I Hate Them

I hate them <3 with love

eat sleep breathe the mind electric

Narrator comforts a depressed Stanley

Me and the 40 opened supernatural fan fiction tabs on my phone against the world

Oh yeah his brain finally kick started processing his emotions! Against his will!!!

Bill at therapy part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Yes, I do teach creative writing: attribution.

There’s no need to ever use dialog tags. They are often clunky and add nothing. 

“I’ll kill you!” she screamed. (Can you guess she might be screaming?)

“What is that?” he asked. (Well, duh, it’s a question.)

“I love you,” I declared. (That’s a declarative sentence, so that’s obvious.)

“Not today,” he replied. (The word “replied” is my least favorite.)

“It’s a girl,” she said. (Good old “said.”)

But, you retort, we NEED dialog tags to clarify who’s speaking. That’s absolutely true, and I’m not a fan of unattributed dialog where you have to count back to figure out who’s talking.

“Give me the gun,” he demanded.

“Take one step closer and I’ll shoot.”

“You don’t even know how to use that thing.”

“Do you really want to find out how wrong you are?”

“Do you really want to do something you’ll regret the rest of your life?”

“What I want is for you to leave me alone.”

At the end of exchanges like this, I’m checking back to make sure I know, who’s saying what. So we need attribution. But dialog tags are so boring.

Good attribution can add action (even if it’s just a gesture), emotion, thought, or description. It’s separated from the dialog by a period, not a comma as with dialog tags. The writer is forced to think more deeply about what’s happening in the scene and with the characters. The reader is not stuck in a blank room with “talking heads.” Look at my five original lines of dialog, the ones with dialog tags above, rewritten with these types of attribution.

“I’ll kill you!” She bared her teeth, her hands clenched into fists of rage.

“What is that?” He could hardly look at the box as his face drained of color.

“I love you.” I had meant to say the words clearly. Why had they come out so shy and faint?

“Not today.” His eyes were bored as he turned the sign on the door to read “Closed.”

“It’s a girl.” Joy and wonder competed on her face as she handed me the bundle.

Look at how action, thought, and description attribution add to the unattributed scene.

“Give me the gun.” He held out his hand. Was it shaking slightly?

I found the safety, clicked it off. “Take one step closer and I’ll shoot.”

“You don’t even know how to use that thing.” He was trying to smile, to make light of the unlikely scenario of me with a gun.

“Do you really want to find out how wrong you are?” I didn’t try to keep my voice steady.

His smile was grim. “Do you really want to do something you’ll regret the rest of your life?”

But I was willing to call his bluff. “What I want is for you to leave me alone.”

He pulled out the kitchen chair and sat in it, still with that smile.

Doesn’t the attribution bring a lot more depth to the scene? Can’t you picture it a lot more easily?

Remember to always start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes, and sometimes even if there is no dialog, if the “camera” moves from one person to another.