If you’re starting out as a writer, you may be overwhelmed with the flood of new lingo you’ve had to assimilate. One of these phrases may be “Dialogue tags.” Just what are these?
Remember when you were a kid and you had those tags on the back of your shirt? In order to identify your clothes, your mom would write your name on those tags so your shirts wouldn’t get confused with someone else’s. Those tags with your name identified those clothes as yours.
In a similar way, dialogue tags identify who is speaking and sometimes how they are speaking.
It may be as simple as a
He said, “My sling will protect me..”
Or a little more specific like this
She whispered, “I have sword skills.”
My struggle with dialogue tags involved finding different words each time to make the story interesting or so I thought. Then I began finding out from different articles I read that except for the “said” tag, other tags can be distracting to the reader. I spent all that time on switching tags for nothing. Then I read some advice about using action instead to identify who is speaking.
What this looks like:
J.T. brought the lamp closer. “Is that better?”
Kat pointed to the mountains on the map. “We’ll find the cave of jewels here.”
Don’t write action for the sake of action. Instead, make it relevant to the characters and plot.
Now of all the dialogue tags, “said” doesn’t take us out of the story as much as yelled or giggled. One reads over it and hardly notices the word, but the other tags stop you to think how the words are being giggled and yelled. Still one should not overuse the word.
These are my thoughts on dialogue tags seen through the window of my experience. It’s just a suggestion. Using action tags has given me more freedom as a writer. Check out the web for “dialogue tags” for more advice!
Thanks for reading!
Jeremy
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