Chapter 64 — An Early Morning Visitor
The Curve of Time, Chapter 64 —— An Early Morning Visitor , in which Zeno shows up on Saskia’s doorstep.
Followed by some musings on dialogue tags.
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— 64 —
An Early Morning Visitor
Early on Wednesday morning, and in stroke of symmetry that was not lost on Zeno, he walked up to Saskia’s front stoop. He stood there a moment, setting his jaw. This was better. Rather than return her call, he preferred it this way. This way, it was he who would benefit from the element of surprise. Moreover, the intimidation of his physical presence might level the field against whatever Saskia’s ability with prophesy was.
He rung her doorbell, but there was no response. She had to be home, and he peered in through the window beside the door.
It had taken some detective work, and a performance he felt sure his business coach would have been proud of, but he’d found Saskia. Or at least her place of residence. He glanced at his wrist watch. It was 6AM. Surely she was home.
His plan had been to confront her directly about her premonition, the one that had first incited their acquaintance. He’d not given any thought to the possibility that she might not be home.
Perhaps Sienna had played him, even more than he thought he’d been playing her. He’d regaled her with a cock and bull story about how he knew Saskia. How Saskia had told him about her twin. “Though, I didn’t know your name was Sienna.”
Had he been the sucker all along?
No, that couldn’t be right. Sienna had given him enough of Saskia’s details that he’d had little trouble locating her here. This had to be Saskia’s house. It was too big of a coincidence that this house might belong to an alternate Saskia, and she just happened not to be home when he showed up.
Yet, if not here, where could Saskia be? Had she known he was coming? He could simply call her, but that would be giving up his one edge. If Sienna had tipped her off, then he really was the biggest sucker ever to walk the world.
Zeno had no way of knowing that Saskia, of course, was with Mica in New Orleans. That the two of them had had a late night at a bar and, despite the two hour time zone advantage, that they were still asleep.
That was chapter 64, Friends, I hope you enjoyed it!
You might have noticed that there was almost no dialogue in today’s chapter, which makes it a bit of a counterpoint to what I’d like to talk about today, but sometimes that’s just the way things happen. Anyway, I’ve been noodling on how to tag dialogue, and I thought it might be fun to share my evolution. Specifically, that I’m kind of coming around to some of the book industry’s ways of thinking.
There exist many different ways to describe dialogue in novels. On one extreme, Elmore Leonard was famous for insisting that all dialogue should be tagged with “said”, because, as he insisted, other tags distracted the reader. Actually, I guess no tags could be argued to occupy an even more extreme case, simply switching back and forth between two characters——though this usually requires establishing who is speaking, which could of course be achieved within the dialogue itself, but only at the risk of dialogue motivated by the reader’s needs, rather than the character’s desire to communicate; never good.
Screenplays, as you might know, are also pretty sparse, taking an approach rooted more in formatting; character names are placed in the center of the line above the dialogue itself, which is centered underneath on about half the width of the line——occasionally screenwriters will include a parenthetical direction on how the dialogue should be played as a centered, well, parenthetical, between the character name and the dialogue, but this is generally frowned upon as the delivery of dialogue is viewed as up to the interpretation of actors and directors.
I guess options for spare approaches are multitude when it comes down to it.
Occupying the other end of the spectrum, there are a plethora of tags that add color to the way dialogue is delivered, think reporting verbs such as “shouted”, “whispered”, or “sneered”. In the literary world, such tags are also generally frowned upon, as they’re viewed as distracting from the flow of the story. Frankly, I never really understood this as, it seemed to me, for instance, that the way dialogue is delivered can be as important as the dialogue itself, and often contrasts with the semantics. That said, it’s on this point that I’ve kind of come around.
Why? Well, after reviewing another writer’s prose the other day I found myself considering the importance of micro-questions that keep the reader engaged. During those reflections, it occurred to me that in many texts physical descriptions can be used in place of reporting verbs, and, by using the physical description, the readers are given a little puzzle to nut out. So, rather than a potentially on the nose dialogue tag such as “quarreled” one might describe the character as “folding her arms as she spoke”. It’s all a bit of the old show-don’t-tell adage.
Having given you my thinking, I’m curious if others have thoughts on this front, personal predilections as it were. Would love to hear your preferences!
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
