If, like me, you enjoy creative writing – from short stories and novels to poetry and drama – you no doubt ask yourself thousands of questions about language every time you find yourself in front of your screen ... or your sheet of paper, if you’re retro! One aspect of writing that may seem so simple is actually trickier than it sounds: dialogue! As a writer, that’s been my experience, at least. So I’ve decided to take a closer look at it in this post.
The importance of dialogue tags
In movies, television, graphic novels, comic books or other visual media, the audience can literally see who’s talking. But it’s not so obvious in a book, which is why writers use dialogue tags to indicate who’s speaking. Dialogue tags are usually used for at least one speaker (identified either by a noun or pronoun) and contain a verb indicating a way of speaking (often “said” or “asked”). The tags become increasingly important with every character added to a scene; the more people involved in a conversation, the greater the need for dialogue tags to identify the speakers.
These tags appear so often in written fiction that they become invisible to us as readers, which is precisely the point. In order to keep the reader focused on the story, the tag must draw as little attention to itself as possible.
Types of dialogue tags
Let’s take a look at the different ways to use dialogue tags within a story. Based on my research, there are three types of tags: basic tags, descriptive tags and action beats. To create a compelling dialogue, a writer must learn to balance all of these tags so that none of them pull the reader out of the narrative.
Basic tags
Basic tags are short and simple and meant to draw as little attention as possible while serving their purpose of identifying the speaker. Primary examples are “said” and “asked,” but basic speech tags can also include less common verbs, such as “suggested,” “noted,” “exclaimed,” “hollered,” “begged,” and “whispered.”
Descriptive tags
Descriptive tags involve adding adjectives and adverbs to dialogue tags, which can provide insightful information about the speaker or the speech. Here are two examples: “he said angrily” and “she asked innocently.” Descriptive tags should be used sparingly to increase their impact. If there are too many descriptive tags, they lose their power, and they may end up telling rather than showing the story to the reader.
Action beats
Let’s move on to action beats, which are small inserts of action that the writer can use to separate dialogue, announce who’s talking and provide additional information. Used effectively, action beats can help the reader better understand the character and story elements, and add some movement to a scene. Here’s an example:
“How do you think we should handle this?” He glanced up from the paper he was studying. “Head on or ignore it?”
The sentence between the quoted material is the action beat.
When using action beats, writers must be mindful of the story’s pacing. During a quick-paced action scene, adding too many action beats may clutter the text, slowing down the story pace, thus having the opposite effect of what the writer is trying to achieve.
No tags
On occasion, it’s possible to include a conversation using no tags at all, simply because it’s obvious who’s talking. The absence of dialogue tags is most commonly seen in situations where there are only a small number of people talking.
Tags in administrative texts
If you write mostly administrative texts rather than creative ones, the same rules apply when quoting people, so this post (and Language Navigator (s’ouvre dans un nouvel onglet)) may also come in handy! If you like, you can practice in the comments section by sharing your favorite quotes.
