What’s True To The Beginner Is True To The Pro

At times I teach children in creative writing classes.

Surely we adults don’t need the prompting and coaching I used for these kids.

Ah yes, well . . . I realized as I was fleshing out a scene recently that I was using the same method.

In my teaching unit on dialogue, the children write out a dialogue using colored pencils to identify the different speakers. They are completely freed from quotation marks and dialogue tags. (Some of them live in a perpetual freedom from spelling and punctuation rules. But, that’s another matter.)

In my own work, when I zip through a scene of dialogue and the characters speak in my imagination with a fast and furious beat, I spend little time worrying about the technicalities of punctuation. I don’t worry about dialogue tags or identifying the inflection in the speaker’s voice. These occur incidentally, but are not my main purpose. I speed through, catching the essence of what is being said.

NEXT, in the classroom, I have the students use the same color pencil to enclose the spoken words with quotation marks.

AND THEN, we talk about the “he saids” and the “she saids.” We talk about how they come before and after the quote, and sometimes, in the middle.

Always putting dialogue tags in the same location is a bad deal . . . boring.

We talk about different words which can substitute for the “he said” and “she said.” For instance, John whispered, and Ella screamed. (Third grade boys love it when there are screams and screeches.)

At this point in my own writing, I go back and check my “he saids” and “she saids.” Is it really clear who said what? Are there too many “he saids, she saids” in the passage? Does “he expostulated” really fit in the text, or does it sound like the writer intruding on the scene? Most times a “he said” is more fitting than a “he interposed,” even though the second contains a two dollar word. “He said, she said,” is almost invisible to the experienced reader, a subliminal impression.

Sometimes when the dialogue snaps back and forth between two people the dialogue tags can be left off for several lines.

NEXT, my emerging writers are given the task of hiding description in the dialogue paragraphs. These little bits of narrative are sometimes called “action tags.” Most student writers are very keen on sneaking in details.

Watch the changes in these examples and see how effective it is to hide a detail for the reader to uncover.

John said, “I won’t be able to do it.”

John glowered at the mountain. “I won’t be able to do it.

“Please let me try,” begged Emma.

“Please let me try.”  Emma ran her fingers over the old yellowed ivory keys of the piano.

“If it’s money you want, I have some,” said Christine. “My mother gave me enough to buy my lunch and take the trolley home. I could share.”

“If it’s money you want, I have some.” Christine’s fingers smoothed the green velvet on the pouch her mum had given her as she walked out the door that morning. She felt the hard round lump of the apple. She weighed the purse in the palm of one hand, tightly clutching the drawstring with the other. On the bottom, a rustling sound emerged as she pinched the paper notes. Three bills, two round silver coins and six copper pieces. “My mother gave me enough to buy my lunch and take the trolley home.”  Christine looked again at the dirty little face under the woolen cap. She spoke softly. She didn’t want anyone but the little boy to hear. “I could share.”

By dropping these hints in the dialogue paragraph, instead of stopping to switch over to narrative and descriptive commentary, you can build scene, mood, and character. The story line moves along at a faster clip, and the reader is engaged.

LAST, in the classroom, the writers go through and take any thorns sticking out of their beautiful piece. A thorn is any word or phrase that might snag the reader. We don’t want to interrupt the reader’s pleasure by making him stop to consider “What does she mean by that?” A thorn is anything so out of place that the reader is jerked out of his absorption in the plot.

I tell my students that the difference between TV and a good book is that the mind of the reader is exercising, getting stronger, developing. The mind of the watcher is placid, flaccid, and turning to acid. (Biochemically, that is probably not accurate, but it projects a mean image.) The connection here in writing the dialogue is the writer purposely causes the reader to continually envision the scene.

I teach my students to write, revise, embellish, and refine.

Hey, isn’t that what I do in my own writing?