Don't worry. I'm not a week behind. Since both Bailey and I had a busy last week, we decided to do First Friday on, well, the second Friday for this month. Just go with it. First Friday is a blog thingamajig my dear friend and CP Bailey and I started as a way to encourage us to blog more frequently, with the other goal being to enjoy said blogging.
Today's topic (thanks Twitter for the feedback!) is Pet Peeves of the writing kind. In particular, over blocking and the overuse of dialogue tags.
I know we all can relate to the dream-sequence-as-introduction and the describes-self-in-mirror loathing. Those two things definitely land on my writing-related-shit-that-pisses-me-off lists. Since we all already feel the unhappiness in those areas, I decided to focus on two other pet peeves of mine:
1) Over Blocking.
Example One: He stood. He walked across his room to his door. He opened his door. He walked down the hall. He saw his dog drinking of the toilet. He kept walking and turned down the hall. He reached the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee.
Example Two: The brick floors under his bare feet made him want to jump back in bed, but instead he made himself march to the door and down the hall. Slurping told him the dog had found the toilet again, but he beelined for the sizzling coffee pot before he even thought about dealing with the dog.
How does example one make you feel?
Ok, so 2 isn't a great example, but it works for my point.
Blocking is, essentially, what your character is doing. It's the actions and movements (walking, crossing the room, opening the door etc). Writing needs blocking. Blocking gives us context for characters and our settings, and how characters and settings interact with one another and themselves. Without it, we would have lots of dialogue and facial expressions and exposition. We would also be pretty confused. Blocking has a purpose, and sometimes it can be required to set context, and other times it can help add layers to a scene.
The problem becomes when we get all this stiff, telling blocking movements instead of showing. See example one. Sometimes, brief telling blocking works. We don't need major detail every time a character walks across his room for example. Too much of that, though, is when things fall flat (and annoying) and tend to tell more than show. Example two gets us from the bedroom to the kitchen with (a little) more showing (we can figure the floors are chilly, and we get more of a feeling for him, the frequency of the dogs toilet-drinking etc). I picture stick figures in example one, and, in the very least, slightly more dimensional clothed stick-figures in example two. If you think about characterization, senses and showing while blocking, it can help provide more natural-feeling choreography to the scene.
PS. I got really worked up over blocking. I will be writing a post complete on good blocking.
2) Over Dialogue-tagging
While I'm a little more lenient on an overuse of "said" a million times in a dialogue scene, since readers tend to almost ignore that word, seeing dialogue tags when they aren't needed irks me. Also, dialogue tags that are not "said" can get to me unless a) they are used sparingly b)the author is the shit no matter what c)the tag fits the character or scene perfectly. Anyway, while an overuse of creative tags can be irksome, my main point in this peeve is simply overusing the dialogue tags in general, when they aren't necessarily.
Let's pull some logic here:
A) The dialogue should give us an inclination to the character. This doesn't always happen, of course, but there are times when we can figure out the character based on what he/she is saying.
B) If you have only two characters talking, and you're blocking (see what I did there) and whatever else makes sense and isn't jumping all over the place, then we don't need a "it said" (the "it" was just for Bailey- go read her peeves after this ;) ) after every piece of dialogue. THERE ARE TWO PEOPLE. We can figure this out.
C) If you have dialogue followed by an action, see above. Example:
L writes down a sentence with an ambiguous pronoun.
B grabs her by the collar of shirt and begins shaking her. "Ambiguous pronouns must die!"
I promise, I'm not going to be like "Who the eff said that?"
D)
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," her friend replied.
"I hate butterflies," she said.
The other girl said, "I know."
"They're so creepy with wings and shit," she said.
"Right," her friend said.
"I also hate goats," she added.
"Goats or demon goats?" she said.
She said, "Both."
HOW ANNOYING IS THAT? I can't even continue the example. Also, yes, I know there is nothing but dialogue there so it's not a good example, but that's the point. Even if we blockified and facial-expressionified and leveled up that scene, all the tags would still be hair-pulling worthy.
What are your pet peeves?
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