036: The Great Dialogue Tag Debate
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The great dialogue tag debate
Welcome to the podcast, let's chat about dialogue tags. There are a few topics in the writing world that really fire people up. One of them is the Oxford comma, the serial comma. There are a few other ones and dialogue tags are one of these things that people just have very strong opinions about. And it's interesting because people will have opinions about this as a as a writer, you know, like how they prefer to write. And then they'll also have opinions on this as a reader what they like to see in books. So what I'm going to do in this episode is I'm going to go over first What a dialogue tag is, then I'm going to give you a few different sides of the argument. There's there's really three groups of people with opinions about dialogue tags, and I'm going to present the arguments that the that they have in this debate. And then at the end, I'm going to share with you which team I'm on which side of the of the debate I'm on.
Okay, so let's talk about first, just what a dialogue tag is, in case that's not something that you're familiar with. Basically, a dialogue tag is a very short phrase that comes before or sometimes in the middle of, or sometimes after a line of dialogue, in a book, a dial a piece of dialogue, you know, a line that's that's spoke that the character speak, that set off in quotation marks, some examples are, he said, said John, she yelled, he mumbled, they screamed, those are all examples of dialogue tags that, again, would come before the piece, the sentence that's being spoken, sometimes in the middle, sometimes you could have a line that's being spoken. And then she said, and then another line being spoken, or it can come after the sentence that's being spoken. That's basically what all that a dialogue tag is. And if you open any book that has any sort of dialogue in it, if you just grab one off your shelf off of your shelf right now, you can see examples of this, maybe that author has decided to do a lot of said, you know, he said, they said, she said, maybe the author has decided to do something else. But you can just open up a book and see how this is structured and get an idea of what this actually looks like on the page.
Okay, let's talk about the three different camps of people in this debate. Okay, first of all, we have teams said, These people, these writers, readers, believe that said, is the best option for a dialogue tag in almost every case, almost every case, okay? Because it blends in readers don't notice it, readers are so used to seeing said in novels that it just doesn't even register. It also puts the focus on the actual dialogue on the words that are being spoken. Instead of putting the emphasis on the tag on what that person is doing, how they're, they're saying those words. Then, we've got team not said team, anything other than said these people believe that said is just way too overused, it's way too repetitive. And that readers actually will get annoyed by that repetition. They'll get annoyed if they start to see said come up too many times that it sticks out to them. And it's best to use other types of tags to help the reader know how the words are being spoken. So like I gave in earlier example, muttered grumbled, shouted, screamed, whispered, et cetera. Those are all different dialogue tags that aren't said. Finally, we've got team action tag. And I'm gonna give you an example of what this can be in the episode and then we'll talk about it.
Okay, here's the example. Sarah grimaced. I hate tomatoes. And I hate tomatoes is in quotes. That's, it has quotation marks around it. That's the piece of dialogue. So Sarah grimaced. And then she she's speaking out loud. I hate tomatoes. So, Sarah grimaced, I hate tomatoes. So there's no said in that example, there's no yelled, we don't know, if she, we don't know how she said those words. The action, Sarah grimaced appears right before the quotation marks, and that that piece of dialogue, so we know that Sara is the one speaking, because her name and her action appears right before that sentence. That's an example of an action tag. And people who are on Team actions tag instead of sad or anything else, believe that dialogue tags if you include them, I mean, if that it's fine, it's fine to sprinkle them in occasionally, but that they really interrupt the flow of a scene, they interrupt the flow of a conversation. And this team believes that they're really not needed, like dialogue tags aren't needed if the reader knows who's talking, and that they can be distracting. So it's best to kind of just include the piece of dialogue on the line next to the person doing the action.
So those are the three. In very simplistic general terms, those are the three teams, the three camps of people. And I fall in team said, in 90% of cases, I think said personally, is the best option to go with as a reader, I don't notice it, I believe it puts the focus on the actual words that are being spoken. I think sometimes people can rely too heavily on other dialogue tags, like yelled and mumbled and shouted and groaned. And it gets to be a little bit over the top, when I'm reading a scene or like a conversation that has so many different dialogue tags, it gets to be a little, a little too much a little overwhelming, to the point where it's overwhelming and taking center stage and not putting the focus on what's actually being said. Now, when I am writing, again, at 90% of the time, I'll just use said, sometimes I'll just, if it's clear who's talking, I won't include a dialogue tag at all. If two people are having a conversation, and they're going back and forth, I don't need to like include a dialogue tag was said every single time. It's pretty clear who's talking. So in that case, I won't include one, or sometimes I'll just include, you know, an action tag. But occasionally, I'll throw in something else. Occassionally I'll put in, you know, he replied, or she asked, or she yelped. I think for me, stylistically, when I'm only including those things, sporadically, it makes more of an impact.
Now, you could absolutely disagree with me, being one of those other teams totally fine, I can understand the thinking behind both of those other teams, both of those other sides of the debate. When I'm copy editing, I don't impose that style on the writer. First of all, because copy editing is really just fixing, fixing grammar and punctuation and usage and verb tense. I'm not, I'm not making stylistic suggestions to the writer, that would be more of a line editing, which is a service that I don't offer. But when I'm copy editing, I will ask the, Ask the writer, or I'll just put a dialogue tag into a sentence if I, if it's hard to tell who's talking. And sometimes I'll just have to leave a comment and say, who's speaking this, I can't, I can't tell who's speaking this particular line. Because it can get confusing for the reader, you know, when it can take them out of the story if they're not sure, who's talking. So I will sometimes ask the writer or or just go ahead and put a dialogue tag in just to avoid confusion. But I don't ever switch it out. The only thing I'm doing with dialogue is making sure that all the punctuation is correct. So commas and periods and quotation marks and ellipses and like all the all the punctuation that can happen in dialogue, I'm making sure that that's all good to go. And that's really that all that I'm doing. Because again, it's a stylistic choice.
Every writer is different in terms of how they approach dialogue. So I wouldn't want to impose my my voice or my style on someone. However, one thing I will do is I will edit a dialogue tag that doesn't work as a dialogue tag, for example, laughed. This is one I see a lot. So someone will have a piece of dialogue. They'll in the sentence in a comma closing quotation marks, he laughed. The problem with that is that you can't laugh words. You can laugh while you're speaking. You can laugh while you're saying something, you can do those things simultaneously, but you can't laugh out words, you can scream words, you can yell words, you can mumble words, you can shout them, but you can't laugh them. So laugh isn't an appropriate dialogue tag. So in that case, what I'll do is I'll either have it be an action tag, so I'll put a period where the dialogue just is a complete sentence, it stands on its own. And then I'll start a new sentence right after the piece of dialogue and say that says he laughed. So the person knows, like, okay, this person spoke this line, and then they laughed. Or, I'll add said, so I'll do all I'll have to keep the comma. So it'll be comma, closing quotation marks, he said, comma, laughing. So then it's clear that he's laughing while he's speaking. It's kind of the same thing. It's it's basically saying it's the same thing in two different ways.
But just be careful when you're if you do decide to use other dialogue tags besides said that they're actual dialogue tags, like you can't, you can't laugh and you can't laugh words out. So just make sure that that works as a dialogue tag. If you are new, and you're not sure which team you're on, you're not sure which is the best option. What I recommend is looking at examples in books, looking at a lot of different books, reading a lot. I mean, I recommend reading a lot for writers generally, but look at dialogue, look at how different writers structure it look at different dialogue tags they use or don't use. Try to get a feel for what writers are doing with dialogue to see what you prefer as a reader, and to see what you might want to do in your own writing. And don't be afraid to experiment. See, you know, take a stab at it and see, see what happens. See which you like better. Alright, that's it for dialogue tags. See you next week.