They all spoke at once. But, who said what?

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the link to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

When you are writing scenes with more than two characters, how do you help the readers keep track of who is speaking?

It would be easy to fall into the trap of giving everyone a line, in turn. And adding, after every few words, the dialogue tag, “X” said. It might be grammatically correct, but it wouldn’t make for very good reading. Nor would it be realistic. And realism is the key.

Thinking back to my days on ships, conversations in the mess or bar could get very involved, very quickly. Nobody spoke in turn, rank was ignored, and people often referenced what someone else had said in their comments when making a point.

People would get up, move around, grab another beer, shift position in their chair or any number of things, often in the middle of speaking. Heckling and interrupting were common, with the accompanying extra wordage.

People would join and leave, very often, a new arrival might say something stupid, or repeat what had already been discussed, while he got up to speed with the rest.

People reacted to what was said in different ways; some waved their arms about to make a point, others sat still and spoke quietly. One person might hog the conversation, while others struggled to get a word in.

It could all feel quite chaotic at times.

In my crowd scenes or group dialogues, I try to follow this sort of idea. If you include the actions and emotions of the characters, you can do so much more than keep repeating he/she said to show where the conversation is coming from and how it’s developing. You can make the scene feel real. People sigh, mutter in the background or do all manner of things, peripheral to the words but immensely powerful in setting the scene.

Because of that, this sort of scene is perfect for injecting backstory or worldbuilding without information dumping. It’s the ideal time to advance the plot, drop clues or confuse the reader with red herrings.

Not only that, you can use the dialogue to develop the personalities of the people involved in the conversation. You can do this by showing the way they interact, or by giving them more (or less) to say.

And once you’ve created an impression of a particular character, you don’t need to repeat their name the next time they have something to say. You can indicate their involvement by mentioning the trait you’ve worked so hard to devise for them.

To sum up, you should use every method at your disposal to show who’s talking, instead of just telling us.

What do you think about this week’s subject?

Let me know by leaving me a comment.

While you’re here, please click the InLinkz link to check out what my fellow writers have to say about this week’s topic.

I’ll be back with another post on Thursday. See you then. Meanwhile, have a great week.

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