Dialog - He said, she said and paragraphs.

chuckgalle said:

I also feel comfortable including three or four sentences by both parrties within a paragraph instead of sprawling the page out with new paragraphs every time some one says two or three words.

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That might be confusing to me.

Being an "old schooler" (traditionalist?), I believe that following the path of least confusion is the best way for me. Certainly, successful guys such as Doctorow, et al, can do whatever they please. Like you, I to try to keep those "tag lines" to a minimum and vary them whenever possible ("murmered," "chided," etc.) I still think that correct choice of these words helps create the mood and tone of a scene. "And I appreciate your ideas," I complimented.

chuckgalle said:

I'm pretty adept at not using "he said" and variations of "said"

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There's no reason not to use "said". Avoiding "said" is like avoiding "the".

chuckgalle said:

I also feel comfortable including three or four sentences by both parrties within a paragraph instead of sprawling the page out with new paragraphs every time some one says two or three words. I see some pretty heavy hitters do that sort of thing - Doctorow, e.g. I wonder what folks here think. Any comments?

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I'd like to see your specific examples of this being done. The only times I've seen it, and it's so rare I can't recall specific instances, is to convey the effect of a bunch of short, maybe argumentative stuff being said by several speakers more or less at once. For ordinary dialogue, as a reader it would drive me nuts.

Among other things, the convention about dialogue is so firmly established that you really have to come up with some compelling reason to violate it. And "I also feel comfortable" writing it isn't very compelling. Your reader almost certainly won't feel comfortable reading it. Massive slugs of long paragraphs just plain tend to be harder on the eyes to read through, and forcing your dialogue into that format would only make things worse. And really, you're not saving all that much paper space. I'd bet 99% of the editors exposed to it will suggest/demand that you turn it into normal format. If they even read it, that is.

chuckgalle said:

I know the rules I believe, but I'm seeking opinions here. My WIP is a mystery, you know, murder. I'm pretty adept at not using "he said" and variations of "said", just getting the reader started and letting the diaplogue flow maybe eight, ten lines, then dropping in a nuancing verb, "sneered", "murmured", something. I also feel comfortable including three or four sentences by both parrties within a paragraph instead of sprawling the page out with new paragraphs every time some one says two or three words. I see some pretty heavy hitters do that sort of thing - Doctorow, e.g. I wonder what folks here think. Any comments?

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Chuck,
The nice thing about he said, she said (along with asked and replied) is that they do the job of showing which character speaks as unobtrusively as possible. It's said they disappear on the page, which minimizes authorial intrusion and allows the reader to become part of the conversation. Words like murmured, sneered (which is visual, not speech) and others tend to break that illusion.

Used only when special emphasis is needed, tags other than said can work well. But most of the time, emphasis can be shown with the dialog itself, rather than a tag.

And dialog by different characters in the same paragraph is downright confusing. Doesn't matter who writes it.

Stan

Chuck, there's no reason for you not to place strings of dialogue together like that, but hear this: whatever you do in your story should have a precise reason behind it. Placing three or four sentences, or nine or ten, just because you want it to go a particular length is rather arbitrary. If you're going to do this, you'll want to read other writers who do this to give yourself a taste of how it's done well. James Clavell does it in Shogun, so does Philip Roth, and Roberto Bolano, I believe. And understand that a paragraph stops because the idea it's covering is through being covered, not because you think it's long or short enough. There's nothing wrong with having short two or three word paragraphs, dialogue or no.

Stanmiller already hit the nail on the head about tags. If you write it real enough, it will be obvious to the reader how said character is speaking and who is speaking it. Remember that each character should speak like themselves, not you or each other. Character A might say, "We should try to get out of here", while B would say, "We're going. Now!" It's a matter of who the speaker really is. If you capture these cadences, it will give the reader subtle hints into the character while helping them know who is saying what without unnecessary denotations on the page.

Chuck, what is the rule you think you know?

You're not writing to be comfortable. You're writing for your reader. Are they going to be comfortable? Are they going to keep reading?

blacbird said:

For ordinary dialogue, as a reader it would drive me nuts.

Among other things, the convention about dialogue is so firmly established that you really have to come up with some compelling reason to violate it. And "I also feel comfortable" writing it isn't very compelling. Your reader almost certainly won't feel comfortable reading it. Massive slugs of long paragraphs just plain tend to be harder on the eyes to read through, and forcing your dialogue into that format would only make things worse. And really, you're not saving all that much paper space. I'd bet 99% of the editors exposed to it will suggest/demand that you turn it into normal format. If they even read it, that is.

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Right on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I might accidentally buy a book with strange formatting such as Chuck suggests, but it's highly unlikely I would finish the book, and I would not have the author on my list of buy agains.

Chuck, IMHO, you can only write in a way where you feel comfortable (ignoring others) if you are not planning on having your work commercially published.

In other cases, the readers comfort is more important than yours, and standing between you and the reader are people called agents and publishers.

If you persist, all I can say is Lots of luck.

Sentosa said:

the reader's comfort is more important than yours

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Oh, God, someone embroider this and frame it. Please!

I find having different speakers in the same paragraph incredibly confusing. In fact, most of the time, I prefer a new paragraph for a new actor, not just a new speaker.

(Granted, that's not possible when two people are wrestling.)

Andy threw himself on Mark's sofa like one exhausted from hay-making. "I've been writing all day, and I've only gotten my main character from Tuesday morning to Tuesday afternoon."

Mark took his coffee cup to the window. He stared out at the dirty snow and the dirty cars.

"So, what have you been doing? Heard from Sue yet?" Andy scrabbled on the coffee table for the travel section of the Times.

This is where reading your text aloud really helps. Especially with dialogue, your ear can pick up things that sound clunky/unnatural that you might miss on a simple read.

Every time a reader has to study a paragraph to figure out who said what, you yank them out of the fictive dream. Make it easy for them.

Maybe there are some eggheads out there who like to struggle over "difficult" prose because it makes them feel smart, or whatever. This isn't who I write for.

Stanmiller said:

Chuck,
The nice thing about he said, she said (along with asked and replied) is that they do the job of showing which character speaks as unobtrusively as possible. It's said they disappear on the page, which minimizes authorial intrusion and allows the reader to become part of the conversation. Words like murmured, sneered (which is visual, not speech) and others tend to break that illusion.

Used only when special emphasis is needed, tags other than said can work well. But most of the time, emphasis can be shown with the dialog itself, rather than a tag.

And dialog by different characters in the same paragraph is downright confusing. Doesn't matter who writes it.

Stan

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Agreed. In my college creative writing classes and journalism school using any word other than "said" was grounds to be taken out against the wall and shot.

You can fudge a little with some other words, but Stan's right, it does minimize authorial intrusion and disappears.

seun said:

You're not writing to be comfortable. You're writing for your reader. Are they going to be comfortable? Are they going to keep reading?

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Wow, less than halfway down the first page, and I've already found someone who said something to peeve me. While yes, it needs to be interesting for the readers for it to get published and sold, saying you aren't writing to be comfortable is, in my opinion, a very bad bit of advice. If you aren't comfortable with what you are writing, you will produce crap. Every time. This is why I will never write a lusty romance; my skin would crawl the entire way, I might puke a few times, and it will show in the finished product. The readers won't like it because my personal severe distaste will come across in the writing. Keep your audience in mind, but make sure you find the line of comfort for you that you are unwilling to cross. Every writer has a personal style. You may have to find some leeway and bend a bit to get a really brilliant piece of work, but make sure you stay true to your style.

chuckgalle said:

I also feel comfortable including three or four sentences by both parrties within a paragraph instead of sprawling the page out with new paragraphs every time some one says two or three words. I see some pretty heavy hitters do that sort of thing - Doctorow, e.g. I wonder what folks here think. Any comments?

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blacbird said:

I'd like to see your specific examples of this being done.

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I was hoping someone would comply with this request. A few of you seemed to be saying you'd seen it. I can't even imagine how it would look on the page. (Or, I can imagine... And the image is not a pretty one.)

Juvela Obi said:

Every writer has a personal style. You may have to find some leeway and bend a bit to get a really brilliant piece of work, but make sure you stay true to your style.

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Don't confuse style with clarity and readability. These "rules" (guidelines, really) are there to make it easier. It's not there to make you uncomfortable or stifle your voice and style.

Personal style doesn't mean you can just do whatever you want without regard to the readers, to the industry standards, or guidelines. If the writer says, "I want to use *!@#@ as quotation marks and CAPITALIZE every word and not use even one dialogue tag. It's my style!" I'd just laugh and say, "Good luck."

Stanmiller said:

And dialog by different characters in the same paragraph is downright confusing. Doesn't matter who writes it.

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Safran Foer does that in Everything is Illuminated, and it drives me bonkers. He also largely writes dialogue in italics, which also aggravates me.

_Richard

Just because established Big Name authors occasionally veer outside industry standards doesn't mean a new writer can get by with it. IMHO, every time a new writer disregards the long established conventions, they decrease the likelihood they will ever be published, and if they ever are, they might be condemning themselves to low sales.

The majority of readers read for entertainment. Not to have to read something several times in order to understand it. Again, that's just my opinion. Personally, if I picked up a book with dialog from several speakers in one paragraph, I wouldn't read past the first conversation. It's just too much work to follow.

As for 'he said' alternatives, IMO, they should be used very sparingly, and only when the tone or emotion of the dialog absolutely cannot be conveyed in another way. I believe those kinds of tags interrupt the story for the reader.

There are a lot of threads here about dialog and tags. If you choose to write more conventional dialog, I'd suggest reading those threads. Lots of great information there.

He said, she said are fine phrases, and so invisible the reader doesn't know they are there.

This is why I will never write a lusty romance; my skin would crawl the entire way, I might puke a few times, and it will show in the finished product.

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This made my day!

You have to be comfortable in what you are writing. Whether or not it will be marketable is an issue you will have to deal with when the work is finished.

Mosty of the folk who think bending all the rules or creating new styles of punctuation and spelling and whatever usually do so because they haven't sold anything yet, haven't been writing long enough to discover their 'style' and/or think that sort of tomfoolery will give them a saleable one.

Juvela Obi said:

....Every writer has a personal style. You may have to find some leeway and bend a bit to get a really brilliant piece of work, but make sure you stay true to your style.

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Picasso didn't start bending the rules until he'd mastered his skills and probably painted a thousand still life and portraits, conventional style.