Wednesday Wanderings
Posted On December 27, 2018
/ Written by Lindsey Duncan
I haven't been writing as much as I would like, in part because a good chunk of that is editing, which takes more brainpower, and generates additional and undesirable desires to stab something. Seeing as I work around knives, it's best to be cautious. I have actually been contributing writing for a work feature, Kitchen Wisdom Wednesdays, and that's been a lot of fun. I've toyed with posting Foodie Fridays here, but I know myself and I fear I wouldn't maintain it.
In my (leisurely, molasses-esque) editing, I noticed something new. I've had a couple short stories go to press over the past few months, and both editors thought I used too many speech tags and, to a lesser extent, too many action cues connected with dialogue. Now, for me, I often find that's a comment I give other writers in reverse: their dialogue can feel like "talking heads" to me, words floating in space without clear connection to characters.
As I went back through these stories to trim up speech tags, I found I resisted it. It made the characters' speech feel disconnected to me. Somehow, having tags in particular spots made the dialogue feel more grounded, more attached to the character speaking. What I realized is that it comes back to something in my underlying nature. I'm a very kinesthetic person: I experience the world and learn through action, tactile sensation, movement and activity and *doing*. So cutting those ties - via cutting the speech tags - was very disconcerting to me.
To some extent, I still feel as if I make good choices on this topic; I also feel that part of this is stylistic, a writer's way of crafting prose. But this whole experience has taught me to look more closely at the dialogue and analyze, not always listen to the instinct I wasn't even aware of before.