“Name Tagging and Name Dropping,” Dialogue, Part I
By Renee Geffken, Coastal Dunes Branch
Many people (or just me) will decide not to purchase a book full of pages of long paragraphs. This can be off-putting to the eyes and brain. So, we unabashedly return that book to the shelf. If more white space lurked inside, maybe that book would have received more than a cursory glance.
White space includes everything that’s not in the body of text. For some kooky reason, this ‘nothingness’ enables readers to focus better on the content. Imagine staring at a computer screen with three paragraphs of single-spaced text and there isn’t a cursor. That’s scary!
Long sentences/paragraphs will always be necessary as they convey essential information, but repeatedly long stretches of text can be tiresome. Even a character using excessive dialogue can drag a reader down. A copyeditor once told me, “Yes, Renee, we get that Dr. Geffken is a total bore, but does a reader need those five mind-numbing pages to prove your point? It’s best accomplished by showing how the other characters reacted.”
You can control the pacing of your story by using less or more white space. With shorter paragraphs and dialogue, the pace picks up. Longer text slows down that roller coaster, giving readers time to absorb what occurred and input the new information. Each genre uses white space a bit differently, but all writers must remember the eyes and minds of your fans.
To convert a super long paragraph to several short paragraphs, notice how your sentences naturally transition from one area to another. Let’s say, you’re writing about the first car you owned, and you included the following points in a 500-word paragraph: *Learning to drive, *DMV, *your dream car, *the car you actually bought, *your first fender bender (or in my case, the first time I uttered the ‘F’ word), *road trips with your friends, *deciding to sell the vehicle that helped you accomplish so many milestones, and *the next car. Cramming so much history or action into a single paragraph shortchanges those asterisked items of their interesting anecdotes and information—leaving the reader to superficially envision the story. Every asterisked item can be enhanced, requiring its own paragraph—nay, pages. With interspersed dialogue, the story becomes eye/brain-friendly.
When a different character speaks, begin a new paragraph. This increases white space and cuts down on dialogue tags. To summarize, using DIALOGUE creates white space and may entice that prospective reader to buy your book.
“Renee?” asked the editor of Coastal Currents (who is me).
“I get that white space is important, but your article is lacking the Informative aspect of writing dialogue.”
“Um.”
“Isn’t the name of this piece, ‘Dialogue Part 1’?”
“Stay tuned.”
Thanks to Renee Geffken
and the Coastal Dunes website
for providing this two-part series.
See Part II next month.