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Back to Articles Page (submitted to the Gulf Coast Romance Writers website) "I’m not stupid," the blonde tittered. "Well, looky here," she smiled. What is it about dialogue tags and what are they? Dialogue tags (or bookisms) are things such as ‘he said’. They’re tags explaining who’s doing the talking. You can also tell who’s talking by using action beats or tags (which is what I like to call it) used in conjunction with dialogue. An example of this is: She laughed. "I knew you’d be here." She laughed is an action tag. It tells us what she’s doing and who’s talking. If it’s in the same paragraph, that person is the talker. What’s dialogue used for? We use dialogue to create a great hook, show characterization, indicate back story, show instead of tell, inject humor, speed up the story, and to add word count. When writing dialogue, use quotation marks to show speaking and correct punctuation and capitalization. Start a new paragraph with a new speaker, and the reader should know who’s speaking. Realistic dialogue: Dialogue isn’t just written speech (you don’t have to write things like ‘hello, how are you doing’, because it’s boring dialogue). Also, people do other things while speaking, so use action throughout to show that. When speaking, people give details in small bits for the listener to understand what’s going on. They also rarely use other's names when talking to them. When writing dialogue for a single speaker that runs to multiple paragraphs, put an open-quotation mark at the beginning of each paragraph, but no closing quotation mark until the final paragraph. Get speech attribution tags in as early as possible in the paragraph. When alternating lines of dialog, make sure you identify speakers at least every five or six exchanges. It doesn’t have to be every line if there are only two in a conversation or you know who’s speaking. If have more than one person, alternate action and dialogue tags to break it up. Much real dialog goes unfinished. If it’s abrupt, use an em-dash (alt-ctrl-dash on numeric keypad for Microsoft Word). If it’s an unfinished thought, use an ellipse. But don’t do it so much that it jars the reader. Dialog Pitfalls: When you use words other than said, asked, and replied, you’re telling and not showing which slows the pace. Use them very infrequently. There are four techniques for dialogue tags—no tag, action tag, dialogue tag, and a combination of dialogue and action tags. Avoid extreme dialogue tags like shrieked, snarled, barked, growled, and sniffed. You can’t smile, laugh, sigh, sneer, grin, frown, or grimace a line. Put it in an action tag instead. (See the example at the top where the woman smiles a word—that’s not good). Don’t use dialogue tags that look silly, like ‘hissed’, or ‘ejaculated’. Avoid as many adverbs (-ly words) as possible in dialogue tags. Only use them if the readers would be confused about how the dialogue is said. It’s better to describe it with other words than to use adverbs. NEVER let a hero say something cockily during a love scene. Keep the dialogue tags lean for faster pacing. Tag word order: for commercial fiction, use ‘John said’. For literary works (like Shakespeare’s stuff), use ‘said John’, UNLESS it’s a long phrase, like ‘said the woman looking over the merchandise’. And, most of all, have fun writing your dialogue. Humor goes a long way to break up an emotional scene of dialogue. References: Uses of Dialogue: www.scribesworld.com/writersniche/articles/WritingDialogue1ER.html Mechanics of writing dialogue (punctuation, etc.): mrbraiman.home.att.net/page13.html www.lorraineheath.com/articles/btb_punctdialogue.htm Realistic Dialogue: www3.baylor.edu/~Greg_Garrett/writing/dialogue.html www.sfwriter.com/ow08.htm Dialogue tags and other pitfalls: users.wirefire.com/tritt/tip4.html www.writing-world.com/fiction/said.shtml www.stephaniebond.com/PDF%20files/Writers%20Articles/Self-Editing--Dialogue%20Tags.pdf Other: www.candidateshandbook.com/class/Class%20outlines/dialogue_week3.pdf Back to Articles Page |
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