Our Lunchroom Zoom has been talking about the mechanics and craft of our writing. We’re all sharing tips and our habits about dialogue. “As a writer, you can make a stylistic choice that is different than the norm if you so desire,” said one author. Another kicked off a chat via email afterward with “I can see situations where you need the full name, but I seem to switch from first to last.” A third said, “If you have a style sheet you can make it consistent, and I feel that’s the important part.”
I have a few rules I follow. The journalist and nonfiction writer in me always uses last names as I write nonfiction. Unless I’m in a longer, more introspective nonfiction article, and then some select speakers get an attribution by first name. Inside writing about families, of course, first names can help.
In fiction, it’s easier just to lean into using first names whenever you need a dialog tag. Using the first names is more effective dramatically. Sometimes I use last name for a villain or somebody mysterious. I used to call my middle school pals by their last name. We did the same thing in the Army, too. Guy stuff, that was. We were unwilling to be vulnerable enough to use first names in a crowd. When we’d talk in small groups or one on one, it was by first name. Much of the time, when it was just the two of us, of course, there was no name tag at all.
And that’s a note I apply to all the stories and books I edit. You rarely, so rarely, need to use a character’s name inside of a piece of dialog.
“Ron, you can’t be serious.”
“No Pat, I really mean it. Try not to call me by my name inside a conversation.”
Using Ron and Pat in there is kind of preachy and didactic. One way you can avoid this is to give the speaker an action or gesture or expression before their reply.
Pat straightened her chair. “I tend to not believe you.”
The character name comes outside of the dialogue line.
Yes, yes, watch how your favorite authors handle this. John Dufrense’s book The Lie That Tells A Truth. includes eighteen well-written pages about dialogue. This one is a favorite rule of his.
Use as few dialogue tags as you can. Use “he said” or “she said” often. Or “they said,” if you must. In an interchange between characters when there’s only two, try no tags at all. Try making the characters speak differently, varying syntax (order of words) and vocabulary, and maybe even vocal tics — “know what I mean?” could be one of those.
And if there are more than two speakers in an interchange? It’s time for names, especially if you’re stuck using “they” instead of he or she. I like to consider reducing the number of people speaking in a scene or a passage. It’s called dialogue for that reason, I think: two speakers. Dufrense says this about that.
“If you have two characters in a scene, you should only have to use a single tag. The conventions of punctuation will tell us who is speaking from there. Every time you switch speakers, you start a new paragraph. In a conversation among more than two people, on the other hand, you may need to tag every line. This can be clumsy and difficult to manage gracefully. Ask yourself, Do I need this other person in the room? If not, send him out for coffee.”
