The brevity, the fact it’s only two words, conveys his tone. Similarly, in the first speaker’s retort, we don’t need a tag telling us his tone (that it’s curt, sarcastic, or hostile). Because it’s on a new line, and responds to what the other said, we know it’s a reply from context. The strength of the exclamation mark in the second character’s reply makes any dialogue tag showing emotion (e.g. A stronger sense of dialogue’s ‘back and forth’.īecause it’s clear the glaring first-person ‘I’ is the character speaking at first, we don’t need to add ‘I said’. In the second, making glaring an action rather than tethering it to the dialogue gives us a stronger sense of the scene. “Well I wasn’t listening, was I!” he said.įor some authors, it’s a matter of stylistic preference.Įven so, it’s hard to argue that the first version is better than the second. Whenever you read the author attributing who said what, it reminds us a narrative convention is being used.Ĭompare these two versions of the same conversation: Romy Sommer in ‘Writing dialogue: What to avoid’, webinar preview here. Keep it as tight as possible, and move as quickly as possible into the purpose of the conversation. Novel writing coach Romy Sommer says of dialogue: The more we read ‘he said’ and ‘she said’, the more we’re aware of the author creating the dialogue. The problem with dialogue tags is they draw attention to the author’s hand. Show how people speak using action and gesture.Use said or other tags only where necessary. #Another word for things to do list how to#Here are some tips for using dialogue tags such as said and synonyms for said well: How to use said and its synonyms well: They let characters’ words do the emoting. ‘He said’ and ‘she said’ are often preferable because they do not draw the reader’s attention to the fact they are reading written dialogue. Given that there are countless verbs that can take the place of ‘said,’ should you simply find a stronger, more emotive one and use that? It would be strange, for example, for a character to ‘sneer’ the words ‘I love you’, since the word ‘sneer’ connotes contempt rather than affection. yelled, shouted, bellowed, screamed, whispered) It identifies who spoke and/or the tone or emotion behind their speech. In written conversation or dialogue, a tag is a group of words following quoted speech (e.g. Read other words for said as well as tips for keeping your dialogue natural and engrossing: What is a ‘dialogue tag’? It’s not only what characters say but how they say it that matters. Writing effective, compelling dialogue has multiple elements.
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