Said Purists: Using only says/said helps dialogue tags blend into your writing and doesn’t distract your reader with unnecessarily complex or unique words. Here are some of the justifications for these two camps. These folks rarely use says/said, instead opting for more colorful language like what you saw above.īoth sides have reasonable grounds for their stances, and there isn’t one way that is objectively better than the other (and anyone who tells you otherwise is just snobby). On the other hand, you have the Attribution Anarchists. ![]() Synonyms and variations of says/said are rarely welcome amongst this group. One side, who we will dub the Said Purists, argue that dialogue tags should exclusively use says/said. Within the halls (online forums) of passionate writers, there are two different schools of thought on dialogue tags. Note that this works much better for nouns than pronouns and can’t precede dialogue (but we’ll cover that in our how-to section). It can get repetitive to always have the noun/pronoun then the verb, so you can always swap them around. My best friend joked like they always did in awkward situations.The magician recited, feeling the spell form at her fingertips.Check out our last examples with some added flair: You can also add some flair to your attributions by including adverbs, objects, or other details. Speaking verb: This is a verb that is either says/said (depending on the tense you’re using), a synonym for those words (stated, claimed, etc.), or a related verb that describes something less basic than just speaking (shouted, muttered, etc.). Noun/pronoun: This is a character’s name or a pronoun (she, he, they, the magician, the killer, my best friend, etc.) that references who is doing the talking. Noun/pronoun + speaking verb = dialogue tag For any math fans out there, here’s a formula: In their simplest forms, dialogue tags are just two words. Then we can talk about different examples. Instead, let’s look at what forms an attribution. Honestly, I’m not going to list every possible dialogue tag, because that list would go on for way too long. We’re all writers here, so you’ve probably read a few dozen or hundreds of books, which means you’ve seen thousands of attributions before. ![]() Assuming you’ve read a book or two in your time, then you’ve seen hundreds of dialogue tags. In this example, the reader said is our dialogue tag. We’ll be covering some examples of dialogue tags next, but here is a very standard one just to get your head around what we’re discussing: “Wow, I’m learning so much,” the reader said. These tags are important to help clarify our writing, especially in a scene where multiple characters are speaking. ![]() Also called attributions-which is handy because dialogue starts to look weird the more you see it-these phrases also inform the reader how something is being said. First and foremost, we need to establish what dialogue tags are.ĭialogue tags are phrases in your writing that tell the reader who is speaking. Okay, that’s the first and last time I’m going to make a heading like that. “I’m so excited to learn!” the reader surely said.
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