Beyond Mr. Dodgson's intended meaning, I find it difficult to imagine a person speaking, snorting and chuckling all at the same time. This, to me, seems as improbable as "laughing words." Why can he not simply "say" WITH a chortle? Why must he chortle? I also agree with the earlier statements about timeframe. Bob chortling as he watches YouTube seems as out of place as Dante "sharting" as Virgil escorts him through hell.
Actually, if you listen carefully, the words are broken up by the laughing or chuckling. I will grant you, however, that readers tend to understand how that sounds. However, it's very easy to get caught in the web of using dialogue tags instead of narrative to express how someone is speaking instead of showing their emotions. "That's silly!" she laughed. is stale compared to "That's silly!" She wiped the tears of mirth from her eyes. JMO
My writing partner and I discussed this not too long ago. He had something in his story like this. "I don't know what you're talking about..." Stuttered James. When you read that sentence, does it sound like James is stuttering? It would be better to illustrate that like so. "I-I don't know w-what you're t-talking about..." James said, hands shaking nervously. It's generally a good rule to let the character's actions color the dialogue, rather than blatantly saying what is going on. It's more subtle and adds more character.
I agree. She might also "place a hand over her mouth to contain a fit of laughter" or any number of other ways to illustrate the tone. Other writers saying you can laugh words does not make it correct. You cannot "giggle" words. You can say words. You can yell words. You can whisper words. You can have a sentence interrupted by fits of giggling. You can interrupt your laughter with a word or two. But laughing and giggling are not means to deliver words themselves.
Thursday night was Dungeons and Dragons night. Let me introduce our little team. You know me already. To my left there's Blake. Blonde hair, square jaw, muscles like a World's Strongest Man reject. He sits hunched, tense, ready for action. In battles, you can see his muscles tensing and moving under his skin tight t-shirt. His caveman club placed on the floor in front of him, his D&D mascot. He'd stroke it tenderly during moments of relative quiet. Dayna. Sexy as damn with her long gothic-black hair, black lipstick, black eye-liner, and a Ferrari-red miniskirt. Mind sharper than Musashi Miyamoto's katana, she was always our Dungeon Master. None of the rest of us would stand a chance against her. And none of us could ever guess what mythological beasts she would be throwing at us next. Then there was Bob. Greasy hair, greasy beard, and his hairy hobbit legs sticking out of his cut-off jeans. Not the brightest knife in the drawer, but just when you think the weirdness is already cranked up to eleven, Bob can bump it right up to fifteen. Man, when I told Bob about that youtube deal, he really chortled. That's right, you heard me right, "chortled." A word invented by Lewis Carroll as a blend of chuckled and snorted. Bob had spent six months in front of the mirror practicing, and he was good at it. Damn good. Dayna brought a fire breathing demon smashing through the plate glass windows of a church where we had sheltered overnight, and we were away. Little did we know that within five minutes, we'd be in another battle for our lives. Except that this time, it would be for real.
Since every line starts with a capitalized word, it's actually hard to say. I suppose one can make a case either way.
If it were a tag, it would have to start with a lower case letter (unless a proper noun). A tag is part of the same sentence as the dialogue fragment.
Yes, but the word "He" starts a new line, and every word that begins a new line is capitalized in that poem.
I struggle with this every time I write dialogue. It stems from reading other authors who strike me as overusing standard syntax, "said" and "asked". Contrary to what has been suggested, those words do not become invisible for me. I even get tripped by overuse of "the" when I read. I always knew I was unusual, but I can't believe I'm alone in this. Perhaps, it's simply that I am sensitive to the poetry in ordinary prose. Creative tags that promote flow and/or rhythm are perfectly fine in my view.
If the "said" and "asked" tags are overused then indeed they start to become visible -- and irritating. A little use of other tags is ok. but not enough to solve the problem of overuse of the standard tags -- if you used other tags enough to do that then it would itself become irritating. Better is to simply cut a lot of the tags, replace them with beats, or even flip it around: I'm reading Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles at the moment (beautiful writing), and when you posted that comment I looked at how Bradbury does it. The first line of dialog I saw was "he heard his wife say '[...]'" In other words, don't worry about varying the tags. Find ways of doing away with some of them.
"I agree," I said. Actually, I try to do just this whenever possible. Still it's always a struggle to achieve balance - when to have it said, when to leave it be, when to "beat" it into the ground.
I've taken a contrary position in this thread. However, I have been taking on board what has been said. This morning I've written a flash fiction. I've only twice used tags that weren't "said", with one "snapped" and one "shouted". I've made extensive use of beats in dialogue. I've not used tags for some lines of dialogue, but tried to make sure that it's obvious who is saying what. I've also applied many other lessons I've learned over the past two weeks. Both lessons I've learned from here, and from other reading. I think overall this is the best bit of writing I've done yet. That may not be saying very much of course However, even though my two week embargo on posting my own stuff for comment ends tomorrow, I won't be posting it here. I'm so pleased with how the piece has turned out, that I'm actually going to submit it somewhere for consideration for publication.
I use said or asked as a taqg verb most of the time, when I use a tag at all. If I choose a different tag verb, it is not for variety. It's because I wish to emphasize a tone that is not obvious already from context, and I am careful to choose a verb that is consistent with articulating words. These different tag verbs don't disappear into the background like said or asked, and to me that is usually a disadvantage. When I write dialogue, I want the primary focus to be on the dialogue itself. If I wish to reconnect the dialogue to the scene, I favor the use of beats. The primary purpose of a dialogue tag is to identify the speaker. Forcing it to do more usually means a dialogue tag is not what the story really needs at that point.
