Keeping It Straight

You can say stuff like, the red haired man said, the taller man said, the older man said...

Aaah, and for a moment, I thought you were trying hard to keep two straight characters from going all gay on us...

Really, I just use their names.

"He said" or "<name here> said" are words that are not noticed anymore. We just accept them.

Other things are more noticeable...so they're good for when you want something to pop out, but if you use them over and over and over again, people go "HARRRGH!"

Or at least I do.

And then I throw your book out the window.

If its only two people talking, paragraph breaks should be enough to differentiate them. Of course, you need to add in some actions to avoid talking heads, but that's another issue.

Can they have different accents or one have a lisp or something like that? I have my MC talking as we do but the Lords and Ladies in the 14th century speak very correctly while the peasants drip their 'h's. So after the first Jenny said/Tom the Cobbler said, I don't have to use dialogue tags for ages.

If it reads well you don't need any of these things.

If you have a lot of dialogue between two characters, you can often skip the dialogue tag (or for that matter, a reference to the character's name in the dialogue) for around three lines before you need to reassociate the reader with who's talking. Then, you can either use a dialogue tag or an action beat to identify the speaker.

Read Hills Like White Elephants, a short story by Ernest Hemingway. You can find it online. It features dialogue between two people and it's well-written. The only story by Hemingway I like.

There are several ways to avoid using too many dialogue tags.

The most important way is to make sure that the dialogue itself is strong enough to be associated with the character. Each character needs to have a unique voice, so if you have trouble over pages of dialogue, it may be a sign to focus in on the dialogue and make sure you are giving the character their own voice.

But that alone isn't enough, I know. But it's something to look at.

Another way is to have one of the characters use the other character's name. "Gary, you can be so obtuse sometimes" or "I know what you mean, Phyllis."

The best way, however, is to imagine all the subtle actions that the characters are going through in the scene. You really have people who sit stone faced and don't move a muscle while they are talking. They could scratch their nose, take a sip of coffee, look away, etc. It's important that you include these actions in long lines of dialogue so that you don't have a couple of talking heads. And when you use these actions, you don't need to use "said."

Example:

"I agree with you wholeheartedly." Shadowlit took a sip of coffee and looked away.

****

Using those three tips, you can handlee 95% of the dialogue in your entire novel.

The other 5% of the time, use "said, replied, asked."

I'm with Prozyan and James81. I believe you're overthinking it. If it's just two characters, it'll be a lot easier to tell who's talking, even when you're not using speech tags (though a speech tag every so often, as suggested earlier, is good). But alternating dialogue with actions, no matter how small, goes much further than just using speech tags, and keeps the scene from becoming just two disembodied heads talking to each other. Since you say the characters are traveling, there's a LOT of potential for interesting actions to be taking place as they talk. (This happens a lot in my own story. Even the act of traveling itself can contribute to interesting dialogue.)

Use action tags like in James81's example. Leave off the tags for three or four lines. But don't fall into the Burly Detective mode, where you make up descriptive names for the characters rather tan use their names.

If only two people are talking, you need almost no speaker tags. Just tell us straightaway who's who, then forget those tags. Gregory McDonald, as I recall, did this in his Fletch books, and in dialogue that stretched many pages at a time. By and large, readers don't lose track, and they don't get confused. If the dialogue is doing its job, no one will miss tags, nor will they see these characters as talkin' noggins. That said, such a choice is a matter of style. Not everyone writes like McDonald.

Ideally, each line of dialog should be distinctive enough that only one character could be the speaker. The obvious example is an argument: once you've set up who's on each side, the rest should be clear. In any discussion, though, the characters should have different perspectives on the subject and different attitudes about it.

Each character should also have a distinctive voice. That doesn't mean something as heavy-handed as a lisp or a thick dialect. It has more to do with vocabulary and diction and rhythm and sentence structure.

Realistically, some lines of dialog are too brief to offer much scope for all that ideal distinctiveness, so you need other tools as well. When there are only two characters present, simple alternation of paragraphs can work for several lines in a row. If one character is male and one female, pronouns help out.

Interspersing action among the dialog is a good idea for several reasons, but if you set it up so that each character is engaged in a different task, it can also provide information about who's speaking.

Some techniques are inadvisable. Things like lisping, stuttering, and nonstandard pronunciations are tricky. If used at all, they require careful handling. They also have implications far beyond being a convenient gimmick for differentiating characters.

People rarely address one another by name unless there's a need to single out one person from a group. A conversation between two people sounds very stilted if they repeatedly use each others' names. It can be done occasionally, but not often. One exception is where there is a marked status difference, such a military officer with a subordinate or an aristocrat with a servant. The lower status individual may well use a formal term of respect whenever addressing the higher. Another exception is where relationship terms, endearments, or insults would be natural.

Don't try to vary what you call a character in narrative. If his name is Captain John Smith, don't call him John in one paragraph, Smith in the next, the captain in the third, and the redhead in the fourth. Pick one identifier and stick with it.

I hate it when people do "the elf" "the taller man" "whatever". That's such a fan fiction move (no offense.)

Stunted said:

I hate it when people do "the elf" "the taller man" "whatever". That's such a fan fiction move (no offense.)

Click to expand...

Actually this would be called "The Burly Detective Syndrome" and it's vaguely frowned upon.

I, too, would be annoyed by the substitutes for character names. Just use the names.

Also, if you've developed the characters sharply, each should have a distinctive style of speech and distinctive concerns that will identify his dialogue in most cases without the use of a tag. Short exchanges can also go without tags; my rule of thumb is up to five lines of dialogue alternating between two characters. If you have more than two characters talking, you may need to tag more often.

Yeah, definitely try to avoid Burly Detectivism. It's clunky, and not as elucidating as one might think.

I'd say unique voices, for starters--and this doesn't need to be an accent or a lisp (which can also get pretty clunky, if you're not careful). Real people have idiosyncrasies to their speech; characters should too.

Stage business might also help, with the added benefit of grounding the action into the setting. Where are they roaming? Is it a paved path, or are there things to trip over? Obstacles to duck or climb? Can they pull their over-garments closer against the cold/wet or hold a canteen to their forehead to stave off the heat? Anything of note to smell, grab, or step on? Any backpacks to adjust or stones to pick out of shoes?

You can go overboard with that, too, but it's a way to break up the "Name saids" without wasting words repeating physical descriptions that readers know already.