Spunk & Bite Page 10

  Some writers try to avoid tags altogether, even the simple said. This trend has spread throughout writers’ workshops, where minimalist and screenplay-like styles are imitated and produced. Many writers today—and some editors—feel that dry attribution tags indicate professionalism, whereas more dramatic tags shout “amateur.” And little wonder, given the tendency of inexperienced writers to overdo the inflated verbs and adverbs. A single cachinnated lachrymosely can give attribution a bad name.

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  AVOIDING SWIFTIES AND OTHER HOWLERS

  A lively attribution verb or adverb can punch up key dialogue, make it more precise. But the pitfalls are many. One must avoid the labored, clichéd, and unnecessary—and at all costs, any trace of a pun. Punning tags—such as the one used in the sentence “Fire!” yelled Tom alarmingly— are known as “swifties,” after the adverb-heavy Tom Swift adventure series. You’ll find thousands of them on swifties-themed Web sites. A few appear among winners of the annual Bulwer-Lytton atrocious-writing contest hosted by San Jose State University, to wit: “ ‘My left eye has been slowly shifting over to the right side of my face!’ she floundered.” (Brian Holmes)

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  DRAMATIC STYLE

  Yet there are those writers unafraid of putting some oomph in attribution. They dare to use adverbs, as well as such assertive tags as spat and brayed. And not every such writer becomes the butt of editorial hilarity or a candidate for atrocious-writing awards (see the “Avoiding Swifties and Other Howlers” sidebar).

  Take, for example, the writer of these tags: “ ‘Shoo!’ said Mr. Dursley loudly.” . . . “ ‘No,’ she said sharply.” . . . “ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably.”

  This writer also has her characters snarling, snapping, wailing, and croaking—and doing so coldly, heavily, glumly, sleepily, and so on. But then, what does J. K. Rowling know? Her books have only sold a few hundred million copies in some forty languages. Rowling even breaks the rule that says characters can’t hiss unless their dialogue has sibilant sounds. “ ‘No!’ Harry hissed,” she writes—and, sibilance or not, the “No!” goes down as hissy.

  If such robust attribution should be limited to children’s literature, however, Danielle Steel and the buyers of more than 370 million copies of her novels seem unconvinced. Steel tags her dialogue with gusto. Shake just one of her novels (in this case, Mirror Image), and out like confetti fall such attributions as:

  “You must come with me,” Victoria answered fiercely. . . . “Religion,” she smiled mischievously. . . . “I think that’s disgusting,” she said heatedly. . . . “Neither can I,” he laughed. . . .“Yeah,” he grinned at her. . . . “You cheated,” she accused.

  Primly, blithely, miserably, mysteriously, vaguely, soothingly, nervously, cautiously, discreetly, and frantically—thus do Steel’s characters chide, moan, wail, and bluster their way through their dialogue.

  THE CONFIDENT TAGMEISTER

  Stephen King and others blame inflated tags on lapses in confidence— the fear that otherwise a speaker’s tone and intent won’t come across. Writers should address this fear (after writing their first drafts), and sort out the tags that seem excessive. But excess cannot always be measured against the austere tenets of writers’ workshops. Sometimes the author’s particular tone, or the genre, or the readers’ expectations, call for a vigorous attribution style.

  As I flip through shelves of novels, I find occasional, pumped-up attributions to be perfectly welcome clues as to how characters dished out utterances to one another. Salman Rushdie does not strike me as a writer lacking in confidence; but within four pages of The Satanic Verses, his characters have “conceded,” “admitted, “promised,” “thundered on,” “said jovially,” and “yelled suddenly” what they had to say. With due respect for Elmore Leonard’s reasoning that such “intrusive” verbs and adverbs can distract the reader (he especially hates suddenly), in the hands of a riveting storyteller like Rushdie they seem only to drive the dialogue, like an emphatic drumbeat.

  Often, because speech is nuanced in ten thousand ways, a descriptive verb or adverb is simply a good idea. In an award-winning short story, for example, Hester Kaplan wrote: “ ‘Cold as hell in New York,’ she said hoarsely, as though clots of snow were lodged in her throat.” Absent the adverb hoarsely, I’d have had to conjure the sound of a snow-clotted throat—which I can’t do without choking. Emphatic tags can also provide dramatic counterpoint as they interweave with neutral ones. In this passage from Fay Weldon’s novel Worst Fears, Alexandra faces Leah, her deceased—and deceiving—husband’s colluding therapist:

  “You prurient old cow!” shouted Alexandra. . . .

  “I understand your anger,” said Leah.

  “No one understands my anger!” shrieked Alexandra.

  “This session is at an end,” said Leah.

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  DIALOGUE TAGS THAT MADE THE CUT

  How many zesty dialogue tags are killed by editors? While the shocking numbers may never be known, we can be sure that flocks of the most passionately composed attributions have perished by the blue pencil. Take heart, however, in this selection of live ones that have made it into works of accomplished writers:

  Vladimir Nabokov: observed calmly, observed slyly, enigmatically observed, commented good-naturedly

  John Irving: said miserably, said despairingly, bellowed, wailed, screamed, roared

  Alexander Theroux: giggled, sneered, yawned, brayed

  James Thurber: spat, growled, barked suddenly, asked thickly, said triumphantly

  Mary Higgins Clark: shrieked, screamed, sobbed, yelled, asked abruptly, said hoarsely, fiercely

  Charles Palliser: stammered, urged, breathed, faltered, said ironically, laconically, equably

  Maeve Binchy: said casually, mildly, hastily, asked companionably, haughtily, suspiciously

  Patricia Cornwell: muttered, wept, bragged on, blurted out, inanely said, cautiously went on

  Nicholas Sparks: relented, confessed, protested drowsily

  Jan Karon: crowed, whistled, bellowed, commanded

  Sandra Brown: amended, drawled, squeaked, chorused, retorted defensively, asked belligerently, teasingly

  Janet Daily: hooted, hissed, taunted, raged, challenged, scoffed, emphatically agreed, perversely had to add

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  BOTTOM LINES

  In melodrama, farce, parody, and other tongue-in-cheek genres, dialogue tags can be part of the fun. Go nuts with them. Find fresh terms in the thesaurus—and not just those listed in the “Communicating Ideas” category—to stretch into verbs of expression. For example, from a term in the “Moisture” section of Roget’s: “ ‘I think I’ve had too much to drink,’ he marinated to the ambassador.”

  Outside of such lighthearted genres, allow yourself an occasional, juiced-up attribution for clarity, emphasis, or nuance—unless it

  • repeats what’s already clear;

  • calls too much attention to itself;

  • is one too many to bear;

  • goes against your spare style; or

  • makes you feel amateurish, and for good reason.

  As author Barnaby Conrad pointed out in The Writer magazine, feel free to use descriptive tags when something is said in a manner that contradicts the words—“when a character speaks, as they say in theater, ‘against the line’ (viz: ‘I love you,’ he said savagely).”

  Remember that you can avoid forced speech tags with “action tags”—brief clauses detailing the action that accompanies the dialogue. Instead of the awkward, “ ‘Go, girl,’ she thumbed-up,” you can write: “She raised a thumb. ‘Go, girl.’ ” Or: “ ‘Go, girl,’ she said, raising a thumb.”

  And speaking of thumbs-up performance, if you command an audience anything like Rowling’s or Steel’s—why then, tag your dialogue just as ululatingly as you damn please.

  FIFTEEN

  ENALLAGE: A FUN

  GRAMMATICAL GET

  Among talk show
producers, the corralling of a hot celebrity or headline figure is known as a “get.” President Clinton was a get during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Monica was a get. Gets are gotten by “get specialists.” And who in the entertainment industry cares that get is traditionally a verb? Or who, when calling something “the new fabulous” cares that fabulous made its name as an adjective? All this shifting of function is just more fun (to roll out another shifted noun) in a fun world.

  Writers, in their never-ending quest for fresh locutions, can get some gets of their own by taking advantage of this rhetorical effect. Grammarians call it “anthimeria,” “functional shift,” or “enallage” (a broader term, but my preferred pretty one); it amounts to the turning of nouns, verbs, and adjectives on their functional heads to produce novel usages. Something like this:

  So how can questy writers enallage their way to the big Fresh? On that little how, we could noun and verb you all day.

  Okay, I’ll admit that’s a lot of enallage—and not everything can be stood on its head without a horrific flump. Not all at once, anyway. But in a language amenable to enallage, just about every word seems poised for turning. This grammatical shifting (also called “conversion” or “functional variation”) accounts for tens of thousands of common usages, especially in journalism. Think of the verb rewrite, and how easily it shifts to a noun (“he submitted a rewrite”) or an adjective (“he entered rewrite hell”).

  Why do words keep shifting function? Well, why shouldn’t they, considering that users are the ones shifting them, and that words should serve users—not the other way around? Shifting is broadly embraced in the ever-flexible English language, though sometimes a sudden shift is like a scream of gears.

  An English word does not come to us labeled as a “noun” or “adjective” or any other part of speech. This sobering fact is underscored by Bryan Garner in Garner’s Modern American Usage—a magisterial work for language lovers. Only when a word is used in context does a functional label make sense, notes Garner; however, habits of usage give words the appearance of fixed roles.

  Among Garner’s examples are words traditionally thought of as nouns—limo, mayor, box-office—that newspaper writers have shifted into slangy verbs: “George will be limoed”; “He’s been mayoring in Boston”; “[The film] . . . out-box-officed ‘Jurassic Park.’ ” I offer two other examples, this time from the sports world, where functional shifts are as common as hockey brawls—and just as popular with fans. First, from a piece by Kevin Gleason in the Middleton, New York, Times Herald-Record: “Matsui . . . inside-outed the double down the left-field line.” (italics mine) For those keeping score, that’s an adjective shifting into a verb. It happens every day in the major leagues, known enallagically as “The Bigs.” The second example comes from Mark Wood in Golfonline: “Try to die the ball into the high side of the hole.” (italics mine) Here the verb die was shifted from its usual intransitive function to transitive, enabling it to act on a direct object (ball ). Energetic and useful, this form is now part of the golf lexicon (it refers to the ball’s momentum “dying” at the hole).

  OUTING THE DISCONNECTS

  Do we die the language with all this enallage? No, not our organic, surprise-loving English language. Though a few shifts may raise some, er, aesthetic issues, many help keep our communications playful and engaging. Very few undermine clarity.

  One can barely find an English word that has not undergone some functional variation. Often, over time, the variation displaces earlier terminology, proving more economical or precise. To out someone, for example, has displaced—who can even remember what heap of words? Most shifting occurs gradually, without fireworks; but when the shift is conspicuous, as in mass communications, it can cause all sorts of excitement.

  Disconnect, for example, is an insipid verb that only a utility company can brandish with any force. But toward the close of the last century, disconnect became a hot noun. In every corridor and throughout the mediasphere, someone was saying, “We’ve got a disconnect,” with the accent stylishly on the first syllable.

  And there it was: the little frisson people derive from bending the language. Perhaps in some minds disconnect was simply short for disconnection, the preexisting noun. Word clipping has always been stylish in the vernacular: witness fab, terrif, and the diff. But something else was going on—some bold stroke, some power usage—similar to what happens when a hotel executive calls a branch start-up “a new build” (as opposed to a “rehab”), thus transforming a banal verb into a trendy noun.

  Why is “a disconnect” still more fun to say than “a disconnection”? What makes a functional shift appealing? Is it the power play? The rebellious edge of new and unauthorized usages? Does it have to do with who first makes the shift? Or simply with how snappy and unexpected the shifted word sounds in context? Certainly the effect merits a heed from writers. A functional twist, and bada-boom!—a word gains cachet. It’s like turning a baseball cap backward— or, when it really works, like an electron shift among atoms. A media star says, “there’s no quit in that guy,” and the verb quit explodes as a noun in ten thousand sports and business locutions. Masters Tournament golfers who “gutted it out” were said by enallaging sportscasters to have “no quit” and “no give-up.”

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  USES OF ENALLAGE

  Enallage, or “conversion,” is one of those devices we use daily to spark expression, but without considering its dynamics:

  • “I’ll money you,” we joke to some would-be borrower, shifting the usual function of the noun money to a verbal one.

  • “That’ll cost you five large,” we say smartly, yanking large from its adjectival hangout to serve as a noun.

  • We read a bumper sticker aloud—“I heart New York”—and the quirkiness of the noun-turned-verb induces a chuckle.

  • Or we shift a word from the verbal to the nominal sense: “By the time he left, I needed a good swear”—which is more emphatic than “I needed to swear a lot.”

  Emphasis is what enallage can give us; it draws reaction by shifting the function of a word from that of its usual part of speech to an uncharacteristic function, thereby thwarting the predictable. Some enallage is likely to enter your writing naturally; but now and then an intentional shift gets the desired effect. Examples of such effects include:

  Lyrical force. In many of her evocative poems, Elena Karina Byrne creates startling verbs from such unlikely nouns as bellboy, patience, quayside, and brûlée. One such poem begins:

  Can I, for a moment?

  Dada you to accord something light

  first, sweet you and slow

  you as a canoe, to window you and murmur

  you . . . (—“Sex Mask,” Chelsea 76)

  Authenticity of dialogue. In the slang of rebel subcultures, shifts be cool—as in smack for heroin, blow for coke, kill for marijuana, and other verbs-turned-nouns. Members of the campus culture have tended to “pig” on noun-to-verb shifts—“Like, don’t scrumb on me, dude; I gotta book for the test soon as I meal.” In police-procedurese, the officers “good-cop-bad-cop” the perps, and the perps “lawyer up.”

  Vernacular punch. Prose at any level can get a boost from vernacular shifts, as from an interjection (whoa!) shifting to a noun:

  If it’s a quick, potent, mind-bending shot of Whoa you seek—and I’m talking about pure Whoa here, the good stuff, undiluted by extraneous gadgets or CGI cityscapes—I give you Primer. (—Mike D’Angelo, “Movies,” Esquire)

  Energized proper names. Any name can be made to function as a verb. Adding the suffix -ized is one way, but a functional shift is more dynamic:

  “Halloween would have been harrypotterized this year in any case. Now it’s been osamaed too.” (—“All Hallows Eve, 2001” [Editorial], The New York Times)

  Coinages for nameless entities. Shift a word’s function to denote something unnamed, and voilà—a needed coinage. Philosophy professor Daniel C. Den-net, for example, has introduced bright as a noun re
ferring to a person with a naturalist (as opposed to a supernaturalist) world view. He himself is a bright.

  New grammatical functions for words that need them. Many words, especially new terms, have yet to develop multiple grammatical functions. Paper, for example, already functions as noun, verb, and adjective (the paper said she papered the wall with paper rejection slips); but plastic, as plastic as it might be, won’t stretch into a verb by itself; someone had to help it along with deft enallage, as did author/blogger Lee Klein in “Foiled Plots”: “Ever since my mother pressed and plasticked my umbilical cord, I’ve been a collector.”

  Many intentionally shifted words function best as one-time (or “nonce”)devices, used for effect rather than to revolutionize the language. Most words retain their traditional functions for a reason: people like the way they work. So play with enallage, but don’t get so shifty that your sentences no longer recognize themselves.