When’s the last time you used someone else’s name in the middle of a conversation? You know, like in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
“And why is the carpet all wet, Todd?”
“I don’t know, Margo!”
It seems like every other word in that movie is someone's name. While it's quite funny and works for the film, chances are you can't pull of the same thing in your novel.
Unfortunately, I find myself trying all the time. The moment is intense, the characters words are important, so he looks her in the eye, addresses her by name, and says something sweet, sassy, special, or snappy.
Seems like the name adds emphasis, right? Wrong.
Who really talks like that? No one. (Ok, maybe only very few people).
So then why are your characters doing it?
Reality is we only call each other by name when we’re trying to get someone’s attention. It's a rarity. Just like names should be in your dialogue.
If you're adamant about using a character’s name for clarity's sake, do it in the tagline. But really, if your conversation is between one male and one female, “he said” or “she said” works just fine.
Stop wasting words and breath with names. Readers just skim over them anyway.
Got that, Russ?
Do you find yourself forcing characters to address each other by name?
PRACTICE
Call a friend and record the conversation. Listen over it and pick up on the rhythms of dialogue. Use what you learn from the call to strengthen a piece you’ve already written. Post it in the comments.
For extra credit: watch Christmas Vacation and count how many times the characters address one another by name… but don't hold The Write Practice liable for the quotes your children pick up.
Probably most useful for humor, scorn, or getting another characters attention.
——————————————————————————–
“Jake. Are you listening to me at all?” His father crossed his arm.
“Yeah.” His arms shifted about as he played his video game.
“Then what did I say?”
There was a long pause.
“That’s what I thought”
——————————————————————————–
Miley pulled out the chair quietly and sat at the round and empty table. The rest of the school cafeteria was a ruckus. She was a silent mouse unnoticed by her roaring classmates. She poked a couple of ketchup-dipped fries in her mouth. Her invisibility wore thin as three girls, approached the table.
“Hi Miley,” the first said with a chip on her shoulder. “I –love– your hair. Its so… greasy.”
Miley stared at her plate of food, avoiding eye contact.
“Miley, what nice shoes you are wearing? Where did you buy them at? Geeks-R-Us?”
Miley felt her body flaring with heat and anger over the confrontation.
“Miley, your so stupid!” taunted the last one as they moved away. She ran into a chair behind her.
And I’m the stupid one, Miley thought.
Great showing of the nasty comments of Miley’s fellow students. Your description of her avoiding eye contact and her thoughts. Excellent.
The use of her name really emphasizes the focused snarkiness of the comments. Is snarkiness a word? probably not.
snarkiness? Snark itself is a rare word that I only hear in Lewis Carrol’s The Hunting of the Stark. Were you thinking nark or narking?
I bet what you were aiming for was snideness, and it is a word.
The Urban Dictionary tells us that snark is a combination of “snide” and “remark.” Snark is also the title of a book by David Denby about how snide remarks are ruining our conversations. Is it an actual word? Hasn’t made the Oxford cut, yet…
You know you have this likable habit of trailing off at the end of your posts. You have a way of making people want to hear more from you, no matter what you are talking about. Makes me wonder…
What a coincidence, I was playing with name calling and dialogue today for my WIP. Thinking back to my own conversations, I never call anyone by name except, as you say, to get their attention or in greeting and farewell. Russell Brand tought us another time we should be using names, is when we’re referring to someone who is present. For example, if Russell Brand was sitting next to me and I wanted to tell you something about him, I wouldn’t say “he this” and “he that,” I would say “Russell has a very strong accent sometimes, but Russell, I find I can understand you much better in person.” If you haven’t seen the clip, you might google it. It is a fascinating study in dialogue.
Thanks for the tip
I’ve been listening for it ever since, and it’s a bit of politeness that seems really rare in North America. It could be a good way to distinguish a proper, upstanding, British sort of character (like Russell), from their Canadian and American counterparts. Almost like a dialect of manners.
Oh yes, my practice…
—-
Tinder waited for her outside the burned-out farmhouse. Lindy placed her hand on
the scorched door frame, lost in memory.
“Sasha, the team’s here. I’m leaving now.” Peter, her grandfather, had rested his head against the door frame with his arms out waiting for Sasha to walk into them. She had stood fixed to the spot, the fingers of her left hand twined in the strap of her overalls. Lindy had watched from the pantry, tucked behind the potato crates. She remembered how her grandmother’s shoulders were set and back and how she stood with her spine straight and chest out. She had held her stone goddess stance even then, as if Peter had only been going out to the barns and would be in for supper. There had been no cue in her movements that her husband and partner would be gone into the wilds for half a season. Sasha had cocked her head to one side and Lindy had been so sure for one moment that she would simply nod to her husband and disappear into her workroom. Instead, she had set the box down in the hall and glided purposefully up to Peter, wiping her hands on her overalls. He stood a full head taller than her, and she reached up and held his face in both of her calloused and beaten hands. He tilted his face down to meet her and rested his forehead against hers.
“May the Lights always guide you home.” She had said the old phrase in her bedtime
story voice: soft and sure. This rote guesture seemed to be enough for Peter who had swept his wife’s long black braid off her shoulder and whispered the response “may all Lights lead back to you.”
Lindy’s grandfather had hoisted his packs over his shoulder, and slung his heavy parka over one arm. After grandmother retreated into her workroom, Lindy had risen from the pantry and followed her grandfather out into the yard. The team from town was all assembled and waiting for Peter. The men were donning their parkas, readying themselves against the opening of the side gate.
“Grandfather,” Lindy called, jogging up to him. He stopped and turned to her, a smile on his delicate lips. Grandmother had told her stories of the Vikings from which he was said to be descended. His redish blonde hair was as different from Sasha’s as it was similar to Lindy’s. Sasha used to call her a child of light because of her white blonde hair and pale eyes.
Lindy had thrown herself against her grandfather’s chest, breathing in the diesel and
leather smell of his parka and all the foreign scents of outdoors. “I’m gonna miss you” she managed to choke out, holding onto him as if he were crossing the sea not going on a routine maintenance expedition.
“Watch the skies, Little Light, I’ll send you messages by Aurora and I’ll be back before the sun kisses the bowl of the earth.” Brushing back her hair, he had given Lindy a kiss on each temple.
Lindy had looked back at the team that was taking her grandfather away. They stood
ready and impatient, their winter gear making them overheat in the controlled climate of the dome. “Goodbye, grandfather” she had said.
They had lead the oxen out through the gates and into the icy cold of arctic summer. In her mind’s eye, she could still see her grandfather’s green parka disappearing over the horizon. Her last look at home.
I found this profound. You write great stuff. Had a little trouble getting started on the read. You kept referring to “her” of which I didn’t know was Sasha or Lindy. Oh, and I thought Tinder was a person.
Great Post!
Thanks James! True enough, “she” and “her” were too ambiguous, so I went back and fixed them. Tinder is absolutely a person. Tinder Broadshadow, sidekick, antagonist and possible love interest to Lindy Goldfeather. It’s no coincidence that his name is also a highly combustible material…
I can see that this is a WIP of yours. I like the name Tinder, but when he didn’t seem to be mentioned in the scene, I was confused.
I also just noticed, this is a flashback. Be careful with these, If a reader doesn’t see that it is a flashback, it will confuse them. Of course, I’m probably easy to confuse.
What I might suggest, and this is only a suggestion. Try rewriting the flashback as dialog between Tinder and Lindy. This causes things in the present to develop from things in the past. I did this with one of my scenes and found the result to be astoundingly better. Especially since I gather that Tinder and Linda might have a push-me pull-me love springing between them. Have this be a “moment of weakness” where they open up to each other and find themselves awkwardly (and yet, enjoyably) close to each other.
Thanks James, you’re quite right that the flashback form really isn’t ideal here. Especially the awkward anterior past tense. I’m pretty sure large chunks of what I’ve written for the WIP are going to be cut mercilessly for draft two. For camp NaNoWriMo this month I’m letting the characters ramble on and remember and exposition to their little heart’s content. When August rolls around, it’ll be judgement day. In truth, until I wrote this, I didn’t know what Sasha and Peter’s relationship was really like. So now I know, but the reader won’t necessarily have to be told in the final cut.
I love some of the lines of the dialogue – great images like before the sun kisses the bowl of the earth. I read mostly to look at dialogue lines – the conversation gets lost with all the description. Might want a few less comments, make the reader work. they can imagine some of the things. Still, I love the nicknames like Little Light. Reading this makes me want to know more of the story you’re telling.
I agree that such name-saying is unnecessarily superfluous (I know, I wrote that intentionally). On the other hand, Tennessee Williams got away with it in his Pulitzer Prize winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Brick continuously uses Maggie’s name at the end of most of his lines. But then, you and I are not Tennessee Williams (or even close).
Yup that and he was writing in a different era.
(I love that you wrote “unnecessarily superfluous.” I like to say “repetitively redundant.”)
Like all “rules,” this one can be broken, especially if you know why you’re breaking it.
I get the impression the continuous use of a person’s name creates distance between them, unless that distance already exists and the one is trying to get his message through.
Leaving out his name means you’re getting through; using ‘you’ instead of his name means you’re already in his head and are getting too familiar.
Does that make sense?
In some societies they continuously use Mr. or Mrs. Whatever in conversations is a sign of respect. .
Katie, I wonder if this is why in movies when on the phone they never say “hi” or “bye.” Don’t know why I’ve always thought that was weird..but it makes phone calls feel incomplete.
It totally does. Sometimes they say hi but they usually skip bye unless someone’s livid. I bet it’s because they’re saving seconds.
Oh my gosh, you had me at National Lampoons. I quote those exact two lines all the time. But you have a point. My editor has taught me my overuse of names, and I’m getting better.
Great post, BTW.
Thanks, Katie. I quote most of that movie all the time.
“I did as you asked, Granddad.”
“How did it, go, my boy?”
“How you thought it would. She’s not in love with me.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her that I was going to try to get her to fall in love with me.”
“And?”
“She said don’t. Be who I am.”
“Then that’s the end of the relationship. It’s not going to go any further.”
“Cynical much, Granddad?”
“Has she talked about the future with you?”
“Well… no.”
“You see?”
“But she says she’s scared.”
“Let me guess: She doesn’t want to hurt you.”
“Um.”
“As I said, my boy, your relationship with her isn’t going to go any further.”
“But… I’m in love with her.”
“I know. And it’s hard to realize that the one who matters the most to you doesn’t feel the same. Now you can move forward and find someone who would love you the way you love her.”
“I don’t think that will happen.”
“With that attitude, it won’t.”
“What do I do, Granddad?”
“Here, wipe your face. There’s no point in crying over it. I know it hurts, but you can’t force someone to love you.”
“I know. But what should I do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to do whatever it takes to win her.”
“How long have you been wooing her again?”
“Almost a year.”
“And you’ve gotten no further than her saying ‘I love you.’ She won’t talk about a future with the two of you because she doesn’t see one with the two of you together.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you talked about the future with her?”
“Yes. Many times.”
“And how did she react?”
“She said it sounded nice.”
“No, how did she sound? Was there any enthusiasm?”
“No, Granddad.”
“Sounds like she told you how she was feeling about the two of you being together.”
“Then why did she tell me that she loved me?”
“Why did she say it in the first place? Did you ever ask her?”
“She said it was something I needed to hear.”
“That’s telling.”
“I’ve been an idiot, huh?”
“Not at all, my boy. You’ve been in love. There’s nothing wrong with taking a risk. It shows you what kind of person you are.”
“I’m not going to put myself out there like this again. It hurts too much.”
“I never took you for a coward, my boy. I thought you were a man.”
“I am, Granddad.”
“A man wouldn’t allow a set back to keep him down.”
“…”
“Would he?”
“No, sir.”
“What did you learn from this?”
“I’ve learned to listen to what isn’t said, as well as what is.”
“Very good. Now go wash up. Grandmom has dinner ready.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, my boy. It’s what grandfather’s are for.”
The dialogue itself is great, and I enjoyed learning some of the grandfather’s ideas of love. Perhaps, instead of saying “Grandad” at the end of some of the sentences, have Grandad do something. Grandad took a sip of coffee, settled back in his chair and said, “….”
A few actions keep characters straight. Still the dialogue is natural and I love the last line that’s what grandfathers are for.
Thanks. I’m glad you liked it. I left descriptives and actions out on purpose. It’s part of an ongoing self test to see if I can keep readers engaged with only dialog.
I based this off some conversations I’d had with my own grandfather. I never got to have this kind of talk with him, though.
First person dialogue between my older sister and myself: Thanks so much for your comments. I’ve gained a lot of help for my writing from this website.
Heather
*****
Diane clutches the steering wheel. Now that she’s recovered from her surgery, she can drive and get out of the house. Maybe things’ll ease up. The kids and I cower when we’re around her, never knowing when she’s going to punch us or scream for the least little thing. Sure she’s hurting from her surgery, but she doesn’t have to take it out on us.
“Maria and Howard have been going to Mom’s for the holidays. My kids are missing out on their grandparents all because of you. It isn’t fair.”
“So go. Don’t blame me for keeping them away.”
Diane punches my arm. “Quit smarting off. Mom says we should come at least for Christmas.”
“You talked to her?”
“Why the hell not?”
“I, I just didn’t expect.”
“World doesn’t revolve around you, missy. I need Mom.”
“Why?”
“She’s still our Mom, no matter what the bastard did.”
“She didn’t help us.”
“Shut up. You don’t know shit.”
How could she? Why go back there? “Do I have to come
when you visit them?”
“Of course.”
“I, I just can’t face them. He might kill us.”
“He wouldn’t dare.”
Every time I think things are getting better, something new happens to ruin it. I pull my little finger toward the center of my hand until it hurts. Just thinking about Daddy is nightmare enough; going back would destroy me.
Diane punches my arm again. “Stop fidgeting.”
Maybe she’ll change her mind before Christmas. I twirl a strand of hair around my finger.
She slaps my hand away. “Quit playing with your hair. Why can’t you just act normal?”
“I’m trying.”
“Like hell you are.”
I rub my sore arm. After a year at her house, I still don’t know what she means by normal. There’s no pleasing her. Might as well give up.
We turn off the highway.
Good, not much longer until Maria’s.
The rhythm seems right. I get a good sense of the relationship and tensions involved. Nice work.
Thanks!
“Hey, Man, I was beginning to think you weren’t comin’,” Steve shouted from the doorway as Random climbed out of the car.
“I got some food and stuff just in case we get stuck somewhere, or want to spend the night where we are.” Random said as Steve shambled up.
“Well let’s get a move on, buddy. I been ready since I woke up.”
“When was that, noon?”
“More like one or two. I got up for a while in the a.m., but thought better of it.”
“You got stuff to stow, or are we ready to roll.” Random was starting to feel restless and wanted to be gone.
“I’ll jus’ go grab the ol’ camera. You said you got food?”
“Yeh, but we can stop for dinner. I have some cash.”
“Well I guess you better ‘cause I’m between assignments, if you know what I mean.”
Steve jogged back in and came out with his camera case and his gray raincoat, pulling the door on his way through with his elbow. It slammed behind him.
“Did you lock it?” Random pointed at the door.
“Never do. As long as my camera is with me, there’s nothin’ worth stealing.”
Good practice, Michael. I want to know more about these men. Who are they and where are they going?
Random is the main character and Steve his sidekick, or is it the other way ’round. You know it is interesting. As I look at this scene it is hard to tell who is the protagonist. It might be a good exercise to write the story from Steve’s point of view. In the story he is the one who helps Random explain himself through dialogue, but maybe it is bigger than that. Random could do the same for Steve, I suppose.
I’m editing my WIP at the moment so this is a very timely question. I can think of a couple of places where using a name is realistic.
First, there’s the greeting: “Hi, John” or “Hello, Mr Smith.”
Then I think there are some formal situations – imagine a police officer or doctor questioning. “So, Mr Smith, can you tell me when….?” I think this is what another poster referred to as “distance”.
Most interestingly, I think, there are some individuals who really do use their interlocutor’s first name all the time, all through the conversation. Some salesmen do it because they think it creates an impression of closeness (even though it’s actually just annoying). In other cases it means they are being manipulative and trying to insinuate themselves into closeness (like the salesman!) Or it can be a verbal tic, something that they do without being aware of it. In all of these cases I think it’s valid to use this in fiction dialogue.
Of course, I do agree with the general point of getting rid of it – like any other undesirable construction, you can use it if you have a good reason but only if you can articulate what that reason is!
Your last sentence is an excellent rule of thumb for rule-breaking in general: you can use it if you have a good reason but only if you can articulate that reason.
This post made me realize I never talk to people on the phone. 🙂 I’m an email/in person person.
I think your point is very good, the thought and detail was put out fairly convincing.
When Should Your Characters Address Each Other by Name? true, i like this thing
This reminded me of a scene I wrote a couple of days ago:
“Hey Rox! Wait up!” somebody called to me.
I didn’t even had to turn around to know who was calling me. There was only one person in this whole wide world who would ever call me ‘Rox’.
“Joey,” I said. “Stop calling me that.”
“Hah? Why?”
“Because it’s embarrassing, and my name is Ross, not Rox.”
“Aw… Roxy’s getting her cute little panties in a twist because of her name? How cute!” he said while petting my head.
“Stop it! First: I’m a boy! Second: just… stop petting me like a dog!”
“You know, you’re kinda cute when you’re upset, Roxy.”
“Joey! Just stop it!”
“Only if you say the magic word.”
“No.”
“O.K. Then I’ll continue petting you like a dog and calling you – “
“Alright! I get it…”
“Now, Roxy, say it!”
“…Please?”
“That’s a good boy, Rox!”
“Ugh…”
Who really talks like that? No one. Definitely something to remember. Thanks.
the article help me understand about life! thank so much