Ask the Author

September 3, 2013 Michelle Griep

If you rattle an author's cage, most often you'll get a response, unless said author is a big-name with bigger britches who doesn't stoop to conversing with mere mortals. I, on the other hand, love to shoot the breeze with mammals from all walks of life. Just the other day I got an email that asked...

I have often wondered why authors write (the following example) the way they do, and if there’s a ‘technical’ name for this style:

(Pay no attention to the plural of the word ‘mothers’. It makes sense in the book I took this from).

1 – “Why,” Haylee asked her mothers, “are you wearing costumes?”

2 – “Why are you wearing costumes?,” Haylee asked her mothers.

3 - Haylee asked her mothers, “Why are you wearing costumes?”

My question is why do I see # 1 used more often than # 2 or # 3? What’s the purpose of splitting the sentence in this way?

And so I responded...

The number one rule about writing is that there are no set-in-stone hard and fast rules. Oh, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of rules a writer should know and adhere to, but once learned, can break for a good reason.

Now then, with that disclaimer, each of those 3 sentence samples are correct. An author could use any one of them no problemo. But (and I've always got a big but), choosing which option to use has more to do with flow, voice or current trend.

Flow ~ It's good to mix up sentence structure throughout. If every piece of dialogue started with the same format, the reader's eyes would pick up on that and get bored. The way paragraphs and sentences are presented on a page, even just shape-wise, makes a difference.

Voice ~ Every author's got one. I'm sure you can hear me in my writing because you know me. Writers often write how they speak. This could be one reason an author would choose to break up a line of dialogue as in #1.

Current Trend ~ Writing is subjective. What's kosher now (salable) likely will change (and has changed) over the years. For whatever reason the gods have decided, it is trendy right now to break up dialogue with tags (who's speaking).

I'm happy to play the Ask the Author game anytime anyone would like to fling me a question. Go ahead. Rattle my cage. I promise I won't bare my teeth or thump my chest.