“YOU’RE IT!” HE SAID TOUCHINGLY

USES AND ABUSES OF DIALOGUE TAGS

    The Butler’s Revenge

He hopped into the kitchen—obese, leathery, smelling like scum.

And he’s like, “Take me to the Princess!”

I shook my head, “Sorry. This ball is formal.”

“But she promised I could sleep with her!” he croaked, angrily.

“Welcome to the club,” I sympathized. That little bitch.

I picked him up and put him on a silver tray.

Said I, schemingly, “I’ll present you.”

The above story, a very short scene based on an old, archetypical fairy tale, needs work in the area of dialogue tags. Let’s do the work together.

Line 2 has what I consider an abomination, a speech pattern perpetrated on the English language by the young. Young people have been polluting our language ever since I became an intolerant old fart. Substituting “he goes” for “he said,” or “she’s all” for “she said,” or “I’m like” for “I said.” They make my eardrums ache. Okay, okay, it happens and I should just get over it. But consider the context here. This is no busboy or scullery maid speaking here. The narrator is the butler. The butler would not say, “And he’s like…”

For that matter, there’s really no need for a dialogue tag in this line. The line of dialogue might work a lot stronger without a tag.

Line 3 has a silent tag. The shaking of a head does not make a sound, unless perhaps you’re wearing a hat with bells on it. Other often used (misused) silent tags are: grinned, glowered, etc. The easiest way to fix this is to use a period instead of a comma: “I shook my head. ‘Sorry…’”

On the other hand, the tag’s unnecessary anyway. We know who’s talking, and the word “Sorry” is all it takes to indicate refusal.

Line 4. We have an animal noise in a dialogue tag. Wait a minute. This animal tag, “he croaked,” is used correctly, because it’s a croaking animal (a frog) doing the talking. Okay, so that line’s fine. But in general, be careful of animal tags. They tend to be cartoon writing: “He snarled,” “she purred,” “She hissed,” “she chirped,” “she roared,” “he bellowed.” Use these sparingly, if at all.

Line 5 has a highfalutin substitution for the word “said.” The longer, unnecessary word “sympathized” isn’t really offensive, but it errs on the polysyllabic side. Other highfalutin substitutions for “said” include “She opined,” “he articulated,” and “I improvised.”

Besides, “sympathized” is unnecessary. “Welcome to the club” says it all.

Line 7 contains the dreaded LY adverb modifying the word “said.” “Schemingly,” which my spellchecker doesn’t even recognize, is unnecessary and therefore offensive. “‘I hate you!’ she shouted angrily” is an obvious example. These LY adverbs are noxious weeds. Get rid of them. If you think need to modify “said” with an adverb, then your line of dialogue needs to be written stronger.

And while I’m on Line 7, let me point out that the double reverse order of words, “said I” instead of “I said,” and putting the tag before the line of dialogue makes this line sound artificial and coy. Not that can’t get away with reversing word order sometimes, but be careful and make sure you aren’t just being cute.

I'll wrap this up by paraphrasing what the great Elmore Leonard has said, echoing what the great Raymond Carver said: You can usually get away without dialogue tags, although now and then it's good to use them for rhythm.

Now I’ll rewrite "The Butler's Revenge" using the lessons we just went through. I think it will work a lot better. You be the judge:

The Butler’s Revenge

He hopped into the kitchen—obese, leathery, smelling like scum.

“Take me to the Princess!”

“Sorry,” I said. “This ball is formal.”

“But she promised I could sleep with her!” he croaked.

Welcome to the club. That little bitch.

I picked him up and put him on a silver tray.

“I’ll present you,” I said.