” as Sinclair Lewis said. Never forget that story means drama, and drama requires character in action. Both action and reaction to action advance the plot and reveal the strengths and weaknesses of character. Action does not have to be vast and violent, but whatever form it takes, it must be shown, not told.

Important: Keep in mind that plotting serves largely to arrange a story in ways that allow the writer the best and most logical ways to show rather than tell the story.

Aspiring novelists should make a special effort to avoid value judgments, which are perhaps the most onerous form of telling. For instance, a writer may say in narration that it is “an ugly house” or that she’s “a wonderful teacher.” If you want readers to respond emotionally to people, things, and events (you do), then such things should be shown, not told.

Telling instead of showing often weakens the opening paragraphs of a chapter or a scene in the work of new writers, especially if the narrative fails even to establish the time and place of the action (two of the requirements of scene framing). Beginnings are much more focused and effective if you start with a single POV character doing something at a specific place and time—if you showed your readers a scene as if it were a stage set, with a person or people in action instead of feeding them dry information. Once that’s done, then you can slip in some description of the setting, some background info, a character sketch, a bit of history, or whatever you need through the consciousness of the VPC (viewpoint character).

Bottom line: Let your story and your characters reveal themselves through action (including dialogue), allowing your readers to witness the action as it occurs, scene by scene. Write like this, and you’ll find that if the scenes—the showing parts—are done well, then you won’t need so much exposition—the telling parts, which is a good way for writers to tighten their novel. As you rewrite, you’ll often find that most of the vital information you thought had to be spoon-fed to the reader by exposition can be inserted more artfully into someone’s thoughts (interior monologue) and dialogue. The best-selling writer Elmore Leonard, who was a real old pro, has said that all the information you need to communicate can be included in dialogue. His crime novels may not be your cup of tea, but he’s one writer who really knows what it means to show instead of tell.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

                                               

The Usual Suspects

Since starting Thayer Literary Services in 1997 (www.your-book-editor.com), and after reading what seems like a gazillion first novels, I have seen the same mistakes over and over again. After a while I started calling them “the usual suspects.” I have considered collecting them into a book, but I thought that seeing so many of them all in one place would drive me to drink. So I decided to create this blog as a way to discuss them one at a time, along with many other writing issues, all of which I think will be helpful to budding writers. Follow this blog, and I’m sure you will find some information that will help you become a better writer.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com