Newbie mistakes #2

There are certain tendencies I see often in newbie writing, particularly romance writing. Today, we’ll talk about dialog tags.

 What are dialog tags?

He said, she said, I said.

One school of thought is that you should seldom use anything other than said. I do believe that makes for cleaner writing, but the newbie mistake I’m dissecting today is the use of an adverb within the dialog tag.

…he said angrily.

…she said sweetly.

…I said hesitantly.

If you do this more than once or twice per chapter, it is considered to be the mark of a hack writer. I found 19 in the 6000-word writing sample that inspired this series:

absently

anxiously

curtly

cynically

delicately

disinterestedly

dryly

dully

dully

flatly

impatiently

irritably

miserably

quietly

reassuringly

sarcastically

savagely

shakily

uncertainly

Convey what’s happening with the dialog itself. Instead of telling the reader a character says something “savagely”, save some empty wordage and have them actually say something savage!

Swifties

Stephen King explains his loathing of the dialog tag-adverb combo in On Writing. He makes a game out of piecing together outrageous pun-laden combos called Swifties, named for the Tom Swift series.

Here are some Swifties I made from adverbs I found in my sample text.

“Stop,” she cried haltingly.

“That truck ran over my dog,” he said flatly.

“Jerry didn’t come to work today,” I said absently.

Things to ask yourself when you find adverbs in edits:

Is the adverb redundant?

Could I pump up the dialog so the emotion is clear from the substance of what’s being said?

Your Assignment

Search the current chapter of whatever you’re working on for adverbs. If you find more than two, really question whether they’re necessary.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swifty

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