Others' action during speech

[LittleStar]

Hi team,

I have a question regarding the description of action during speech, when said action isn't the speaker's. It's something Ive seen in many published books (probably all) but still doesn't seem completely right to me.

As I've seen it written would be something like:
"John never told us you were coming." John looked embarrassed. "We could have prepared something."

But written as that without any dialogue attribution, does that not create confusion as to why John is telling himself things? The way I want to write it would be to have separate paragraphs to denote a new action and then a new batch of speech. Something like:
"John never told us you were coming."
John looked embarrassed.
"We could have prepared something," Paul said. (dialogue attribution should have been in the first example, but I can't go back and change on my iPad)

Is the latter acceptable, or is it not necessary to separate the action if it is fairly clear that John isn't the one speaking already?

Thanks.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Rarely, you can get away with not splitting them, as in your first example, but it's much preferred to split it the way you have in your second example.

It's definitely not in all published books, and I find it disheartening that you've seen it in "many" of them. It's usually a confusing thing to do. One of the books (soon to be two) that I've edited recently needed extensive work to separate the references to someone out of the speech paragraphs of another person, so as to make it clear who was actually speaking.

 

[HareBrain]

I've seen a fair few published examples like yours, but that isn't too bad, in my opinion -- it's clear it isn't John doing the speaking. But it would be clearer, and have less risk of momentarily breaking you out of the story, if there was an attribution. I don't think it's necessary to split the paragraph, though. I'd probably have:

"John never told us you were coming," said Paul, at which John looked embarrassed. "We could have prepared something."

 

[LittleStar]

Ok thanks. That clears up a lot of confusion on my part, and I don't feel so rebellious now for preferring the second method.

TDZ, It might be that I only notice when it's written as per my first example, and the times it's written how I would write it don't jolt me, so I don't mark them. I have just searched a couple of books on my shelf and found some examples of the second option, so there is hope

 

[thaddeus6th]

I'd split it. But also rewrite to show what looking embarrassed looks like [stared at his shoes, blushed etc].

 

[tinkerdan]

I think that when the author goes to great extent to remove speech tags in favor of action that there's an obligation to match the actions to the speaker so that the reader doesn't get too confuse.

Although the example you gave almost appears self evident; I would be the one reader who, even knowing better, would look back to find out if there really are two Johns in this story.

 

[Saharren]

I've often wondered about this myself. I find myself really getting irrate when I keep putting he said, she said at the end of every dialog line when I have multiple characters speaking, so I try to use paragraph breaks to show when a different character is talking. Typcially if one character is doing something while another is talking, I'll try to denote who is talking and who is speaking, rather than just putting the action in there and assuming the reader will understand what is going on.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Think of it in terms of actions:

"John never told us you were coming." Paul struggled to keep the irritation from his voice and only decorum prevented him treating John to his filthiest look. "We could have prepared something."

John looked down at his shuffling feet and whistled softly.

And I'd join Tinkerdan. It might be obvious John isn't speaking but it might make it confusing as to who is speaking and when you're in the flow of dialogue it only takes one misread and the whole thing falls apart. Then you've pulled a reader out of the story. A tag is better than an attribution if you're worried the speaker might be unclear.

 

[tinkerdan]

To add to this; and hopefully not to add to confusion...

In my first book the he said, she said thing was brought up as a problem (way too many) Only; because it is first person it was I said, he said, she said.

When I went back to strike a few and insert different attribution I found I had some actions of other people in the same paragraph(which was probably why I defaulted to a tag to help) as the speech. (Usually the POV observing other peoples action while speaking, which makes a twisted bit of sense since first person point of view relies on what the POV sees and less on their own actions.) Anyway. I found when I went back to change these I had to do something different with the observed actions of other people-at least insert something attributing the speech to the correct character.

Doing that edit was eye-opening.

 

[yorelm]

Frankly, I would have written it the second (broken) way wo a thought. I was under the impression different speakers and actions were generally always given their own paragraphs. The first way looked fine (but I thought the extra "John" was unnecessary) until I saw the explanation later that Paul was the speaker.