Writing dialogue (Page 2 of 3)

I thought it might be interesting for people following this thread to take a look at the excerpt below. It is from "Lock In," by John Scalzi. If you don't know this author, he is a Hugo Award winning sci-fi writer and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He's one of my favorite writers, sci-fi or otherwise. As for his dialog, it's funny, quick, and crisp. But what I want people to see here is his repetitive use of "said" dialog tags. Notice in the excerpt below he uses one in all but two lines. I can only imagine if this was presented on this site, the fun reviewers would have with their virtual red pens. And yet Mr. Scalzi is probably the most well-regarded sci-fi writer working today. So why is it okay for him to so obviously disobey the sacred rules and overuse said in such a blatant way? Well, because that's his style. Because he is doing so in a conscious and deliberate way for a particular effect. Far from disappearing, the repetition of the phrase has, for me at least, the effect of nearly mesmerizing the reader, like a repeating drum beat. In any case, that is my interpretation of the device. But the point is — it IS a device. And what concerns me is that when one takes a dogmatic stance on any aspect of writing (or art in general) one is in danger of discouraging those who would play with the tools at their disposal to create a given style or effect in an intentional way. In light of this, imagine if some editor had told Cormic McCarthy that failing to use quotation marks for dialog was simply not done because, well, I say so. Just something to consider. Now enjoy (or hate, as you choose) the excerpt below:

“I royally pissed off Trinh tonight,” I said. “I think she hates me more than she hates you.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Vann said. “But if you got her even halfway there I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I don’t drink,” I said.

“Good,” Vann said. “Then you buy me a drink. Come on. I know a bar.”

“I don’t really think you should be hitting the bars tonight,” I said. “You have a hole in your shoulder.”

“It’s a scratch,” Vann said.

“A hole in your shoulder from a bullet,” I said.

“It was a small bullet,” Vann said.

“Fired by someone trying to kill you.”

“All the more reason I need a drink.”

For me Scalzi's "saids" do disappear. If I were the dialogue god, I would mandate using the stage play convention of identifying the speaker thusly >>>Speaker:
As always, the secret to being a good writer is knowing whose rules to follow. Scalzi is religiously obeying Elmore Leonard's Rule No. 3 for good writing https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/ … od-writing :

Elmore Leonard: 10 Rules for Good Writing
Elmore Leonard started out writing westerns, then turned his talents to crime fiction. One of the most popular and prolific writers of our time, he's written about two dozen novels, most of them bestsellers, such as Glitz, Get Shorty, Maximum Bob, and Rum Punch. Unlike most genre writers, however, Leonard is taken seriously by the literary crowd.

What's Leonard's secret to being both popular and respectable? Perhaps you'll find some clues in his 10 tricks for good writing:

Never open a book with weather.
Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"…he admonished gravely.
Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Tags aren't only to identify a speaker...they prevent reader confusion, create rhythms, elevate, maintain or break tension (beats), and provide avenues to insert action. But in most cases, if a writer finds themselves explaining too much in the tag, or relying too heavily on a tag to convey the desired sentiment, they should probably consider taking a second look at the quality of the dialogue itself.

I think it best to pretend those particular syllables --"um" and "uh"-- don't even exist as readable copy. Better to qualify the dialogue with something like *he couldn't find the right words in the moment* than to tarnish the dialogue with ums and uhs. Having said that so imperiously, though... Let's face it, I probably do it too.

Deckland Oz wrote:

So why is it okay for him to so obviously disobey the sacred rules and overuse said in such a blatant way? Well, because that's his style.

And he has a fan base.
My advice to writers: don't break rules unless you have a fan base that support you no matter what.

Okay, I found a bit of it. In case anybody gives a...
The setting is a wedding reception, family around the table and eating. As if anybody...

***

"Cocksucking Mucka-Ferguson!

Stunned silence. At the tender and enervated age of seventy-five the old sire's once puissant charm has worn thin and been overtaken by his banal and tedious and inflammatory eccentricities of late. He eats his food with his mouth wide open, for instance, and the sight of his green bean and bacon bolus, lolling at the edge of his mouth full of false choppers, is both disturbing and transfixing all at once.

The man suffers from early stage Alzheimer's and a severe case of rip-roaring coprolalia, is the problem. It's a lot like Tourette's syndrome but without the forgivable clinical diagnosis. You'd think by now we'd have learned to tolerate, or at the very least ignore, the explicit tirades and the constant mimicking and sniffling and spitting but he continues to surprise us and make us squirm on a daily basis. It's the reason he spends most of his days confined to the convalescent wing of the Western State mental hospital. Where he can sit around spitting venom and goosing the nurses, enjoying the crass company of similarly afflicted old-timers who can't be bothered to reconcile the post-modern zeitgeist of Progressive sexual and demographic policy with their long-held Conservative logic.

His tics are not entirely involuntary, though. Rather he is periodically overcome by an irresistible urge to perform. Watch closely. You'll witness the man literally tense up and bubble up over time, like he's playing tug-of-war with Etiquette itself, and then explode into an obscenity-laced non-sequitur. For no explicable reason. Like this:

"Tits and spades!"

My mother, younger than her husband by nearly twenty years, sticks around and remains in love with the man for precisely these reasons, I think. She finds his outbursts, while filthy and absolutely inappropriate, are just as likely to charm the pants off of her. If not for his affliction, I suspect she would have left him years ago. But she enjoys taking care of the ogre. She cherishes being the only woman on Earth who can truly endure, understand, and indulge him.

Truth is, Desmond Shuler still holds a level of respect and authority befitting a traditional family patriarch. This despite his career long lack of success financially or otherwise and not to mention the fact that he utterly owes his very existence to my mother's intrepid equanimity. As we all do I suppose.

Look at her. My mother. Skating around the table and dolling out portions of bread pudding with an iron clad smile on her painted lips.

That's when the old man suddenly blurts, "You gotta bury me in the catacombs, bitch! You cockeating jagoff!"

We all jump and then simmer in the uncomfortable silence. My mother, calm and collected as always, reaches down and takes my father's hand.

"Easy, dear," she says. "Which catacombs are you referring to? Paris or Cleveland, Ohio?"

My father shouts, "Cleavage!" and then begins stabbing his plate with his plastic spork. As he violently chases after his vegetable medley, the peas and corn kernels getting away from him and squirting across the table into other people's laps, his frustration increases.

"So how was your day, Pop?" asks my brother Milo, trying to bring things down a notch.

My father relaxes, sighs and shakes his head. "Well, I didn't have to use my AK, if that's what you mean." His tone does not disclose if this is a good or a bad thing, however. The old man immediately resumes hunting his vegetables then, the effort proving fruitless. Eyes bulging, he yanks the napkin from his collar and flings it to the floor.

We wait for it. It's building in him. Wait for it...

"Holy rubber donkey dongs!" he shrieks. "Go and fuck yourselves and all this horseshit, too!"

***

See? I set it up in the narrative and then let the profanity and the weirdness distinguish his dialogue. Without using ums and uhs or stuttering or whatever. Now, whether I'm making the smart move by doing it that way? That's another matter entirely.

Cheers

John

JeffM wrote:

He broke a number of rules, but it doesn't change the fact that it's rolling-on-the-floor funny.
Maybe that's the point?

Jeff--
John used this snippet of writing as an example of description setting up dialogue without tarnishing said dialogue with the swearing that goes with Tourettes. He then went on to include the 'tarnishment.'  Whether it is funny or not isn't relevant, it was a bad example.

:)