He Said/She Said
Before reading On Writing by Stephen King, I had never really given much thought to dialogue attributions. But as a green writer with a first draft to edit that includes a ton of dialogue, I am hungry for advice on how to make this thing good.
King suggests that better dialogue usually depends more on context and less on the attribution to set the tone. Much like adverbs, dialogue attributions like "he grated" or "she laughed merrily" are at best redundant, and at worst distracting. In King's opinion, it's best to stick with the basic "he said/she said" as much as possible.
This sounded like good advice to me, so I decided that when I began editing I would pay close attention to how I used dialogue attributions, and experiment with trying to eliminate as many non-"saids" as I could.
One of the first things I noticed as I read through my manuscript is that all my characters keep assuring each other of things.
"It's not you," Renn assured him.
and
"That won't be a problem," Adrian assured her.
and
"I don't care what other people say," Danny had assured him.
Those are just a few examples from the first three chapters. There were so many more. I started laughing every time I came across yet another assurance. I kept a few of them, but most of them were either changed to "said" or I cut the attribution and/or line altogether.
I also noticed that I use a lot of adverbial phrases, some of them quite long. Here is one example:
"This is my wife Petra," Renn introduced the woman, leaning in and placing a gentle kiss on her nose.
This sentence was clunky and awkward. In my edits I took out the dialogue attribution completely, and it works a lot better.
"This is my wife Celis." Renn placed a gentle kiss on her nose.
The new version is much shorter and to the point, yet still includes all of the same information.
I'm only a few chapters into this round of revisions, but already I really enjoy seeing how simple advice like this changes the writing and makes it better.