Rehab for Roleplayers - Part 6

Welcome to Rehab for Roleplayers, a series of articles aimed at helping roleplayers more successfully make the transition into writing fiction.


Part 6 – "Where's Ruth?" Tom Cried, Ruthlessly


Throughout the rest of this series I've explored various 'roleplay-isms' which are fine in the RP environment but don't automatically translate well into fiction. This article deals specifically with 'attributions', which are the 'he said' / 'she said' part of dialogue.

It's a generally accepted practise in fiction writing to keep attributions in dialogue simple and to not overdo it with synonyms for the word 'said', like 'shouted', 'whined' and 'snarled'. This includes, for the purposes of this article, the addition of adverbs and other modifiers (words and phrases which 'flavour' a noun or verb) to 'said' - like 'he said wistfully', 'she said with a bitter tone'.

Among editors, the overuse of modifiers in attribution is known as "S.S." or "Synonym Syndrome" and is the cause of many a rejected submission.

This is because overly modified attributions draw attention to themselves, and can easily drag the reader's eye away from the story itself. Also, they're very often redundant, and sometimes downright silly.

I'm not at all suggesting that you cannot use anything but "said", ever.  The use of descriptors like "burbled" and "squealed" is alright in small doses, but when used too often they not only lead to redundant sentences, but also commit the crime of "telling, instead of showing". Further, reliance on overly descriptive attributions also promotes lazy writing.

Attributions in roleplay are often surrounded by tons of descriptors, because roleplay posts lend themselves to over-emphasis, and not without reason.

As I've discussed in an earlier article, RP is designed for a 'live' and therefore fluctuating audience which may wander in and out of active scenes and so require writers to repeat things, or to reveal the mood of scenes very quickly. Too, readers of rp posts are not only reading but might also be busy formulating their own posts and thus aren't too bothered by colourful and plentiful modifiers.

Repetition and redundancy which would be unacceptable in a short story, therefore, tends to not only be overlooked in RP but in many cases might even prove desirable.

"Get down!" John roared aggressively.

In an RP post, the above sentence might not be cause for anyone to roll their eyes.

In a short story or novel, though, where the reader has time to ponder and become more deeply immersed in the story, they may justifiably wonder -why- we need to be told that John roared, considering that we are – let's say – already aware that John is a war-zone, which is noisy and therefore shouting is necessary.

Anyway, the writer used an exclamation point, so we could probably have figured out for ourselves that John is not whispering.

We also know from the rest of the text that John is panicking as he herds his men across a battleground, hence the probability he would 'roar', and that John has a short fuse, so he'd probably speak such an order aggressively. And how does anyone 'roar' in any manner –but- aggressively, anyway?

The reader might let the writer get away with one or two redundant verb/adverb attribution modifiers like that, but they'd better not be as redundant as "roared aggressively", or "whispered softly", or "cried plaintively". That's going to get up the reader's nose quite quickly.

In one very short story I read recently on the internet, which I'll not identify for the author's sake, I found the following list of synonyms for 'said' (some of them used repeatedly):

she said in derision,
she said quickly and almost apologetically
she said in a trembling voice.
she hissed viciously.
she said fretfully.
she said coldly
he asked worriedly
she whispered
she squealed x 2
she giggled
she yelled x 2
she hissed x 3
she barked x 2
she muttered
she exclaimed x 2
she mocked
she screamed
she screeched x 2
she fulminated
she retorted x 3
she declared x 2
she blurted x 2
she cried x 2
he inquired x 2
he breathed
he winced x 2
she grunted  

The effects of this onslaught on me, as the reader, were:

1. That I found myself paying less attention to what was actually barked, grunted, declared, blurted, hissed and fulminated than I was to the increasingly long list of modifiers being employed.

2. It murdered all narrative tension as it hammered me over the head with moods and intentions I should have been able to work out from the rest of the text on my own.

3. It also made the piece seem overly 'noisy' to the point where the characters reminded me of cartoon zoo animals.

And it's also just lazy writing.

For the most part, that's quite alright in the roleplaying environment, probably moreso in the 'live' environment of the MUD. Most people roleplay for recreation, perhaps after a long day at school or work, and lazy writing is entirely forgivable in those circumstances. Roleplay can be fast-paced, no time for editing. And, as its main purpose is creative interaction and entertainment, few would begrudge anyone a little extra description.

But think about paying $25.00 for a novel and sitting down to read it, only to find Chapter One crammed to the gills with 1000 different synonyms for "said", akin to the list above.

In all likelihood, you'd wind up feeling very distanced from the story (if you haven't set the thing on fire by Chapter Five), because you're being 'told', not 'shown' what the characters' motives and moods are, so you don't have to mentally interact with the story beyond surface level.


In short, here's a list of things to keep in mind when writing dialogue in fiction:


Some Basic Do's and Don'ts of Attribution


- DO show, not tell.

"Give food!" demanded Hagorth the troll, greedily.

Compare this to:

"Give food!" Thick ropes of saliva dribbled over Hagorth's tusks, his wide nostrils flaring as he inhaled the scent of roasted yak.


- DO NOT assume your reader will get bored with "he said".

Read that list of synonyms above thirty times in a row, and it ought to be plain why.

- DO give your reader some credit for basic intelligence.

You don't need to explain that somebody 'whispered softly' or 'shouted loudly'.
You don't need to follow an exclamation point with "he exclaimed".
You don't need to follow a question mark with "she asked/inquired".

- DO NOT assume that every piece of dialogue NEEDS attribution.

If there's only two characters speaking, then "he said / she said" isn't really necessary for every line of dialogue.

- DO keep your adverbs and other modifiers fresh and to a minimum.

There's actually a name for the use of stupidly redundant modifiers in dialogue. They're called "Tom Swifties", after a series of books in which this mistake was often made. Tom Swifties have become a joke, a game of pun-the-adverb often played on literary forums.

Here's a few, to illustrate:

"Where's Ruth?" cried Tom ruthlessly.
"Let's get married," said Tom engagingly.
"Fire!" yelled Tom alarmingly.
"You have the right to remain silent," said Tom arrestingly.
"I'm losing my hair," Tom bawled.
"I have to keep this fire alight," Tom bellowed.
"Would anyone like some Parmesan?" asked Tom gratingly.
"Drop your gun!" said Tom disarmingly.
"I have a split personality," said Tom, being frank.
"I need a pencil sharpener," said Tom bluntly.

And this has to be my favourite:

"A Greek woodland deity is no more," Tom said, with a deadpan expression.


In Part 7, I'll be exploring further aspects of dialogue and narrative.