Heir to the Empire Week: Day 3- Wriggles

 Did I say plot? Nah, no plot. We're going to talk about Timothy Zahn's eyebrow wriggling.

Timothy Zahn predicted this meme by almost two decades.

The word eyebrow or eyebrows appears in Heir to the Empire 42 times. About half the time, they're being cocked. Regardless of what verb they use, it is usually only slightly. People like to make fun of Zahn for this (and he probably should mix in some nose twitches or something) but I want to take tonight's post to talk about why he probably does it and how (if he'd mixed things up a bit more) it'd be a good writing technique. 

Dialogue is weird. It's one of the things with the most rules in writing, but a lot of them are vague. You want to describe a castle? Do whatever you want. Some authors will just slap down a quick, "imposing stone facade" and others will write three pages, and neither one is "wrong". Dialogue, you have to deal with stuff like, "make people sound the way we think people sound, not how they actually sound." Which basically just means people in fiction don't forget their words or go "umm... like..." or other verbal pauses, but sounds goofy as hell.

Zhan's eyebrow wriggles (and his other mid dialogue actions, the eyebrows are just the most famous) help avoid common dialogue issues in three ways.

1. Break up the wall of text: It's very easy to wind up with a page or more of just people talking. Think about when you're on the phone with someone, or taking a road trip. You might talk for half an hour or more with no action besides grabbing a handful of chips. But that looks weird on the page, and is at best very stylistic, and at worst awkward and hard to follow. Wriggling an eyebrow or whatever breaks up the blah blahs, while also helping you...

2. Avoid awkward dialogue tags, adverbs, and 100 saids per page: So you don't want to have people talk for a whole page with nothing else. You want to make sure people know who is talking. You're a believer in the modern writing rule of not using dialogue tags other than "said" or "asked" except in emergencies. You're equally devoted to Stephen King's "no adverbs" rule. Wriggling an eyebrow lets you tag the speaker and give them a little emotion/character without breaking any rules. Cocking an eyebrow is sort of questioning. Scrunching a nose is put off. Grinning is happy. A whole world of emotions a face part and verb Mad Lib away.

3. Keeps it moving: Literally. People are always moving around in Zahn's books. I think it's one of his strengths as an author. He's got the literary version of the Aaron Sorkin walk and talk down pat. Everyone is always getting to the next scene, revealing a cute little background detail, or setting up a twist. It's amazing how much you can get done in a page of dialogue if everyone just does one thing every two or three lines.

I don't even know what I'm doing with these anymore. I'll post something tomorrow. Maybe it'll even be relevant.