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regshoeI was musing about the different styles of dialogue tag used in fiction, and thought this would be another interesting topic to investigate in the language of Flight of the Heron.
First of all, some definitions: for the purposes of this post, a dialogue tag is a verb which has a piece of dialogue as its object—most often the word 'said', as in 'Do not be a fool!' said the young man in the loch.
There are 443 uses of the word 'said' in the novel. I started my investigations by going through and classifying how these 'said's were used. The verb can go before or after the dialogue; it can be attached to the speaker's name, a pronoun or another noun describing the character, and it can go before or after this noun. Here's how often Broster uses each possible construction:
Some notes on this:
Broster's favourite way of phrasing a dialogue tag is 'Dialogue,' said Name. Roughly two-thirds as often as that she uses 'Dialogue,' pronoun said, and roughly two-thirds as often as that, 'Dialogue,' said epithet. The 'said' comes before the dialogue occasionally in all three forms, but there are very few 'Dialogue,' said pronouns and no uses of the 'Dialogue,' character said phrasing with a name or epithet. This roughly corresponds with my intuitions about how common each type of phrasing is, so by this very unscientific method it looks as though Broster's use of dialogue tags is fairly typical. The only thing we might remark on is the absence of 'Dialogue,' character said with names and epithets, which is definitely something authors do—but I have the suspicion that this construction is more modern and/or American, so it's perhaps not surprising that Broster doesn't use it. (If anyone has actual evidence on this, please let me know!)
But 'said' isn't the only word that can function as a dialogue tag, and authors can use plenty of alternatives (sometimes disparagingly called 'said bookisms'). Broster, it turns out, likes these quite a lot. Here are some of her favourites:
(These numbers come from doing a simple search of the text for each word, so they will include uses in contexts other than dialogue tags).
There are 509 total alternatives to 'said' in this table, not inconsiderably more than the 443 'said's. And this is just words with more than 20 uses—I noted several others less frequently used.
Having looked at these general tendencies, I decided to investigate Broster's use of dialogue tags in more detail by going through four representative dialogue-heavy scenes from the book. I picked the conversations between:
I counted whether each piece of dialogue was accompanied by 'said', an alternative to 'said', or either of two alternatives to dialogue tags: describing the speaker's actions on the same line, and letting the dialogue stand alone with only the context to make it clear who's speaking. Here are the results:
A dialogue tag with 'said' is actually Broster's least used common way of formatting dialogue! Her favourite is to use an alternative to 'said', followed by describing the speaker's actions and letting the dialogue stand alone.
(I notice that, here, alternatives to 'said' are used more than twice as often as 'said' itself, whereas the total count of alternatives in the table above is only about 15% more than the total uses of 'said'. There are several possible explanations for this—it could be that 'said' is used outside of dialogue tags more often than the alternatives, or that alternatives with fewer than 20 uses are numerous and significant, or that these four scenes aren't actually representative of all the dialogue in the book. I suspect that all three contribute.)
So, conclusions! It's interesting that even though Broster is, as I hope we can all agree, a fairly good writer, two of the most distinctive features of her dialogue—the frequent use of epithets and of alternatives to 'said'—are two things that often come up in writing advice about what to avoid. I think this illustrates the importance of subtlety over absolutism in the principles of what makes writing good. Writers often resort to epithets as a means of avoiding repetitive use of the characters' names, and constantly using epithets just for this reason isn't good writing—but, with a bit more thought, epithets can create some particular effects of which a good writer might choose to make use. Broster is particularly good at using them for a sort of ironic commentary, as in these examples:
(I won't quote it here because too sad, but there's one very memorable use of 'his enemy' as an epithet which certainly belongs in this category!)
Or epithets can be used to draw attention to relevant features of who the characters are—for instance, calling Keith 'the Englishman' in a scene where he's complaining about the dreadful noise of the bagpipes, or repeatedly calling Charles Edward Stuart 'the Prince' rather than 'Charles' to highlight the importance of his status to Ewen and to the rising.
As for 'said bookisms', a lot of the criticism centres around the idea that they're 'telling, not showing'—for instance, simply telling the reader that a character 'shouted' a piece of dialogue is much less effective than describing how the character crosses the room to stare down at whoever they're addressing, clenching their fists and turning white with barely-suppressed rage. But this criticism applies mostly to words which, like 'shouted', describe the speaker's manner, rather than to ones like 'asked' or 'went on' which simply describe the function of the dialogue in the conversation. These might be regarded as more neutral alternatives to 'said', if not used too excessively—and, looking at the table above, it's clear that Broster greatly prefers this type of 'said bookism' to the 'shouted' type. And I think there is something to be said for occasional use of the shorter, more efficient description of a dialogue tag like 'shouted' or 'exclaimed' (Broster's favourite 'character's manner' dialogue tag) rather than slowing down the action for lengthy descriptions of what the character is doing every time you want to make it clear that they're exclaiming their words.
It's long been an opinion of mine that most writing advice given in the form of absolute rules is a bit useless. Good writing is much less a matter of 'do this, don't do that' than it is of 'think about what effect you achieve by doing this, and make informed choices about when and why to do that'. I think this investigation gives some support to this view!
First of all, some definitions: for the purposes of this post, a dialogue tag is a verb which has a piece of dialogue as its object—most often the word 'said', as in 'Do not be a fool!' said the young man in the loch.
There are 443 uses of the word 'said' in the novel. I started my investigations by going through and classifying how these 'said's were used. The verb can go before or after the dialogue; it can be attached to the speaker's name, a pronoun or another noun describing the character, and it can go before or after this noun. Here's how often Broster uses each possible construction:
| 'Dialogue,' said character | 'Dialogue', character said | Character said, 'Dialogue' | |
| With name | 144 | - | 11 |
| With pronoun | 2 | 99 | 13 |
| With epithet or title | 61 | - | 7 |
Some notes on this:
- Broster never uses the fourth possibility for arrangement, said character, 'Dialogue'.
- I counted any noun (or noun phrase) other than a name or pronoun in the third row—so the young man in the loch, the Highlander and the Prince all went here. I also counted the construction a voice said, 'Dialogue' in here.
- There are another 60 'said's in dialogue, and 46 in the narration that are not dialogue tags.
Broster's favourite way of phrasing a dialogue tag is 'Dialogue,' said Name. Roughly two-thirds as often as that she uses 'Dialogue,' pronoun said, and roughly two-thirds as often as that, 'Dialogue,' said epithet. The 'said' comes before the dialogue occasionally in all three forms, but there are very few 'Dialogue,' said pronouns and no uses of the 'Dialogue,' character said phrasing with a name or epithet. This roughly corresponds with my intuitions about how common each type of phrasing is, so by this very unscientific method it looks as though Broster's use of dialogue tags is fairly typical. The only thing we might remark on is the absence of 'Dialogue,' character said with names and epithets, which is definitely something authors do—but I have the suspicion that this construction is more modern and/or American, so it's perhaps not surprising that Broster doesn't use it. (If anyone has actual evidence on this, please let me know!)
But 'said' isn't the only word that can function as a dialogue tag, and authors can use plenty of alternatives (sometimes disparagingly called 'said bookisms'). Broster, it turns out, likes these quite a lot. Here are some of her favourites:
| Word | Number of uses |
| asked | 95 |
| replied | 72 |
| added | 60 |
| answered | 51 |
| went on | 50 |
| exclaimed | 43 |
| observed | 36 |
| called | 34 |
| repeated | 23 |
| finished | 23 |
| retorted | 22 |
(These numbers come from doing a simple search of the text for each word, so they will include uses in contexts other than dialogue tags).
There are 509 total alternatives to 'said' in this table, not inconsiderably more than the 443 'said's. And this is just words with more than 20 uses—I noted several others less frequently used.
Having looked at these general tendencies, I decided to investigate Broster's use of dialogue tags in more detail by going through four representative dialogue-heavy scenes from the book. I picked the conversations between:
- Ewen and the Prince in part 2, chapter 1, from 'Avanti!' cried a voice to the end of the chapter
- Keith and Guthrie in part 3, chapter 3, from the beginning of the chapter to 'ye’re gaun tae sup wi’ me.'
- Ewen and Keith in part 4, chapter 7, from 'Windham!' he exclaimed to '...and a happy end to your journey!' (this was a fun one to revisit... :D ;_;)
- And Ewen and Archie in part 5, chapter 4, from the beginning of the chapter to its last, its mortal wound.
I counted whether each piece of dialogue was accompanied by 'said', an alternative to 'said', or either of two alternatives to dialogue tags: describing the speaker's actions on the same line, and letting the dialogue stand alone with only the context to make it clear who's speaking. Here are the results:
| Ewen and the Prince, 2.1 | Keith and Guthrie, 3.3 | Keith and Ewen, 4.7 | Ewen and Archie, 5.4 | Total | |
| Dialogue tag with 'said' | 10 | 5 | 13 | 8 | 36 |
| Dialogue tag with alternative to 'said' | 17 | 20 | 32 | 8 | 77 |
| Character's actions described on same line | 11 | 12 | 19 | 7 | 49 |
| Nothing, dialogue stands alone | 5 | 12 | 10 | 16 | 43 |
| Other | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
A dialogue tag with 'said' is actually Broster's least used common way of formatting dialogue! Her favourite is to use an alternative to 'said', followed by describing the speaker's actions and letting the dialogue stand alone.
(I notice that, here, alternatives to 'said' are used more than twice as often as 'said' itself, whereas the total count of alternatives in the table above is only about 15% more than the total uses of 'said'. There are several possible explanations for this—it could be that 'said' is used outside of dialogue tags more often than the alternatives, or that alternatives with fewer than 20 uses are numerous and significant, or that these four scenes aren't actually representative of all the dialogue in the book. I suspect that all three contribute.)
So, conclusions! It's interesting that even though Broster is, as I hope we can all agree, a fairly good writer, two of the most distinctive features of her dialogue—the frequent use of epithets and of alternatives to 'said'—are two things that often come up in writing advice about what to avoid. I think this illustrates the importance of subtlety over absolutism in the principles of what makes writing good. Writers often resort to epithets as a means of avoiding repetitive use of the characters' names, and constantly using epithets just for this reason isn't good writing—but, with a bit more thought, epithets can create some particular effects of which a good writer might choose to make use. Broster is particularly good at using them for a sort of ironic commentary, as in these examples:
[Major Guthrie is testing Keith's patience with ribald comments which he doesn't find funny.] 'And that’s how ye repaid his hospitality, Major,' finished the humorist as they splashed through the Tarff.
But Lachlan continued to pour out Gaelic. 'Eoghain, marrow of my heart, ask me for the blood out of my veins, but do not ask me to let the heron live...' [several more sentences of impassioned pleading.]
'Stop!' said the marrow of his heart peremptorily.
(I won't quote it here because too sad, but there's one very memorable use of 'his enemy' as an epithet which certainly belongs in this category!)
Or epithets can be used to draw attention to relevant features of who the characters are—for instance, calling Keith 'the Englishman' in a scene where he's complaining about the dreadful noise of the bagpipes, or repeatedly calling Charles Edward Stuart 'the Prince' rather than 'Charles' to highlight the importance of his status to Ewen and to the rising.
As for 'said bookisms', a lot of the criticism centres around the idea that they're 'telling, not showing'—for instance, simply telling the reader that a character 'shouted' a piece of dialogue is much less effective than describing how the character crosses the room to stare down at whoever they're addressing, clenching their fists and turning white with barely-suppressed rage. But this criticism applies mostly to words which, like 'shouted', describe the speaker's manner, rather than to ones like 'asked' or 'went on' which simply describe the function of the dialogue in the conversation. These might be regarded as more neutral alternatives to 'said', if not used too excessively—and, looking at the table above, it's clear that Broster greatly prefers this type of 'said bookism' to the 'shouted' type. And I think there is something to be said for occasional use of the shorter, more efficient description of a dialogue tag like 'shouted' or 'exclaimed' (Broster's favourite 'character's manner' dialogue tag) rather than slowing down the action for lengthy descriptions of what the character is doing every time you want to make it clear that they're exclaiming their words.
It's long been an opinion of mine that most writing advice given in the form of absolute rules is a bit useless. Good writing is much less a matter of 'do this, don't do that' than it is of 'think about what effect you achieve by doing this, and make informed choices about when and why to do that'. I think this investigation gives some support to this view!
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Date: May. 15th, 2020 06:06 pm (UTC)And omniscient narrators who occasionally drop random snarky opinions into an otherwise-neutral piece of description are always fun—it's one of my favourite things about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.