naged is infinitely more natural and fitting than the
he-said, she-said sort. Of course, the more characteristic the speech of
the characters, the less the need for verbs of utterance. The primary
office of such verbs is to indicate the person who is speaking, and, if
the words spoken do that, the verb may be omitted. The secondary office
of verbs of utterance is to characterize the manner of speech, and here
it is well not to be too extreme. A character may snarl or bellow or
invite or plead, for instance, but if he is made to flame in words there
will be a suggestion of strain and artificiality for a reader.
Intelligibility and suitable--not unsuitable--variety should be the
writer's aims in managing dialogue.

The total amount of dialogue any story will contain depends on its
nature and character. Possibly it is true that the more strictly
dramatic a story, the greater will be the proportion of dialogue to the
rest of the text. At any rate, a writer should never transcribe speech
at any length simply for its own sake in an endeavor to trick a reader
into thinking that the story is livelier than it is. Dialogue is
attractive to a reader, but it is attractive in a story only when it is
an essential element of the story. The writer should not depend on the
intrinsic wit and vivacity of his characters' speech. Even if it is
interesting in itself, apart from the story, the fact will not help the
story as such, for a reader's attention will be distracted from its
movement. Mr. Dooley's talk is beautiful, read apart and by itself;
thrust into a short story, it would hurt the tale.

Finally, a word as to the actual creative process of writing dialogue.
The way to narrate is to live and see the story's happenings in
imagination; the way to describe is to feel the totality of the story's
environment or setting in imagination as some character or characters
must have felt it; and the way to write dialogue is to be each speaking
character in turn for a space, and to write as the particular person
would have spoken. As stated above, the writer will have to think as
well as to imagine. He will have to comprehend the essential nature of
each speaking character, his personality, education, and habits of life
and mind, in order to discover the words that would be called forth from
such a person by each new event. The task is not easy. But the writer
should bring his full powers to bear upon it, for the dialogue of a
story is tremend