The Conan Doyle Dialogue Method?

I'm writing a mystery novel, and I'm kind of using the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle as a blueprint for my writing structure. However, I've noticed very few writing resources cover his methods; this is one of the reasons I'm drawn to his "blueprint." In particular, (and the subject of this thread), I'm trying to get a proper grasp of how he wrote dialogue. His unique dialogue style has always fascinated me, and yet it's so unique that I've had a lot of trouble finding any resources that accurately explain his dialogue style in enough detail.

The basics are that he completely omitted prefixes, (such as he said," or she said,"), save for when the dialogue chain begins. Then the lines were just "dialogue character 1", "dialogue character 2." He expected that the reader is of sound enough mind to tell the difference, since the flow obviously goes back and forth from one character to the other in each line.

Were I'm having difficulty is the more nuanced dialogue chains, such as where 3 or more characters are involved.

Does anyone know of any resources that dive into the Conan Doyle writing style?

 

I don't have any resources to offer, but I can perhaps offer some terminology that will help in your search?

What you describe is not a prefix. It's a dialogue tag. Dialogue tags are themselves a kind of attribution. A beat is another kind of attribution that eschews directly indicating who spoke, and instead implies the nature of the speaker by giving a seperate action attributed to the speaker in the same paragraph, making use of the One Speaker Per Paragraph™ rule.

You are describing dialogue without attribution, which, as you mention, is easy enough to deploy when it's just an A-B conversation. You're looking for ways to do it with an A-B-C (or more) conversation.

Dialogue without attribution - try giving that a search.

 

The best resource for studying A C Doyle is his writings . He was very prolific, over a long period of time . Most People are familiar with Sherlock Holmes stories. But he wrote many short stories and books that were not related to his Holmes work. I don't think Doyle had a distinctive writing style and the style he did have , changed over the years . The early short stories did use he said and would often add a bit extra like , Said Cyprian , shaking his head gloomily .
Doyle was a self taught writer and wrote as an amateur for many years . He liked to write in a naturalistic and popular style of the day .

 

I've come to adopt a similar approach. As its taxing on me to always be putting "he said" or some variation after every statement. I think assuming the readers intelligence so far as to be able to distinguish the characters is noticeable and appreciated. I think though that that's just common maturation as a writer.

I think if you're average reader can read dialogue between 3 or more people and can distinguish them without attribution then that's a huge testament to your prowess with character creation and development. Something I think all writers should aspire towards, for sure. Though I don't think complete and total absence of all attribution is a good thing. I think it has its place but to have a dialogue and you and your reader are able to definitley say "Okay, that's Carl and that's Brad" etc. Is an indication of great writing.

 

Correct, Doyle never wrote an entire story devoid of attribution. Usually there's a little at the beginning of the conversation to establish the setting of the conversation. There's also nothing wrong with the odd "he said," for a one off sentence of dialogue, (yes, these do exist, and Doyle wrote a few of them.)

We're all hitting on the value of his method, and I still find it amazing that over the course of the 90 years since his death so few writers used his dialogue method, (at least to the degree he himself used it.) At the same time, it probably lends itself particularly to the mystery genre, where you might expect a higher level of reading comprehension considering the puzzle constructing involved in writing a good mystery.

 

That's an interesting point. Maybe a kind of quark that lends itself to mystery writers, whether consciously or not.

 

I wouldn't say what Conan Doyle did was unique.

Most of us omit dialogue tags to a greater or lesser degree. I do it all the time. A rough guide is to use a beat or a dialogue tag once every approximately three sentences to remind or clarify for the reader who is talking.

And vary your tags. Sometimes, instead of saying something, Holmes ejaculates. He ejaculates 6 times during the stories. Watson ejaculates twice as much as Holmes.

Crude humour aside, looking at a few short passages here:
http://thetaleofsirbob.blogspot.com/2013/07/watson-and-other-excitable-characters.html

Conan Doyle does use tags and beats approximately once every 3-4 lines of dialogue.

 

As @Naomasa298 points out beats are a great alternative to tags and aid dialogue scenes featuring more than two.

A crude example of how to use a beat to indicate a third character speaking:

“You spilt my drink!”
“Calm down. It was an accident.”
“Yeah, an accident you’re gonna pay for!”
Pete stepped between the two men. “Come on, guys. We’re all adults here.”

 

A

And not a tag in sight.

 

The other part of it is creating such a unique voice for each character there won’t be much of a question about who’s speaking. If the voices aren’t individual enough, you may need to reevaluate if your characters are individual enough.