The position of said in dialogues

Dialogue is important for a story. Dialog is a TOOL for an author! It animates scenes. It shows the personality of Character X and Character Y while they’re discussing.

But does it matter if the action is at the beginning, in the middle or at the end?


For example:

Sarah walked into Tommy’s direction. “You stole my EyePhone!”

“Me?” He asked with big, shocked eyes. “Why should I do that?”

“You know why.” Sarah’s face turned red. She looked like a volcano, which was going to erupt.


Does it change anything?

 

Action beats double as pauses in speech. The longer they are written, the longer the implied pause.

Accounting for flow and the sound of repetition, or how snappy you want it to sound, the sooner the better.

If you wait until after a long piece of dialog that needs an action beat, the reader is left wondering who is talking.

So usually, I like it at the beginning, or at the first natural verbal pause.

 

It doesn't matter, except that where you put it changes the rhythm of the narrative. I say put it in the position that sounds best to your ear in terms of the flow of the overall narrative.

 

Honestly, I think it does. It affects the pacing and implies an order to when things are happening. For instance, in your example with Tommy, it tells me Sarah started walking before talking.

 

I think it's also important to avoid repetition when placing a dialogue attribution. But as @John Calligan said, it's also really important that the reader can follow who is speaking. It's important at any time, but especially if the dialogue runs on for a while—even if there are only two people involved.

If the reader blinks at, say, the 5th line of unattributed dialogue between two people, it's easy to get mixed up about who is saying what. So early attribution for clarity's sake is good, but probably try to mix it up a bit. Action beats are great because they add more to the scene, so I like to use them a lot. As John said, they're best placed during natural verbal pauses, or at the beginning of a speaker's contribution to the conversation (again, for clarity). As the OP's example did with Sarah walked in Tommy's direction.

 

I mix it up, all dependent on what feels right at the time. I agree with Jannert that action beats are very important, and I use them way more than "he said" "she said" etc.
After a while you'll just "know" how to use them.

 

Ditto to mixing it up, and if the characters are doing something other than sitting across from one another talking*, I get up and act it out to check the pacing. Then I adjust the tags and beats accordingly.

*In my WIP, the characters shouldn't be sitting still, so there's a lot of acting it out as I write.

 

I am not sure anymore. Got kinda schooled that the best way
to portray dialogue is to follow it by 'action' of some sort, and
the reader can imply the rest of it. Seems using said/say is
not trendy, from the perspective of the ladies at LC group.
Mind you, one is an editor, so it kinda adds a touch of weight
to that discussion.
For me, IDK, since having a wide and varied amount of talky
bits that are implied by vocal range, that say/said is the normal
level of speech, and so thought that it would be good to use it
as way to differentiate and moderate the entire 'vocal' range
of the right d-tag to use for a given situation. It has been suggested
to drop the say/said pretty much entirely, and use descriptors
that enhance the speech (where possible).

So I guess use your best judgement...?

 

Hemingway just writes what the characters are saying and lets the reader assume who is doing the talking by the logical flow of the conversation.

 

I don't think this is accurate, at least not universally. From "Hills Like White Elephants" (the first Hemingway story that came to mind):

"They look like white elephants," she said.
"I've never seen one," the man drank his beer.
"No, you wouldn't have."
"I might have," the man said. "Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything."
​

The first two tags are clearly there to set the order of the conversation, but the "the man said" in the final line isn't necessary for that purpose, and Hemingway still threw it in there. Maybe he thought the line needed a beat?

​

I agree that he's light on dialogue tags (the full text I cut and pasted from is at https://faculty.weber.edu/jyoung/English%202500/Readings%20for%20English%202500/Hills%20Like%20White%20Elephants.pdf, if anyone want to read). And actually, there are times when it isn't clear to me who's speaking, like:

The man called "Listen" through the curtain.
The woman came out from the bar.
"Four reales."
"We want two Anis del Toro."
"With water?"
"Do you want it with water?"
"I don't know," the girl said. "Is it good with water?"
"It's all right."
"You want them with water?" asked the woman.
"Yes, with water."
"It tastes like licorice," the girl said and put the glass down.
"That's the way with everything."​

I've read this story a dozen times at least and still don't know who says "four reales" or why. I'm also not clear who says "It's all right," although I think it's the man. And the lack of narrative between "Yes, with water" (said by the man?) and "It tastes like licorice" is also confusing. Clearly the woman has gone away, mixed the drinks, and returned, but there's no indication of that in the text.

This story is renowned for being a story in which the reader has to figure out the important subtext from the banal text, and maybe Hemingway was trying to create some kind of effect by leaving the dialogue attribution unclear, but it's annoying to me. It makes the story something I can study and respect, but not something I'd read for simple enjoyment. (That's my feeling on Hemingway in general, to be honest)

 

Yes, I know. I was referring to passages like the following from the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls

Then we have this passage from the short story: A well-Lighted Place

That is what I meant. He often employs that no-dialogue tag technique and the reader is expected to infer who the speaker is.

Also, I agree, the technique can cause reader confusion. So one has to be very careful in making sure that the speaker's identity is clear by inserting dialogue tags occasionally.

 

Lets start by taking the concept of MIXING IT UP and throwing that out the window. Also, take the concept of JUST BE CONSISTENT and throw that out, too. Once we've cleaned the shop, we can start to get serious about how to handle dialogue and feed off of the concept of IT VARIED BASED UPON FLOW, which is vague, but closer to true.

Words take up space and they generally imply time, both physically and in terms of wearing the reader out. So, for example, writing this:

Joe paused for thought, then said, "Alright. Open the door, if you want."
is the exact same thing (pace wise) as saying:
Joe rubbed his forehead then nodded. "Alright. Open the door, if you want."

But these two things are not the same thing (pace wise):
"I was meaning to say that--"
"Cut the crap, Joe." Bill smacked the table.
versus

"I was meaning to say that--"
Bill interrupted, "Cut the crap, Joe." (note how saying he interrupted is redundant, unnecessary and provides time/space where we definitely do not want it.)

Pace is god. In dialogue, in particular, it's the father, son and holy ghost.

That said, where you put your thoughts, dialogue tags and action beats (or none at all) is CONTINUALLY TACTICAL. That is to say that good writers consider where and when and how much EVERY SINGLE LINE. As writers mature, they do this second nature, but they do it nonetheless. Notice how none of this relates to consistency or to mixing it up. How do either of those thoughts even relate to saying that tactically this is exactly my intent on this line and for this section of exchange? Hell, you might not mix it up at all, if that coincidentally is the structure that fits the bill.

Let me extend this a tad to a related thought. Look at the two examples above. In one we have Joe pausing or rubbing his head and nodding. In example two we have Bill smacking the table. Those are small things. In the case of nodding, cliché and overdone. If you fill up your work with lots of tiny, relatively meaningless actions, your work is relatively meaningless actions. A work of meaninglessness is itself meaningless. Do you see where I'm going with that?

So, while learning how to use action beats in place of dialogue tags and how to keep the reader moving along at the pace you design by good placement, consider that you might be promoting good mechanics but not delivering content worth reading. That said, this subject never ends and has now become forth dimensional in complexity. Great writers deliver. By that I mean, everything counts. Sometimes it's best to make those five word action beats into three sentence content. That, in turn, will slow pace (usually you want the opposite), meaning that you compensate by more naked dialogue in other places, meaning that you calculate when to go at length, base upon material and intent. See how all of that expands and contracts on your butt, never giving you a moment's peace on this issue. The words CONTINULALY TACTICAL take on even more expansive light. And the terms MIXING IT UP, and JUST BE CONSISTENT, well off the table.​

 

Using said is perfectly fine. Though sometimes said is a little redundant since you already can tell who "said" it by context.