The Importance of Speaker Attribution
Speaker AttributionSome writers and editors swear that the right speaker attribution is almost always said. These people argue that the use of a variety of verbs does harm to the writing. For example, Rene Browne and David King, in their book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (2004), claim that “The reason for those well-intentioned attempts at variety don’t work is that verbs other than said tend to draw attention away from the dialogue” (89). In their opinion, the use of a variety is a sign of amateur writing. I respectfully disagree with their position. I believe that whether one uses a variety of verbs depends on what kind of book the person is writing. In fact, most of the time, I would argue, a variety of verbs may be necessary.
To demonstrate my point, I would like to offer an indirectly told short story. It consists only of a few lines. In this very short story, a woman tells the tale of a previous meeting with her doctor to her friend. Here it is:
I met my doctor on the street yesterday. He asked me how I was doing. I complained to him that I had stomach trouble. He wanted to know if I had traveled lately. I told him I did not. Strangely, he inquired at this point if I even had a passport. In my surprise I didn’t know what to say, so I denied it. I lied that I had ever had a passport.
This is an indirect way of telling a story because the conversation is not cited. I highlighted the important verbs to see that their use is necessary to accurately reveal what went on between the woman and the doctor. Now, note how it looks like when I change this to a direct conversation. Here is the direct form:
I met my doctor yesterday.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I have stomach trouble,” I complained.
“Have you traveled anywhere lately?” he wanted to know.
“I didn’t,” I told him.
“Do you even have a passport?” he inquired.
In my surprise I didn’t know what to say, so I denied it. “I have never had a passport,” I lied.
In this direct communication form, most verbs were simply transferred to the end of the line to be used as speaker attributions. The verbs from the indirect communication were not lost, just provided in a different form. Now, the “he said, she said” stylists would say that it is not necessary to keep the speaker attributions when the story is told directly quoting the participants. So, this is the version they prefer:
I met my doctor yesterday.
“How are you doing?” he said.
“I have stomach trouble,” I said.
“Have you traveled anywhere lately?”
“I didn’t.”
“Do you even have a passport?”
In my surprise I didn’t know what to say, so I denied it. “I have never had a passport.”
Certainly, the he said, she said scenario speeds things up. However, this form reveals the poor quality of the conversation when it is turned back to indirect speech. Here is their indirect version of he said, she said:
I met my doctor on the street yesterday. He said how I was doing. I said I had stomach trouble. He said if I had traveled lately. I said I did not. Strangely, he said at this point if I ever had a passport. In my surprise I didn’t know what to say, so I denied it. I said I had never had a passport.
Does it sound sophisticated? Actually, it is not even intelligible. But, even if I correct the grammatical mistake in places, where the word asked should have appeared instead of said,the text still seems flat. In fact, it seems like a colloquial, broken social media creation of a teenager.
The he said, she said scenario may speed up the conversation, but it takes the quality away from it. To repair the problem of the loss of quality, often times, people try to replace speaker attributions by beats, just like I did in the last line: In my surprise I didn’t know what to say, so I denied it. Although this breaks up the flow of the dialogue, the die-hard he said, she said, stylists still prefer this solution over speaker attributions. Here is what they would propose:
I met my doctor yesterday.
“How are you doing?” he said.
“I have stomach trouble,” I said.
He wanted to know more about this trouble. “Have you traveled anywhere lately?”
I told him, “I didn’t.”
He inquired further into the matter. “Do you even have a passport?”
In my surprise I didn’t know what to say, so I denied it. “I have never had a passport.”
Did anything change? Maybe. However, in this scenario the beats have simply become a replacement of speaker attributions transferred to the beginning of the sentences. What the he said, she said stylists miss is that often times they just sneak the missing information back into the text they managed to eliminate in the first place.
The bigger problem is that the he said, she said style carries the wrong analogy the defenders of this style rely on in order to justify its use. The fans of this style often compare the role of the dialogue to a theatre performance. They claim that the use of speaker attribution is like a person running on a stage during a play and asking the audience, “Did you see what the character just did?”: It basically calls attention to itself. However, this is a mistaken idea. Speaker attribution was designed for a purpose: a piece of fiction is not like a theatre. A theatrical performance takes place in a three-dimensional universe where the characters don’t have to stand on the stage and declare, “It is the doctor talking now!” In a three-dimensional universe the actors can stand on the stage and talk because everybody can hear and see them–no speaker attributions are necessary.
However, this theatrical image is not comparable to storytelling. In storytelling, the writer tells the story of something that has already happened or something that has never happened where the three-dimensional theatre strictly exists in the writer’s mind and nowhere else. Writing is a first-person effort where nobody can see those three-dimensional images that are present in the writer’s mind. Unlike the theatre action, which is publically available to all who are present in the room, the writer’s world is privately present; this is a completely different type of world that does not mimic a theatrical, public event. The writer’s job is to translate this private world into the written page for the reader to imagine it. The storytelling is the transfer of images from one person to another without a three-dimensional visual hint.
In this transfer of images, the writer may choose to share more or less of the details of his/her image creation. In certain stories, the writer maximally allows the reader to use as much imagination as the reader wishes or capable of accomplishing. In this case, very few speaker attributions are necessary. For example, the writer can create the line, “I had enough!” and let the reader decide what level of volume the character used to say the line. Since not all readers are created equal, a reader, for example, with a non-confrontational personality will read the line imagining a lower tone of voice than a reader with a confrontational personality who is generally loud in life. This maximal amount of freedom creates a variety of possible interpretations of the characters and the entire novel. However, this could be a double-edge sword where the writer’s intent may be misunderstood. This maximalist approach can potentially backfire, if the writer is not careful.
In other stories, the writer may not want to be maximally generous to the reader (many times to avoid misunderstanding). For example, if the writer creates an atypical character, an atypical situation, and/or an atypical chain of events, the writer might want to restrict the amount of imagination the reader uses while reading story. In this case, speaker attribution becomes necessary beyond the he said, she said. For example, if the writer creates the line, “I had enough!” for an atypical character who responds with an unusual and unexpected level of volume, the speaker attribution becomes essential. There are subtle differences between the interpretations of the following lines: 1) “I had enough!” she cried out. 2) “I had enough!” she yelled. 3) “I had enough!” she howled. These interpretations are carrying slightly different volumes and, hence, slightly different emotions. When the writer wants to be in control of how he/she wants the reader to interpret the line, the use of speaker attribution becomes essential. The atypical character might have a specific emotion that a reader would never guess because the reader would never behave in the manner that this character does. This means that, in this case, the writer needs to play the role that a sound engineer and a cinematographer would in a movie. To create the distance between the reader and the character in certain situations, the writer needs to provide the sound and the picture to the reader even if this sound and picture make the reader uncomfortable. For instance, it might be essential to make the non-confrontational reader uncomfortable when forcing that reader to hear the character yell out on top of his lungs: “I had enough!”
Ultimately, there is no one-size fits all to novel writing. Whether the speaker attribution becomes necessary depends on the type of novel one is writing. Currently, I am writing a novel where a woman in rage is taking revenge on her husband’s mistress. I am using speaker attributions because I want to dictate to my readers how to read her lines in terms of pitch, volume and tempo. I want my readers to become uncomfortable with the crazy woman who at some point decides to shovel horse manure into the mistress’ car. I certainly do not want to have my readers left to their own devices with an atypical character who has nearly lost her mind in the midst of her fury. Sometimes, speaker attributions are necessary to have tighter control of the work. Other times, the writer can just let the readers’ imagination go wild. There is no right or wrong answer to use of speaker attribution. Each writer should just do what works in a particular novel.
Write to M. J. Mandoki
