Indirect Speech (AKA: "What could you possibly mean?" "Why, let me tell you." "Oh, please do." "With pleasure.")

Early post this week because I start my new day-job tomorrow (wish me luck!).

This week I want to discuss something with you that often gets overlooked: Indirect Speech. Sure, we spend loads of time talking about successful character development, dialogue, and setting, but what about some of the more subtle tools in the writer craft box?

Indirect speech is one of those tools.

To put it simply, indirect speech is the method of paraphrasing your character's actions and dialogue when the information is already known to the reader.

For instance, if your protagonist just learned the evil plot of the antagonist in a long chapter with tons of wonderful dialogue, when she teams up again with her sidekick, she doesn't need to repeat the entire plan because the reader just heard it. Instead, the writer may write something like:

Protag launched into the revelation of Antag's plan as soon as she saw Sidey-Man. 

"But why would he rob Starbucks?" Sidey-Man asked.

This way, the protagonist relays the important information to a supporting character without taking up valuable page-time. (Also note that directly after the indirect speech, the writer flows right into the necessary dialogue in the new scene without any breaks.)

Indirect speech is also important to help cut out common human interactions that your character may think are necessary, but that your reader doesn't want to continuously get stuck reading.

For instance, if you introduce your character as a polite person, they may begin their third conversation in the book like this:

"Hello, Mr. Johnson."

"Hello, Anvil, how's your day going."

"Just fine, how is yours?"

"Splendid. How can I help you?"

"Well, I don't want to alarm you, but I'm looking for a serial killer and I wondered if I could have a peek at your security camera footage?"

This will get mighty tedious mighty fast for your reader. Instead, employ indirect speech:

Anvil greeted Mr. Johnson warmly, then said, "I don't want to alarm you, but I'm looking for a serial killer and I wondered if I could have a peek at your security camera footage?"

This way, Anvil is true to his kind personality and the reader recognizes who this character is, but only the important need-to-know info is given the mighty distinction of quotation marks. 

So, the next time you're writing and find that

1) you're writing the same information over and over again

2) you need to cut word count, or

3) you receive critiques that say there is a lot of repeating information or phrases in your text

have a thought for indirect speech. It may be the subtle, underutilized writing tool your novel needs to kick it up a notch.

Happy Writing this week! I'm going to try and keep up a schedule, but with new jobs and training it's always difficult. Ah, the life of the poor scribe ;)