In Today’s Journal
* Chapter 5, Part 2
Picking up where we left off yesterday,
Tag lines do not stand on their own.
The tag line—which consists only of the character’s name or the appropriate pronoun (he or she) and a verb that indicates a form of utterance—is neither a complete sentence nor an independent clause.
Any verb that indicates a form of utterance is a transitive verb, which means it has to act on an object in order to make sense. In the case of a tag line, the object is the line of dialogue. So in other words, the tag line can’t stand on its own.
If you want to test this, walk up to someone on the street and say, “Mary said” and then walk away. You’ll make their brain lean.
Because they can’t stand on their own, tag lines are attached to the line of dialogue with a comma. For example,
- Mary said, “What’s up, Rob? You feeling all right?”
- “Sure. Never felt better.”
On rare occasions, usually when one character speaks several lines of dialogue without being interrupted by the other character(s), you might feel it necessary to break up the dialogue with the tag line.
In those instances, if the preceding line of dialogue would normally end with a period (like “Sure” above), you would attach the tag line with a comma, like this:
- “Sure,” Rob said. “Never felt better.”
If that example would normally end with a question mark or exclamation point, leave the question mark or exclamation point in place, close the quote, and then write Rob said and be sure to add the period after “said,” as in the fourth bullet point of this example:
- Mary frowned. “What’s up, Rob? You feeling all right?”
- “Sure. Never felt better.”
- Cindy came around the corner of the house. “Are you sure, Rob? You were definitely under the weather when we got home from that ridiculous hike we took in the heat yesterday.”
- “Nah, I’m fine today. But you hiked with me. So how’re you coping?” Rob said. He grinned and pushed her shoulder lightly. “Did we hack it, or what?”
- Cindy grimaced. “Barely.” She glanced at Mary. “Be glad you weren’t there.”
I also used brief descriptive narratives in the example: “Mary frowned,” “Cindy came around the corner of the house,” “He grinned and pushed her shoulder lightly,” and “She glanced at Mary” are brief descriptive narratives. The only tag line is “Rob said.”
Brief Descriptive Narratives Do Triple Duty
Unlike tag lines, brief descriptive narratives stand alone as independent sentences. Like tag lines, they are peripheral to the dialogue, usually introducing it. But they also invite the reader closer to the scene.
So brief descriptive narratives not only
- let the reader know which character’s speaking, but they also
- enable the reader to see, hear, smell, etc. part of the scene, and
- inform the reader of the tone of the dialogue.
These too should appear before the dialogue whenever possible for the same reader-centric reason I stated above: The reader will automatically “hear” the voice of whichever character he believes is speaking.
To repeat the Mary/Rob example from above but with brief descriptive narratives instead of tag lines, you might write
- Mary frowned. “What’s up, Rob? You feeling all right?”
- Rob shrugged. “Sure. Never felt better.”
(Of course, only write Rob shrugged if he actually did.)
You can also convey the tone of the dialogue (quiet, loud, pensive, etc.) with brief descriptive narratives.
For example, Mary frowned lends a concerned tone to the dialogue in the previous example, so the reader both sees Mary frown and hears concern in her voice.
And instead of Rob shrugged (normal tone) if you write Rob hesitated and looked down at his shoes or Rob turned away or any other dismissive or semi-dismissive action, the same dialogue will sound more quiet or pensive. Likewise, if you write Rob grinned, the dialogue will sound a bit louder.
To “test” such utterances, I recommend you read the dialogue aloud. (This is best done during cycling or during an editing pass.) Most often when you read the passage aloud, you will hear the tone of the characters.
I should add right here, everything in this book is instruction. You’re reading this with your conscious, critical, learning mind. And that’s perfect. What you learn will seep into and inform your creative subconscious.
When you’re actually writing fiction, do your best not to think consciously about all this stuff. Instead, “fuggidaboudit,” trust what you’ve studied and learned, and just enjoy writing the characters’ story. What you’ve learned will come through on the page.
You might believe, since they do triple duty, brief descriptive narratives are preferable to tag lines. In many cases they are. These little snippets are invaluable for inviting the reader closer to the scene.
But when you want the interruption to be all but nonexistent—when you simply want to quickly identify which character is speaking and let the reader get back to the dialogue or action of the scene—use a bland, flat, uninteresting tag line. “Said” is the best choice, but more on that later in “These Are Not Tag Line Verbs.”
A Little More on Brief Descriptive Narratives
In my own fiction writing, I use a non-technique that I learned from Dean Wesley Smith. It’s called Writing Into the Dark. It basically means I don’t outline or character sketch or world build or do any other planning in advance.
When I want to write fiction, I simply pull aside a curtain and observe my characters’ story. Then I write what happens: the events of the story as they unfold, and the characters’ reactions to those events as illustrated in their dialogue and their actions.
For a great deal more on that non-technique, I recommend reading Writing Better Fiction.
And if sweat beads break out on your forehead and cheeks at the very thought of writing fiction without planning, I recommend reading Quiet the Critical Voice (and Write Fiction). Those two books and this one comprise pretty much everything I know about the craft of writing fiction.
A Quick Note—I also don’t fear real-world repercussions from writing fiction, primarily because there are none.
If you spend all your time with the unreasoning fear that some reader somewhere won’t like your work because you haven’t meticulously planned everything out and that lack of planning will somehow ruin your “career” and, and— Ohmygosh I think I’m gonna hyperventilate! trust me on this:
You have nothing to worry about. If you’re that frozen with fear,
you’ll never have a career as a fiction writer to begin with.
But I digress.
As I said earlier, tag lines are useful when you want to let the reader know almost subliminally which character’s speaking. But so are brief descriptive narratives. Here’s another difference between the two:
- In every case, the tag line comes directly from the writer—so it’s an author intrusion—but when you use tag lines appropriately as outlined above, the interruption is both necessary and minimal.
- But brief descriptive narratives come directly from the characters.
I never write a word of dialogue that the characters don’t actually speak. I also never write any other words that aren’t filtered through the characters, and I never describe anything in the setting or scene—in either the brief descriptive narratives that introduce dialogue or in longer narrative descriptions—that the characters haven’t noticed themselves.
In other words, I never add anything to the description because I, the writer, think or feel it might be necessary. It isn’t my story. It’s the characters’ story. So if the point-of-view (POV) character doesn’t notice it, I don’t write it down.
This is the best and shortest way to write your characters’ authentic story.
Back tomorrow with Part 3 to close out Chapter 5.