A Classic Story with a Classic Writing Flaw

I had shown the page to some of my fellow writers, interested in getting their insights into why a nine-year-old would take such great offence to the way it was written. Of course, the oldest among us praised the book and its formatter for their brilliance (and I don't mean that sarcastically). For a child's book, it was filled with such simplicity to engage the reader. Yet, I tried to remind her that my own daughter (who was within the age bracket that the book was targeted at) hated the saids.

The conversation sort of deteriorated from there and I don't recall exactly what was said. However, the blog post that I had intended to write about this issue had been shelved—until now.

Said is not the problem. It's how the repetitive it sounds that's the issue.

The real issue with this is not how dialogue tags read on the page, but rather how it sounds when translated into audio form. The ears pick up on different things, and with a large portion of the publishing industry turning to audio books, this is something that we, as writers, need to be aware of.

The following recording is a small reading of the page that my daughter had taken great offense to all those years ago (shown in the image above), starting with: "Hullo," said Polly.

Sure, with my accented reading, it's not actually that bad, but I still noticed it. And there was a burning desire to rework the entire thing to get rid of the saids and add more show that forced me to stop.

So much of our world has become immersed into film and TV. We are now a society of multiple generations who are well versed in the visual mediums used for storytelling. And with societal pressures to get faster and do more things at once, audio books have become a perfect compromise between the written and visual forms.

As writers, we need to keep this in mind when crafting our stories. How our stories sound when read aloud could have a significant impact on their success.

Writing good dialogue is a learnt skill.

I have been actively writing fiction since 2008. I have always created stories and understood story structure, but writing prose and dialogue was still new to me. When I started, I wrote my dialogue like it was a play to be performed on stage. I did have a theater background, spending majority of my teen years in the bowels of a dark theater somewhere or on stage under the oppressive heat of the lights. The scripts I was given were just a series of lines, and it was up to me (with some input from the director) to work out how to play those lines on stage. That was how I wrote my early fiction.

Yeah, I had a lot to learn, but I did get there.

The audio snippet below includes what some of my early dialogue writing was like. The he-said-she-said fest is insane and the show is lacking on so many levels. However, I have also included what the current revision of the same passage. The snippet is from the first book in my high fantasy series. It has not been published, as it is sitting in that metaphorical drawer (where it has been for over 3 years), waiting for me to shrug off the debut writer status. But I wanted to share the snippet with you now, so you can see — hear rather — what impact the excessive use of dialogue tags has on audio.

I will one day finished the high fantasy series that the above snippet comes from, but not now. I'm having too much fun writing crime fiction.

The way a book sounds can impact on sales.

There was a time when I was desperate to work out how I could get more reading time in while driving my children around the countryside for their various activities. Audio books seemed to be a perfect solution, but I wasn't sure if it was the medium for me. (I don't actually do well with listening to stories. I tend to zone out. Not good when you're supposed to be focusing on the road you're driving on.)

Anyway, I found a few audio books that tickled my fancy. I turned on the first one... and got less than 5 minutes in before the he-said-she-said fest kicked in, complicated by so much tell. I thought perhaps it was me. (I swear that being a writer and editor has ruined the reading experience for me.) I made my son listen to it. "No mom, it's not just you. That is seriously boring."

Pulled out another one. Same issue. A third had us both racing for the controls to turn it off.

I put on one of the radio plays I had found, a Twilight Zone one, and we were both happy.

And I have never looked at the authors from those three audio books I tried since. I had such a negative impression from the audio book about the nature of their writing that I have no inclination to even consider the printed forms or anything they've written.

That's such a negative reaction to have, and the cause: he-said-she-said fest on audio.

Read your drafts aloud!

One of the best editing tricks that any writer can have in their arsenal is reading aloud. The ears pick up on different things that are so easily overlooked by the eyes. Repetitions of similar sounds. Awkward phrasings that the tongue stumbles over. Voice infliction and accents that are misrepresented on the page. Missing punctuation.

Reading a story aloud is something that I do with every single one of my personal manuscripts—no exceptions. Sometimes, it's read aloud multiple times. Even client work is occasionally read aloud, particularly if I'm struggling to get the rhythm or cadences of a passage.

I feel that this read-aloud practice has meant that my personal writing will happily translate to the audio form with little issues. Getting it published... that's an entirely different topic.