by Mike Klaassen

Created on: February 22, 2010   Last Updated: April 07, 2010

"Dialogue doesn't stand alone," observes William G. Tapply in The Writer (October 2008).  "Character's speeches need signposts to tell us who's doing the talking.  The last thing you want is readers counting back through the speeches so they can figure out who's speaking."

“Nothing bounces a reader out of a story faster than a key line of dialogue that might have been uttered by more than one person, with no way to tell which,” wrote Nancy Kress in Writer’s Digest (November 2005).

No doubt every reader has experienced this annoying situation, but there is really no excuse for it.  Fiction writers have plenty of tools for identifying the speaker in dialogue:

* Character voice

* Direct address

* Context

* Action

* Attribution clauses

Each of these tools has its advantages, limitations, and pitfalls, but a thorough understanding of the issues may help improve the effectiveness of their use.

CHARACTER VOICE

A character with a distinctive voice may need no further help in being identified.  Evan Marshall, in The Marshall Plan for Getting Your Novel Published, advises writers to "Create distinctive voices for your characters to help the reader keep track of who is speaking."

DIRECT ADDRESS

One technique that has been used over the years is to have characters address each other directly by inserting names into the dialogue.  For example:

"Gabby, I'm heading back to town."

"Okay, Cisco, I'll catch up to you in the morning."

"Be careful, Gabby.  I smell trouble brewing."

More recently, this practice has been discouraged.  Renni Browne and Dave King, in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers advise against using Ping-Pong direct address, noting that it gets old very quickly, and "People just don't talk like that."

Gloria Kempton (Writer’s Digest, October 2006) lists direct address as one of the "Seven Common Mistakes in Dialogue," labeling it the "John-Marsha Syndrome." 

David Morrell, in Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing, seems to agree: "I recommend eliminating names from dialogue completely."

Other writing coaches acknowledge situations where names in dialogue are acceptable, even useful.  According to Michael Levin, in Writer’s Digest (January 2006), “Only have characters call each other by name when there’s a good reason for it.  There are really only three times when we call each other by name in real life.  (1) when we meet each other somewhere, (2) when we’re

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>