Dialogue tags to be avoided (Page 1 of 3)

To this list I would add "paused" which was debated as a dialogue tag in another recent thread. At least most of these could actually be shown by the spoken word whereas "paused" and the like definitely can't be. I must say I used many of these and similar ones in the past, but I find only one I still have in my completed novel -- I'll probably keep it for now just for old times sake; no one wants to be perfect. Hopefully that puts me on the right track. Take care. Vern

That sounds like a good one to me, Vern.  I don't think anyone can pause a sentence out of their mouth.  Cause if they pause, then I assume there are no words, no dialogue.

Is it a cliche that the drill sergeant barks orders?  Or just a fault to use the word as a tag?

Just spot-checked a few books from the shelf and found this. On a single page, Mark Twain used 'says' twice, 'said,' 'saying' and 'sung out', and it all makes perfect sense when you read it. Shirley Jackson used 'said' over and over many, many times on a page, using adverbs almost every time. Lee Child uses said, not quite as frequently and without adverbs. J K Rowling uses called, moaned, yelled and roared on a single page, without adverbs. Dan Brown uses action instead of tags almost always.

All I can deduce from this is that the rules about the use of tags (and adverbs) may have evolved over time, but they are not hard and fast. So, go your own way.  JP

They are not saying don't use the words on that list in your book.  Just don't use them in a tagline.  If you use something other than 'said,' then ask yourself 'how can each word smile out of my mouth?'  Or how can each word chide out of my mouth, volunteer out of my mouth... etc.  Most of them cannot be done physically.  As Moonshine told me, there are always exceptions, and there are places where nothing else you use can hammer that one important thought any better than a tagline.

This is very interesting. And NJC's comment is even more.

Agents, publishers, the "Big Five", and the mafia around them have laid a set of "rules" they truly believe on. "It's the modern way of writing". "It's what the public prefers". "Its--" Wait? What the public prefers? A bunch of these gurus rejected JKR, the largest YA bestseller ever, thinking they "knew" what the public wanted, and it turned to be the other way around. Do agents really have the "nose"? Or do they only suppose they have it and buy, publish, and push a book they liked using all possible marketing tricks that, in the end, sell or partially sell the book only because, crafty as marketing people are, they ended up convincing the public to buy something the public doesn't need/want?

I think it's the latter. Through marketing means, publishing houses push books that aren't really bad, but that aren't literary jewels either, in the same way Tide pushes their detergent's sales via marketing campaigns and adds. When the finally hit the ROI and start making business, they think they're totally smart, that they've picked another book that sold ("as always" many would said while holding a cigar and drinking Scotch), and that it was because the book stuck to the so called "rules" they laid because they understand what readers prefer.

Don't use adverbs.
Don't use any other dialogue tag except said (a good example over these lines).
Stick to one POV, don't head-hop.
Etc.

Below, you may find some of the reason why JKR was rejected, taken from the letters she received (she published several of those letters time ago erasing the signatures):

Harry Potter is slow to start.
The first page of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is all telling and no showing.
The book doesn’t start where it should: with Harry, or “inside Harry’s head”.
The characters we meet at the start of the book are ones with which few readers could identify.
Having fat people (especially a fat boy) depicted as unbelievably nasty (fat boys are usually the bullied one, not the bully--this parenthesis is mine).
Not a new idea. By the time JKR submitted Harry Potter, Disney was airing "The Worst Witch", a sitcom about a teenage witch at a magical school.

But the readers didn't mind. Not one of them. They didn't care about a slow start. They didn't complain about not being in the right POV from the very beginning. Everybody disliked the Dursleys, but that didn't prevent any of us from reading the story. We all disliked the fat boy but, then again, we all kept reading. And yes, it was not a new idea at all. Not because of Disney, but because of a gazillion other similar stories, but children and grown-ups alike enjoyed reading yet another story about witches and wizards, up to the point of turning it into a best seller.

So... what are these rules useful for? Wanna learn the truth? For teaching, and that't it.

It's true that new writers, and specially those learning the craft in college or taking courses, tend to make the same mistakes. E.g,: When new writers head-hop, they tend to be confusing. Too many adverbs and the readers are paying more attention to the next adverb than to the plot. If every dialogue tab is an ejaculation, you end up washed in verbal semen after two pages. New writers (and I may well be one of them) tend to overuse certain tools. Hence, it's reasonable that teachesr--please underscore "teachers"--lay certain rules in behalf of their students. Only later, they will teach their students how to head-hop, use adverbs, etc., without making a mess of it.

But that agents and publishers try to set the rules on how to write in the XXI century, up to the point of providing a full list of words to be avoided in dialogue tags, is not only petulant but fascist. Goodness gracious! Where back to days of the League of Decency and their list of topics that must never be touched in fiction, only this time it's about how to write. The problem is that, despite the rules, the readers enjoy what they prefer and they don't care if there are too many adverbs, or if characters bark orders, sob prayers, or hiss threats. It seems all that readers want is good stories written in understandable English complying with the rules generally accepted for written English, but not necessarily with those laid by zealous, style policemen.

I would like to add a word about "show don't tell". I believe in it because, currently, a writer's main competition is the cinema. When you watch a movie, everything is shown, and only little, very little, is told, mainly through a narrators voice in off--if there is ever a narrator. So, while in prose everything is told and it's impossible to show anything, unless there are pictures, there's a way to help the reader to better imagine what the author is telling the reader. This technique is the famous "show don't tell", looking forward to create cinematographic effects in the readers' minds.

So, if a tagline indicates a character "barked" some words, it's easier for the reader to image that very character talking loudly in, or even shouting, short words resembling a dog's bark. It's certain people can't actually bark, but the image is helpful. Of course, if every character, in every opportunity, "barks" their words, the effect is completely lost. Used with moderation, two-purpose dialogue tags achieve both of them, despite what all the publishers in the world think about them.

Thanks God, nowadays we can self publish and don't give a shit about the so-called "rules".

Kiss,

Gacela

Thanks for pointing me to this thread John! I didn't realize that this was such a big issue. I will definitely refer to this in the future. Thanks for the mention and kind words too!

In my current WIP, Dangerous Alliance (approximately 62K words so far), said is used as a dialogue tag a total of five times while asked appears six times. I don't use anything else in my dialogue tags but rely on action tags instead.

Yes, indeed, the so-called rules are primarily for those who wish to publish in the traditional manner. It goes without saying that if you self-publish, you can say or do or not do anything you wish. You can end every sentence with a question mark even if it doesn't ask a question; you can write the entire story in capital letters with no punctuation at all; you can leave out large chunks of important information; you can print the story right to left or start from the bottom of the page and go upward; you can do anything you wish and chalk it up to defying the rules just because you can. You have that right and no one is saying anything against that free spirit and inalienable right. And after you do all that and put JKR or any other best seller to shame, then you just may establish a new set of rules. Here's wishing you the best of luck.

No rules are set in concrete; no one is saying that. They are however a good guideline if you are indeed serious about publishing in the traditional manner. No, you don't have to abide by every single "rule" all the time -- no one is saying that -- but you just might have a greater chance of achieving the goal of traditional publication should you at least try to accommodate them once in a while. So, you are certainly within your right to knock the "rules" as irrelevant for the self publisher every time the subject comes up in a thread, but you also might want to think about just exactly why you are on a writing site to ostensibly improve your writing. After all, if you are free to follow whatever rules you wish because no one can tell you otherwise, why even bother with anything which might help one improve or be more likely to sell a story? I'm just curious because this scenario invariably plays out with any mention of any type of so-called "rule" within one of these threads. Now, I do quite often break so-called "rules" both on purpose and by mistake, but I don't simply break them because it doesn't matter one way or the other as far as publishing goes.

Having made my remarks, I suppose for the sake of "truth in advertising" so to speak, I should say that although I may end up self publishing at some point in time, I am still exploring the traditional route and expect to for some time to come. And I should also say that if I decide to go the self-publishing route tomorrow, I will still stand by the above statements. Take care. Vern

The folks at Moonshine Cove Publishing must be huge Hemingway fans, because he's the only writer I know who follows their strict "no dialogue tags except for 'he said/she said"" policy. I think the point is to avoid drawing attention to your prose at the expense of the plot and dialogue.

As for their elaborate list of prohibitions, it's pretentious and flies in the face of successful commercial fiction. Paula Hawkins (The Girl On The Train) has her characters both "barking" and "snarling" out dialogue, and I don't think most critics would accuse her of writing "hack fiction." Likewise, if your character has been screaming until his voice is hoarse, I don't see anything wrong with having him "croak" out a line of dialogue (sure he could "say" something "in a hoarse voice," but I'd argue that "croaking" is a simpler, more visceral description). Assuming he's human, I think the readers will assume he's not imitating a frog.

I don't think you need to be a best-selling author to break the so-called rules. If a rule makes no sense, then it mustn't even be considered a rule and there's no need to follow it. Who wrote the rule about the dialogue tags? Nobody It's just the perception of a group of publishers. Who appointed them as XXI Century literature parliament? Nobody.

Take the rule about adverbs, for example. The other day I was discussing that one with my friend Suin from Ireland and she told me she has realised adverbs have almost disappeared from American fiction. However, this is not true for Irish, British, Australian fiction. So, it's the Americans who believe in that rule. And what does the readers say? Does American fiction sells better than Brit, Irish, or Australian fiction because it lacks adverbs. Of course not!

Common sense dictates it's stupid to infest a narration with adverbs, but nobody has ever said that they most be avoided at all, as it seems to be the fashion in America. Where's the rule then? It's only the invention of a bunch of local publishers, just as Moonshine has just decided to issue their no-no list of words for dialogue tags. God!

Of course you can self-publish writing everything in capitals, or using neither commas nor full stops, but that would be stupid and I fancy no TNBW author has ever thought about it only because she self-publishes. Common sense should prevail, as well as sticking to the generally accepted rules for the English language. But to stick to a bunch of rules invented by a group of publishers as if they were the French Academy of the English language, no thanks.

But even the rules of the English language are subject of debate. At both sides of the Atlantic, the same words are written in a different way: learned vs learnt, realize vs realise, etc. As amateur writer, I think we must stick to those rules that make sense, unless you're planning to go to one of those Nazi publishers. Then you'll have to stick to their rules not only in terms of grammar of style, but in terms of a bunch of other matters.

And it doesn't guarantee you'll be best seller.

Kiss,

Gacela

It seems to need repeating that NO ONE is saying you can't break rules. Yes, rules are made up by some people for whatever purpose they intend. You have traffic rules; that doesn't mean you can't break them if you so desire; most people speed at least occasionally, some like me, almost always. Traffic rules just as "writing rules" are there for a purpose, but that doesn't mean you must follow them come hell or high water. You may break the rules and get away with it just I do almost every day in driving, but you may also get caught and then there may be consequences. That doesn't mean there will always be harsh consequences since you might get by with a warning even if stopped by the traffic cop. Yes, it is common sense that the rules are made by others, both the writing rules and the traffic rules, as well as all the other rules/laws of the land. No one is placing a gun to your head in this country to force you to follow any rules. You are free as has been stated often in this thread to follow your own rules. You may be stopped at some point by a publishing cop should you wish to go that route, just as you might be stopped by a traffic cop if you insist upon breaking the traffic rules. Or you may never get caught and more power to you should that be the case. Just as there are emergencies which warrant breaking the speed limit, there may be situations where one is compelled to violate so-called literary rules and be justified for doing so. That is common sense. Trying to deny the rules which create a somewhat more orderly road to get to where you are going merely because you may break them without consequence occasionally is not common sense. We all use common sense to make choices. That should apply to your writing life as well as the rest of your life. No one is denying that right to anyone with any so-called rules, whether you agree with them or not. Take care. Vern