-1
Shoutout to the writing group that called out my lazy dialogue tags
I posted a chapter in my local critique group last night and got called out for using 'he said' and 'she said' in every single line of dialogue. One guy pointed out I had 14 tags in a row and it read like a police report. How do you guys handle pacing with tags without making it confusing who's talking?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
grantmartinez28d ago
Piled all my tags into one paragraph once for a group critique and got told it looked like a script for a police interrogation room. Switched to mixing tags with little beats like her tapping a pen or him checking his watch. Now I keep it to maybe one tag every four lines and let the action do the heavy lifting. That trick with ditching tags for back and forth works perfect though, saved me so much clutter.
9
susan1301mo ago
Oh man I've been there. What helped me was ditching tags entirely when its just two people talking back and forth. Readers can follow the thread for like 3-4 lines easy. I also throw in small actions to break it up like "he pushed his coffee away" or "she flipped a page" instead of always defaulting to said.
4