Adverbs can be your friends WAS: Re: The Return of Tom Swift

[junediamanti]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Haggridd" 
<jkusalavagemd at y...> wrote:
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Amy Z" <lupinesque at y...> 
> wrote:
> >> The only liquid you need to drink is water, but would you 
seriously 
> want to forgo fresh-squeezed orange juice, ice cold milk, coca-
cola 
> classic, an agg cream (you New Yorkers know what I mean), a dry 
> martini, single malt scotch, lapsang souchong tea, espresso, 
> cappucino, lemonade, Dr. Brown's Black Cherry soda, Killian's 
Irish 
> Red beer, draft Guiness stout, or scumble? (For you non-Discworld 
> readers, scumble is made from apples-- well, mainly apples.)

Yes, but a good dialogue writer can add the (genuine) flavourings to 
the speech itself, whereas adverbs are more like a fake essence.  
Think fine vintage claret as opposed to wine flavouring for cooking.
> 
> In all seriousness, I think dialogue is handled best wn there is 
no 
> need for attribution because it is clear from the dialogue 
itself.  
> Judicious use of other lucutions than "he said/she said" can 
relieve 
> the monotony wit out overpowering the dialogue.  I have no 
> objections to a "she asked" or a "he answered" when a question is 
> posed.  Nor would I delete a "they chorused" at a group response.
> The sparing-- extremely sparing--- use of modifying adverbs can 
add 
> to the flavor of a passage.  Which of these are acceptable and 
which 
> are not I can only answer by quoting Justice Brennan's rule for 
> finding obscenity:  "I know it when I see it."

There's generally no need for any attribution in a two-hander 
scene.  Once it is established who spoke first, all but the very 
stupid reader should be able to keep up. One way is to skip 
attribution entirely and use a sentence to describe a gesture or 
action by the speaker:  "I hate you!" She slapped his face hard.  
<snigger>.

Back to your points above, I agree totally (she agreed, totally)- 
but I believe that the content of the dialogue when written well 
should preclude the need for the Swifty.  If someone says "I hate 
you" we can be fairly sure that they said it angrily.  Essentially, 
I find "swifties" rather intrusive when I'm reading.  It can reach 
the point that I start looking for them, rather than concentrating 
on the story.  If there's too many of them, I start making them up, 
facetiously (there's another - man don't they breed like rabbits?).

June