A dialogue tag oddity

I’ve mentioned before that reading out loud is part of the bedtime routine for me and my wife. We’ve enjoyed this as long as we’ve been married, and have read dozens of books by now. Very few of the books we’ve chosen have been stinkers, but reading aloud does have a way of spotlighting authorial quirks or tics even in the good ones. One area where tics most frequently appear is in dialogue tags.

I’ve written here about dialogue tags a few times in the last few months (see here, for example). Again, I believe strongly in Elmore Leonard’s rule of never using a verb other than said for dialogue, though I—following Leonard himself—allow for a lot of flexibility. I’ve read two novels recently, Hill 112, by Adrian Goldsworthy and The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers, that approach ascribing dialogue in plenty of other ways without calling attention to themselves.

That said, reading aloud before bedtime has only entrenched my opinion that a simple “he said” or “she said” is best.

This has been on my mind because of our recent bedtime reading: Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. Alexander is a good and imaginative writer and these books have been favorites for a long time, but in reading them aloud I grew increasingly exasperated with a pattern in his dialogue. See if you can spot it:

As he made to leave the chamber, however, Doli took him by the arm. “Gwystyl,” said the dwarf severely, “you have a skulking, sneaking look in your eyes. You might hoodwink my friends. But don’t forget you're also dealing with one of the Fair Folk. I have a feeling,” Doli added, tightening his grip, “you’re far too anxious to see us gone. I’m beginning to wonder, if I squeezed you a little, what more might come out.”

“It’s not that we're starving,” Eilonwy said. “Gurgi did remember to bring along the wallet of food. Yes, and that was a gift from Gwydion, too, so he had every right to take it. It’s certainly a magical wallet,” she went on; “it never seems to get empty. The food is really quite nourishing, I’m sure, and wonderful to have when you need it. But the truth of the matter is, it’s rather tasteless. That’s often the trouble with magical things. They’re never quite what you'd expect.”

“We have a lovely view of the fens from the hilltop,” Orwen put in with such enthusiasm that her necklace bounced and rattled. “You must come and enjoy it. Indeed, you’re perfectly welcome to stay as long as you want,” she added eagerly. “Now that little Dallben’s gone, and found himself a beard, too, the place isn’t half as cheery as it used to be. We wouldn’t change you into a toad-unless you insisted on it.”

“I don’t mean that,” Taran said. “What I believe,” he added thoughtfully, “is that Adaon understood these things anyway. Even with his clasp, there is much I do not understand. All I know is that I feel differently somehow. I can see things I never saw before—or smell or taste them. I can't say exactly what it is. It’s strange, and awesome in a way. And very beautiful sometimes. There are things that I know…” Taran shook his head. “And I don't even know how I know them.”

“I think you see many things,” Taran replied quietly, “many things which you tell no one. It has long been in my mind,” he went on, with much hesitation, “and now more than ever-the dream you had, the last night in Caer Dallben. You saw Ellidyr and King Morgant; to me, you foretold I would grieve. But what did you dream of yourself?”

“Go on,” Gwystyl said, “put him on your shoulder. That’s what he wants. For the matter of that, you shall have him as a gift, with the thanks of the Fair Folk. For you have done us a service, too. We were uneasy with the Crochan knocking about here and there; one never knew what would happen. Yes, yes, pick him up,” Gwystyl added with a melancholy sigh. “He’s taken quite a fancy to you. It’s just as well. I'm simply not up to keeping crows any more, not up to it at all.”

Alexander’s characters are always going on and adding and continuing, which we already know because they are still talking. A few of these, especially the last two above, hint at stage directions Alexander is trying to give his characters—sighing, hesitating—but this would work better broken out of the flow of dialogue and directly described, which would also give the narration, the characters and action, and the reader’s imagination space to breath. Look at how much better the simple “Taran shook his head” works near the end of the fourth example.

But this habit of breaking into the dialogue for these secondary tags is not only awkward and unnecessary, it’s annoying to read aloud. If dialogue tags should be as close to invisible as possible, annoying the reader may be worse than a lot of clumsy, highly noticeable Tom Swifty adverbs.

I selected these at random from the second book, The Black Cauldron. We’re several chapters into the fourth book, Taran Wanderer, and these interrupting tags are much less common than in the first couple volumes of the series. Someone must have had a talk with Alexander sometime around The Castle of Llyr. The books, already very good—The Black Cauldron and The High King won Newbery honors and a Newbery Medal back when that meant something!—are better for it, and I, as my wife’s reader, am grateful.