Writer's Workshop: Stage Directions for Floating Heads · 1:36am Dec 3rd, 2015
Hey, everypony! How are things? Crazy finale, huh? Anyways, here's another topic that's been fluttering about in my mind. I've talked about dialogue tags in the past, but let's go more in-depth and look at how to do them right.
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So, quick recap: a dialogue tag is that thing that follows a bit of dialogue to to tell you who said it and how they said it. Like this:
"Welcome to the club," said the doorman.
The problem is, there's only so much variation you can do to that formula. You can flip it, put it before the dialogue or in the middle of the dialogue... that's about it. So what can we do instead? You were probably taught the first method in school: replace "said" with a more descriptive word.
"Welcome to the club," greeted the doorman simply.
Now, that sentence is stupid. It's obviously a greeting--it has the word "welcome" right in it--so you're just being redundant. And it's clearly pretty simple of a statement, so again, "simply" is redundant. In most cases, "said" is perfectly serviceable. Why use "shouted" or "cried" or "whispered" or "quipped" when you can convey that just fine in the dialogue itself? This has two names: either Said Book-ism, after a real product called "said books" that were meant to give you all those synonyms for "said," or Tom Swifties, after the classic jokes like this:
"But I don't want to be crucified!" Tom said crossly.
Okay, but now we're right back where we started: using "said" for everything. Here's another super-easy method: just cut the tag entirely! Do whole conversations like that:
"Good morning, sir."
"Good morning."
"Is everything all right?"
"Just fine, Frederick."
"That's good to hear."
"Hey, guys, what's up?"
"Nothing much."
...Wait, I'm confused. Who just said that? This dialogue is really confusing without saying who's saying what or what's going on during the conversation. It's like the dialogue is just coming out of some talking heads floating in a featureless room. This is the Floating Heads problem. We need more going on than just the back-and-forth. It's super-boring, like a cheap movie or TV show that sticks to shot-reverse shot for all its conversations.
So we don't want to say "said," but we can't use synonyms, and we can't leave it empty. Let's put action in there instead!
"Good morning, sir." Frederick waved to James as he walked by.
"Good morning." James waved back and walked over to the pool.
"Is everything all right?" Frederick frowned and walked over to where James was standing.
"Just fine, Frederick." James shrugged and twiddled his thumbs.
AAAARGH! Just writing this is killing off brain cells. This is boring with a capital B. Yes, having the movements of the characters helps to a certain extent, but most of these movements don't matter to any significant degree. Remember my cardinal rule: Write what's important. All of this waving and walking and thumb-twiddling... it's really not important at all. I call this problem Stage Directions, first because it looks like the stage directions for a play, and second because it's a reference to a Zero Punctuation episode. Getting to the first reason, a text-based format doesn't need as much blocking as a visual medium like a play does because the readers will automatically do that in their heads. We do need it if the position of the characters is important, but otherwise keep it to a minimum.
So... what do we do? We don't want to say "said," we can't do Tom Swifties, we need to avoid the Floating Heads, and we shouldn't overdo the Stage Directions. What's left? Well, let's look at some of my favorite writers to see what they tend to do.
“But...” I tried to find some way to explain why she was wrong, but was having a hard time coming up with a good counter to all her facts and logic. Compared to everything she said, something like ‘but I don’t want to have a kid’ just sounded really lame and insufficient, even though that was what the issue really boiled down to.
While I fumbled for an answer, Fluttershy continued to bull over me with her brutally effective gentle nurturing. “Cloud, why don’t you sit down for a few minutes and think this through. Here, let me make you some nice, calming tea, and then we can talk this over.” ~Chengar Qordath, The New Life of a Winning Pony
Before she could say a word, Twilight blurted out, “Can I have a little time to do some research first, Princess. I mean Celestia. I mean… Please?”
After a brief snort of laughter, Celestia leaned down and rested her horn alongside Twilight's, adding a brief and almost motherly lick across her former student's nose. “Breathe, Twilight. This is not a test. I merely want to hear in your own words what you think I am.” ~Georg, On the Natural Rise and Fall of Celestial Bodies
“Oh, I suppose that’s fine,” Akita said stoically, but the look in his eyes said he was more than a little disappointed.
“They’re very good, though,” Basenji said, hoping that a good boost to his fatherly pride might make him feel better. “She’s mastered classical structure in very short order and she’s doing some interesting experimental things with her prosody.”
Akita furrowed his brow, his tail thumping slowly on the ground behind him as he tried to parse Basenji’s assessment. Basenji had seen the look before. His family had produced a long line of drummers – many of them powerful and prolific – but even in such a line there were dogs who had little interest in scholarly pursuits.
“I see,” Akita nodded, his long tail swishing happily behind him. “She is my daughter, after all.” ~King of Beggars, Twilight Sparkle of the Royal Guard: Rising
Princess Luna took a step back, indignant at Pinkie’s scolding expression. “Little One, I would never let a foal suffer from a terrible nightmare!” she protested, stamping her hoof against the ground. She turned her head around and mumbled, “Though I am growing very weary of his dreams starting with being utterly horrid towards yo—" She stopped herself and sighed. "For once, I cannot wait for a pony to grow up and stop believing in me so I do not have to enter his slumbers ever again.”
Pinkie looked satisfied. “Okie-dokie! I believe you! Nopony deserves nightmares, not even meanies like Dipsy Drops, right?” ~Monochromatic, The Enchanted Library
So what do all of these have in common? I tried to cherry-pick as best as I could, but you'll still see a lot of the things we talked about: some Tom Swifties, some stage directions. (They even have a ton of my dreaded nemesis.) I know I said not to do those, but these guys pull it off. So what makes it work? Here's my answer: emotion. With these dialogue tags, we're seeing into the minds of the characters. Cloud Kicker is confused and upset; Celestia is calm and motherly; Akita is stoic, then happy; and Luna goes through a whole range of emotions. Stories are special because they have that twofold sight: they can see the characters' physical presences as well their emotional statuses. Blending those two together gives us that unique feel that only stories can give us. It is, in a word, metaphor.
So how do we keep our writing from falling into the boring, repetitive traps? We must keep looking for the emotion in the conversation. If you have a POV within them, say it directly; if not, use physical actions, clear dialogue, and maybe the occasional Tom Swifty here and there to bring the emotion out. What you don't want to do is put in movements or Tom Swifties just to "spice up" the dialogue tags. Always, always write what's important. If you have nothing to add to the dialogue, don't add anything. But if you have just the thing to bring out the emotion in the scene, put in something to give the dialogue some flair!
And I thought you were going to use one of my favorite "Deer in the headlights" sections out of that story.
"Don't forget earth ponies," said Spike. "With all those big bulgy muscles, they could hurt somepony real bad if they got angry." He poked Green Grass in the stomach and listened to the hollow growl of hunger in response. "Plus they'd eat up all the flowers."
Crosswind blew out a sigh that threatened to send her new writing quill across the room. "Fine! I get it. Everypony can be dangerous in the right circumstances. I'll invite every dragon, pony and griffon when we get married."
"We?" asked Papercut, nearly dropping his quill and spilling ink over the bottom of the schedule.
And then there's a wonderful story named Twilight Sparkle Gets a Free Salad
“And you,” Celestia said, turning on Twilight. Her face was anything but pleased.
Twilight tried to make herself as small as possible. A rain of sparks fell from a nearby light fixture to scatter against the floor. “Salad?” she asked, levitating the salad out toward Princess Celestia.
Soft. Happy. Forgiving. All of these words failed to describe the way Celestia looked at Twilight Sparkle.
3588580
Thank you a gazillion for showing me that story. Now I'm at 100 favorited stories! Woo!
Heh. This is the area of writing I currently despise the most. I often end up trying too hard or not hard enough to sprinkle in versitle dialog to replace 'said'. Sometimes I'll just lay down a list of dialog to get past the scene and would come back later to fix it up.
I must ask: how much of a writing sin are the Floating Head dialog bits? I understand it is a big no-no for scenes with more than two characters. But what about scenes with just two characters? Is it okay in any form then, perhaps for snap responses?
Side note, I did get a good chuckle out of the first quote from Chengar Qordath. The very first thing to cross my mind when Fluttershy said the name 'Cloud' was Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7. Then the fic in my mind took a very different turn from what I assume it actually is.
3796828
The best solution is to do a little bit of everything. The most important part, really, is to keep the regular pattern of action-reaction (or scene-sequel, if you prefer). In between the dialogue, have the characters perform actions, then have another character react to it. That's what I was trying to show with the four examples. Like in Chengar Qordath's, it starts with Cloud Kicker's reaction, then Fluttershy's next action. Georg's, on the other hand, is an action first, then Celestia's reaction, then a subsequent action.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
3796884 I think I do indeed. Thank you. That question mainly came from a conversation with another writer who made it sound like the Floating Head way of dialog trade was a 100% no-no. Figured I'd ask just to make sure. Again, thank you. All of this has been very informative.
3797078
You can do floating heads, provide it's clear who's who. There are a couple of good rhetorical reasons why you might want to do that. One thing it does is make the characters feel faceless and bodyless, very conspiratorial, like this. Ender's Game does that at the start of each chapter with the scheming adults talking in their back rooms. The other thing "floating heads" does is make the conversation feel like it's happening really quickly. As a rule of thumb, the longer it takes to read the text of the story, the more time the reader will think has passed in-story, and vice-versa. So if you have a bunch of really quick dialogue lines with no text in between them, we'll think they're talking really quickly. This is how I would model Applejack and Big Mac's conversation in "Filli Vanilli."