_______________________________

Last week, I went to a writers club in downtown Raleigh. I’ve been wanting to make connections with local writers, and this seemed like a place to start.

The club met in the corner of a small, independent bookstore. The main reason for our gathering was to write together, but there were three parts to our meeting. First, we introduced ourselves and what we were working on; then we wrote together for an hour; and then we had a final discussion.

During the introductions, I learned quite a bit about the other writers. Most were twenty-something or still in their teens. Most were working on fantasy projects derived either from one of the dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie franchises of the last twenty years, or from a genre I understand as a combination of horror and fantasy. One writer was finishing a collection of poetry.

I wondered how many of the writers working on novels would finish their work. How many of these writers, with some revision, might discover the real essence of a powerful idea that was latent in their first drafts? I wished this for all of them.

And then this week, after thinking about it, I decided not to return to the meeting. Normally, I prefer to write alone. I don’t need the company of others. And that was the main point of the gathering. Many people today do need to do that, to meet in coffee places for writing dates. Writing, or at least the physical act of it, usually happens in isolation. I was okay with writing in company this one time if it meant meeting people, but then last week four people to my left didn’t start writing when the time came for it but kept talking with each other and joking.

And then the music kept playing over the intercom.

I can’t write to music. I concentrate on it too much. I think about its form and chord progressions and then the lyrics. I need silence when I write. The only artist I’ve ever been able to write to with any success is Pat Metheny.

So I probably won’t be back. I’ll continue to look for connections, of course.

However, listening to the projects they were working on got me thinking about imitation, the sort of practice that most beginning writers do. The trick with this is to choose the models that demonstrate things that are done well and then learn from those examples.

In my own aspirations, I certainly started out as an imitator. When I was 18, I was told to study the writing of Ernest Hemingway. So I did. Though I’ve heard from many people over the years who didn’t think that imitating Hemingway or even reading him was a good idea, I did learn some things.

On the positive side, reading Hemingway closely, especially his use of dialogue, taught me something about observing people and listening to how they talk. I became aware of and began to avoid cliches and overstatement. On the negative side, I learned to also avoid happy endings and sentimentality. I should add that I did not imitate the writer’s heavy drinking.

In high school, I’d read a lot of fantasy and science fiction. But reading Hemingway, I became practiced at setting up situations in which something unstated was bothering the character, but they would never mention it and carry on as though nothing was wrong.

After a while, I reached a point of diminishing returns. I realized I was becoming practiced in the art of the avoidance of things, and I began to wonder if that was what Hemingway had done. In creating a scene, in introducing characters who were avoiding being honest with each other, avoiding deeper concerns in order to sound civil, I was engaging in something as dishonest as sentimentality. And then, after a certain point, I realized that I was not only practicing avoidance; I had reached a point where I couldn’t write emotion at all. I had overcorrected. In trying to avoid sentimentality, I had become incapable of expressing sentiment.

My sense of invention was also becoming limited. I found that I was actually writing what could easily be scenes in a Hemingway novel, and I started to find this flattening. Many of his ideas and situations dealing with war or with individuals in situations of conflict that lead to someone dying came from his own experiences and character. His stoic idea of grace under pressure is certainly inspiring, but I hadn’t really ever seen much of it.

My correction was to read other writers, and I did this, starting with Jane Austin and Flannery O’Connor. I began to be interested in how a character’s obsessions could be a spiritual way of approaching character in new situations.

I also read other writers.

And I was relieved to find that I was not alone in the imitation trap I’d made for myself. Hemingway also went through this with his beginning phase.

Early on, he read the stories of Ring Lardner. I read these stories also, and they have some charm and influence. His stories are told in the first person narrative voices of the street wise of roughly 1910, with slang and clipped phrases thrown in. Here’s an example:

Well, Jim would set there a w'ile without opening his mouth only to spit, and then finally he'd say to me, "Whitey,"--my right name, that is, my right first name, is Dick, but everybody round here calls me Whitey--Jim would say, "Whitey, your nose looks like a rosebud tonight. You must of been drinkin' some of your aw de cologne." (Lardner)

This passage, from a popular story called “Haircut,” shows the colloquialism Lardner practiced, probably something he got from reading Mark Twain. Hemingway wrote early stories never published but later collected that sounded just like this. Taken to the extreme, we might call characters who always talk like this cads—or posers.

Later, Hemingway met Sherwood Anderson and then went on to Paris, where he met people like James Joyce and Ezra Pound. He continued to write in ways that are close to human speech, but he developed a better style that was simple and expressive and not so mannered as his imitations of Ring Lardner had sounded.

I currently view imitation as important and inevitable. It is limited, or it can become limiting, but it also might be our gateway into our own ideas. Long traditions of imitation exist in all of the arts. Every composer I’ve ever listened to has shown this. Beethoven’s first two symphonies follow without variation or divergence the classical sonata form that Haydn Symphonies assumed, though there is something more original lurking and moving in some of the orchestration. Early Mozart piano pieces come directly from one of Bach’s sons.

Those writers I met at the writing club a week ago are following the dream. They might keep working on their fantasies, and the only suggestion I would make would be that they also challenge themselves with new approaches. They might go to new writers outside of the genres they love. They might read authors who offer new combinations or ways of thinking about the problems they are working on. I’d recommend they read some of George Saunders’ stories. He’s writing about our current suburbs with a vision they might learn from. They might look for new teachers who help them to find new approaches.

Most of us follow what we love. Dropping fantasy, for some, is a deal breaker. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a contradiction here worth considering. We might try keeping our heart for what we love but also exploring new avenues with the purpose of doing what we love more successfully. It’s all in the commitment.

I hope you have a great month. Be safe and pay attention.

************************************

Works Cited

Lardner, Ring. “Haircut.” Classic Short Stories. 11 June 2026. https://www.classic shorts.com/ stories/haircut.html

Yellow

I thought you were the yellow monarch

and you caught up to me walking.

And then you went ahead, but I later caught up

and then again you went ahead, as if to say,

Who is slow now? But how you knew

where I was going, never having come along ‘

before, when I’d leave the house for an hour

and how you could finally join me walking

with wings freeing you from your heart and legs

leads me wading toward mystery with no legs

though I think I always saw your wings hidden

in your eyes, and now I’m going somewhere

I don’t know and maybe not going at all,

following this walk a butterfly has outlined.

***********************************************

This month, I wanted to focus on a technique used in writing dialogue that is of interest to both fiction and nonfiction writers.

The technique, called the dialogue beat, doesn’t get much attention. Many writers don’t use them or think about them that much, though using them can improve scenes of dialogue by providing sensory and character details and even creating the feeling of subtexts implicit in scenes. Instead, more writers, especially many beginning writers, will focus more on what are called dialogue tags.

To be clear about these terms, the following passage demonstrates how the dialogue beat and the dialogue tag or attribution are used in a dialogue:

Jake picked up his crowbar. “You are free to look elsewhere,” he said.

The first sentence, “Jake picked up his crowbar,” is the dialogue beat. It shows a character doing something. When used in the line where a character is about to speak, either at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end after a line of dialogue, the dialogue beat can create a visual impression.

The other item, at the end of this passage, “he said,” is the dialogue tag or attribution. This is what many writers, especially many beginning writers, will focus on, even changing “said” to a verb like “growled,” usually thinking that it creates more expressiveness in writing.

I suppose this choice is considered a matter of taste, but this is not something I would do with conversation tags in my writing. With the character already gripping a crowbar, the passage has enough menace expressed in the dialogue beat. The expressive dialogue tag is not going to add much to it, other than to cause Jake to seem like a dog.

The need persists among many writers to spice up their scene writing by relying on expressive dialogue tags in conversations. Instead of writing, “‘I don’t really know,’ he said,” they will use a less generic verb to convey how the character said it: “‘I don’t really know,’ he droned.”

Of course, “droned” here is a more descriptive word than “said,” but when used in the conversation tag it doesn’t add anything. What the expressive dialogue tag does is to cause us to stop reading at the word “droned” to think about how the line, “I don’t really know,” was droned. If the word were the usual dialogue tag, “said,” I’d immediately move to the next line to see how the other character responds. I’d keep reading, allowing the dialogue to unfold. But instead, I’m stuck trying to imagine how the line before it should sound.

Consider the following scene, written with a heavy reliance on conversation tags to render it expressively:

William walked into the room and noticed the box of chocolate covered raisins on the coffee table where Pete was sitting and cupping some of the chocolates in his hand.

“Someone is going to have to tell Jennifer,” William tensed.

“I will,” Pete yawned, blindly blinking and holding some of the candy.

“Really?” William spit. “Are you sure? I mean…” William hesitated.

“You mean what?” Pete exclaimed.

“I think we should tell her father about the other car first,” William explained. “I have some questions for her, and I’d like her father to be there.”

“Okay,” said Pete, more interested in the chocolate raisins in his hand.

“Does it matter to you that she knows?” William interrogated.

“I don’t know,” he droned. “Go ahead then. You can be the one to tell her,” Pete resolved.

“Okay. I will,” William said conclusively.

This passage might seem exaggerated, but it really is close to what I’ve read in some workshops by writers who believe that these expressive dialogue tags give spark and variety to the dialogue. But as I think this scene shows, a lot of work is being expected from the dialogue tags that they cannot deliver on. When we look at them, most of them are like the first one, which tells the reader that William tensed up. The second one tells us that Pete yawned as he spoke. Saying anything while yawning is not easy to do. A deeper problem is that nothing in the actual spoken lines sounds like tension or boredom or indifference.

Maybe the worst use of the dialogue tag appears when William replies with “‘Really?’ William spit.” Yes, the tag line claims that he spit. But what he says, “Really?” does not sound like the “sp” sound we associate with spitting. Maybe he’s saying something in an exaggerated manner, but we can’t tell.

We have already spoken about the use of “droned,” but we might add that the last two conversation attributions, “Pete resolved” and “William said conclusively” are unnecessary. We already can tell by the paragraphing who is speaking. And the tags do not show us how their lines are spoken. We have no sense of their interaction with each other.

Finally, we might guess from what is said that there seems to be some kind of a subtext going on with how Jennifer should be informed, but it isn’t something we feel. The exaggerations in the way the lines are tagged feel almost like a joke. They do not help to show the two characters somehow sharing a secret about another person not in the dialogue.

The Rule about Dialogue Attribution

Again, the dialogue tag (he said/ she said) functions solely as an indicator of who is speaking. That’s what we look at it for. If adverbs or more expressive verbs are added to it, the conversation tags will fail in their main mission and draw too much attention to themselves. Two exceptions to this might occur when a character whispers or shouts a line. Then “he whispered” or “he shouted” seems appropriate.

What I want to suggest is that if we rely on dialogue beats instead of conversation tags, something different can happen. Too demonstrate, here’s the same brief exchange given above, but with the heavy conversation tags replaced by generic tags and dialogue beats:

William walked into the room and noticed the box of chocolate covered raisins on the coffee table where Pete was sitting and cupping some of the chocolates in his hand.

“Someone is going to have to tell Jennifer,” William said.

Pete smelled the chocolates in his palm. “I will.” He picked one chocolate out and put it to his lips.

“Really?” William shifted to his right foot and glanced at the box of raisins. “Are you sure? I mean…”

Pete seemed to be looking at the floor in front of William as he chewed. “You mean what?”

“I think we should tell her father about the other car first. I have some questions for her, and I’d like her father to be there.”

Pete nodded. “Okay.”

“Does it matter to you that she knows?”

“I don’t know. Go ahead. You can be the one to tell her.”

“Okay.” William continued to look Pete in his eyes, which seemed not see any object in the room. “I will.”

This scene is stripped of context, of course, but we can still get some sense from the way the two are interacting that there is a subtext here involving Jennifer and her father. We get the sense that William wants to take control of the larger situation. He may even be impatient about it. We also might be able to see Pete’s blindness in his smelling the chocolates and looking at the floor near where William is standing and also with William’s observation that Pete’s eyes seem not to be in use, not involved with anything in the room.

The dialogue beat can help to create the physical presence of characters. It helps with the old creative writing workshop admonition to “show and not tell,” by allowing us to show the characters interacting.

This scene is not great, but it does demonstrate some of the advantages of the dialogue beat over the heavy use of dialogue tags. Something else the dialogue beat enables writers to render is point of view. In the second rendering above, most of the dialogue beats given are from William’s point of view. He sees the candy on the end table. He sees Pete cupping and smelling the candy. He sees how Pete’s eyes seem to show something that he might be mistaking for a lack of involvement.

Sometimes, when I’m trying to write a scene that involves people in dialogue, I struggle with how to use dialogue beats. This is especially when I’m still getting to a place where I can understand my characters, and I wish there were a short cut, say, a book of observations, you know, sort of like we have the Harper Book of Quotations for people who don’t have time to go back over their reading or a Roget’s Thesaurus, for easy, at hand synonyms for people who want to avoid verbal repetition. I often feel or notice when public speakers use the Harper Book of Quotations that they haven’t really read the author they are quoting. One pastor I used to love to listen to when we lived in Michigan quoted Ernest Hemingway in his sermon, and I knew. I just knew. That was from Harper. He hadn’t ever read Hemingway, not even The Old Man and the Sea.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, there isn’t one great book of observations I’m aware of that has been produced to help writers with the dialogue beat, and that is probably a good thing. Instead, what I fall back on is reading the writers and poets who do observe carefully. What separates writers is more often not only their ability to notice the world around them, but also the range of their observations. It should be noted that many writers will not rely heavily on either of these devices. Paging through Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, I notice that the use of the dialogue tag "he said/she said” predominates. Ellison relies on this. Speaking is an important element in this novel, where the young narrator is elevated by his ability to speak and used by the Communist Party to reach other young black men. But Ellison does not exaggerate this. He uses the generic tag over and over again.

Turn to Hemingway and we see little use of the dialogue beat, and we also notice the conversation tag, “he said/she said” being used and then dropped after a few lines into a dialogue between two people. The reason he drops them is because they are not needed. We can tell who is speaking, and he wants us to focus on the dialogue itself.

Obviously, writing good characters is at least one half of what it takes to tell a good story. Though many writers focus on plot as the main half, it is characters who usually involve us in caring about what is happening between point A and point F on a plotline, and they should stay with us, make us think about them, keep us returning to a story.

One of the more subtle ways to detail a strong sense of character will come in scenes of dialogue and interaction. These are also places where writers can miss a great opportunity by doing the wrong thing. But when used sparingly, within a consistent use of point of view, the dialogue beat will convey character, reveal various shades of tension or emotion, and especially, hint at subtexts beneath what is being said. Perhaps equally important, it makes us focus as readers on the actual lines of dialogue. It serves as a better method for conveying a conversation than freighting the conversation tags with adverbs or expressive verbs. This is the one case where the generic, in he said/ she said, is preferable to the brand name.

****************************************************

Two weeks ago, I drove to Atlanta to attend the Popular Culture Conference. I had the opportunity to participate in two days of panels of readings by poets. I had a wonderful time and was greatly encouraged by the connections I made and the great poems I was able to listen to. I’m looking forward to more opportunities like this.

I hope summer arrives soon where you are. Stay safe and healthy. I hope you are well.