The #1 Common Dialogue Mistake of Authors

ALESSANDRA TORRE, NYT BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Strong dialogue can be crucial in creating compelling scenes, unveiling your characters, and progressing your novel’s plot. In a 2020 Inkers Con workshop, Mitali Perkins taught attendees how to spot and fix seven common mistakes authors make and demystified the process of delivering great dialogue.

In this post, we’ll share the first common dialogue mistake that Mitali shared.

COMMON DIALOGUE MISTAKE #1: USING ANNOYING ASCRIPTIONS

Ascriptions are the little dialogue tag that is attached to a phrase. For example…

“Tell me where you’re going!” she shouted.

Shouted is the ascription. And the ascription’s basic function, per Mitali, is to “help the reader keep track of who’s talking. As a general rule, the reader should not notice those tags.”

How do you keep the reader from noticing these tags? You use invisible ones or skip the dialogue tag altogether. Ascriptions like said or asked are invisible to the reader (that’s a good thing). Words like acknowledged, questioned, shouted, demanded – stand out to readers and bog down the reading process.

If your dialogue is strong enough, you don’t need to indicate “how” the character is saying the words. You can leave off the descriptive ascription altogether. As Mitali taught “When you try to shift the emotion of whatever’s being said to the dialog tag outside of the quote marks, you run into trouble because that means your dialogue isn’t strong enough.”

PRO TIP: REPLACE ASCRIPTIONS WITH ACTIONS

You can also replace an ascription with an action by the speaking character. For example:

“Why are you so frustrating?” he demanded.

can be replaced with…

“Why are you frustrating?” He raked his hands through his hair, tugging on the short strands.

NEXT STEPS:

Read through your latest dialogue scene and see what ascriptions can be removed, downgraded to invisible ones, or replaced with actions. You may need to strengthen some of your dialogue lines to make them more impactful, so that the ascription isn’t needed.

Voila! You’ve given that scene an instant facelift and made it so much stronger!

About MITALI PERKINS – BESTSELLING AUTHOR:

Mitali Perkins has written many books for young readers. She was nominated for a National Book Award, honored as a “Most Engaging Author” by independent booksellers, selected as a “Literary Light for Children” by the Associates of the Boston Public Library, and invited to serve as a judge for the National Book Award and the Kirkus prize.

Mitali was born in Kolkata, India before immigrating to the United States. She has lived in Bangladesh, India, England, Thailand, Mexico, Cameroon, and Ghana, studied at Stanford and U.C. Berkeley, and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

You can learn more about Mitali on her website or you can find her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The upcoming 2024 Inkers Con conference offers dozens of brand new classes (including six craft classes!), Q&As, author discussions and more! Join us in Dallas or online!