Wanderings Magazine - Tutorial: Tagging Quotations Responsibly

Tagging Quotations Responsibly

Mike Wever

You've been told that using "she/he said" every time a character speaks will make your story monotonous. This is technically true. If you used the same tag to identify every single time every character speaks, it would quickly become a turn-off to you reader. That doesn't mean, though, that you should avoid "she/he said" like the plague. In most cases it is perfectly fine and makes the most sense. Your reader will probably never notice it is there at all.

Then there are times when a character is not making a simple statement. A character who is asking a question certainly should be marked with "he/she asked" rather than "he/she said". And a character who speaks loudly should be tagged with "he/she shouted" or something else along those lines. Most normal conversations will have some questions and many dramatic conversations will include exclamations, so these are natural methods to break up the "he/she said" monotony.

Your characters can also speak in different tones of voice. A desperate character might plead instead of asking. An irate character would shout rather than calmly saying what she needs to say. A meek character may mumble. Using such tones of voice where they are appropriate adds richness to the character and the conversation.

Problems can arise when an author starts to artificially induce different tones of voice where they are not necessary or even warranted. A common mistake writers make is to believe that two or three consecutive statements must never be tagged with "she/he said". The writer will then break out his thesaurus looking for alternatives and end up making a character use all kinds of different tones of voice in what is actually a very simple conversation. Readers will pick up on this dichotomy very quickly and it will be just as distracting, if not worse, than two sentences in a row that end with "he said".

When a writer really starts to reach for alternatives to "he/she said" she can begin to come up with things that are actually incorrect. One common example of this is quotations that are tagged with facial expressions, like this:

"This is not working," frowned Doctor Brown.

A frown is a non-verbal form of communication. While someone might talk while frowning, no one can speak words using a frown. The same is true of smiling (in all of its forms), winking, blinking, head shaking and nodding. Laughing is a gray area. Some editors will balk at a character laughing out words. Others (including me) feel that because laughing and speaking both involve making sounds, it can be acceptable to mix them. The bottom line, in my estimation, is that speech can not be tagged with words that do not indicate some way of communicating through sound.

My feeling is that "he/she said" should be left alone anywhere that a reader will pass through it without noticing it. As a writer, it can be hard to determine what the reader will notice. If you are worried about too much repitition of common quote tags, ask someone else to read your story. Ask them about the quote tags when they are done (not beforehand, as this will make them just as hyper-conscious of it as you are). If they noticed some spots that felt too repetitive, then it may be time to mix things up. If not, leave well enough alone.