“Hello,” he lied.
– Don Carpenter, quoting a Hollywood agent
Danielle’s comment on my most recent story prompts this foray into the world of dialog(ue) tags.
When I was a young copy editor, I learned to chop “ue” endings off of words. I also learned that in newspapers, everything is “said” or “asked”; one doesn’t wax poetic in news stories.
I recently entered Round Five of NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest. The opening and closing lines were given; all I had to do was fill the space between them without exceeding 600 words. I wrote my story and the word count read 772. So I began to edit. (Unfortunately, the contest rules don’t permit me to post the story, so I can’t show you specific examples. I’ll do that with another story in a bit.)
To tighten a story, start with the low-hanging fruit. As King Arthur did Excalibur, so I wielded Rule 17 from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style: “Omit needless words.” Find three words doing the work of one and replace them: “about that time” becomes “then.” Find words that aren’t serving much purpose: “in the bottom drawer” is better than “in the bottom desk drawer” if you’ve already referred to the desk. Look for unnecessary adjectives: “He put on his blue coat and went out.” Do we need to know the color? If not, toss it out. This is a quick and painless way to reduce wordiness.