Dialog Tags

Ray Dario

Literotica Guru
Joined
Dec 2, 2000
Posts
529
I'm probably calling them the wrong thing, but what I'm talking about is "He said", "She replied", "He stated", "She lisped", phrases.

"I'm going to the store," he said.

I hate them! The last thing I want when I read a story is to read tag lines 10,000 times. And I told KinkyKiki that in a feedback over in the "Story Feedback" section.

She replied that an editor had told her to put them back.

So I'm asking for all ya'll's opinion on these nasty things I call Dialog Tags.

Come on, rip me up guys, tell me why they are wonderful. Or if you agree with me (heaven help your soul) say so.

Ray
 
I don't think they should be used all the time. Particularly in a conversation between just two people. As long as the conversation is being written properly, with a new line for a different speaker, than all they need to be used for is to establish which lines a which person. Then you can go about alternating speakers without having to say who it is each time.

Your right, when they're used every line when there's only two people, it's very annoying. But it becomes a bit more necessary to use them when there is a group discussion.

But in principle I agree. Try to limit the use of "dialog tags".
 
he said, she said

I think it comes down to a choice. Do you want maybe too many tags? Or, do you want the reader to have to go back to the beginning of an exchange of dialogue to figure out who said what? The perfect solution would be balance. Hard to do.

If there are more tags than necessary, my eye just skips them. If there aren't enough, making me go back, I'm annoyed.

I try to write clear dialogue. Sometimes a line of dialogue can be fairly ambiguous - nothing in the line to indicate which character is talking. Assuming a wide variety of reading abilities, among readers, I tend to use more tags than absolutely necessary.

One of the benefits of proofreading is checking the balance of tag lines. If it is not clear who is talking, put one in. If it is very clear who is talking, take it out.
 
"I think that I do it out of habit," Chicklet said meekly. "Way back in Middle School, some teacher or other taught us the 'correct way' to write a story, and included your little tags. We could all go back and kill her, but I think I'll still be afraid of getting an F if I don't use them."
 
Yeah, but...

"he said" "she said"

If it's clear who's speaking leave them off, but if you need to clarify HOW someone is speaking, everything changes. The difficulty is in not being repetitive with the "tags".
 
Somewhere in this forum, is a fairly long thread on dialogue. Dialogue tags were coverd extensively as were "why use dialogue," "When shouldn't you use dialogue," "How do you use internal dialogue," and bunches of other aspects.

In that thread, WhisperSecret and I carried on a genial disagreement over how many tags are needed that started when she edited a story for me.

WhisperSecret felt, (feels?), that tags are important and should be used liberally whenever there is a possiblity the reader might lose track of who is speaking. That's not to say that every bit of dialogue needs to be tagged -- only when a new speaker enters the dialogue.

I on the other hand, wrote a story that used no (formal) tags at all, just to prove I could do it. That's not to say that I avoided tagging dialogue completely. I simply tagged it as part of another's word's. (I suppose I should post that story here, because EroticStories.com recently purged it for lack of readers and votes.)

Well written dialogue doesn't really need explicit tags. Especially "Tom Swifties" -- like, "That's too much spice," he said sagely -- on every single lin of dialogue. It's really not necessary to use more than "said," "asked" and "replied."
 
tags

Well said, Harold. I agree very strongly with the part about "said", "asked", "replied". Getting cute with adverbs looks amateurish and hackneyed.

I would like to see your story with no tags posted. Is the absence of tags something you notice in the story?
 
Re: tags

Axeltheswede said:
Is the absence of tags something you notice in the story?

Hopefully not.

I'm not sure if it's cool reception at EroticStories was because of the lack of tags or if it just isn't as funny as I think it is. (It's a humorous take on the Frog Prince fairly tale.)
 
Since I feel like I was part of the reason this post was origonally made I feel like I should comment on it. I've always been told to avoid repetition, which I try to do. Most of the time I use them not so you know WHO is speaking, but HOW they are speaking. I also get sick of "he said" "she replied" so I always use different words so you don't get bored with them. I think they're necessary as long as you don't go overboard with them.
 
This is my opinion.

Attributives (said words) exist for one purpose. To clarify who is speaking. They add nearly nothing to the story itself, rather like punctuation. You must have these words, however.

Now, attributives can also be adverbial in nature. Like muttered, whispered, yelled, errata. Adverbs are best used sparingly in creative writing. Go with me on this one.

Now, you've got about 5k worth of words to make a character come alive. You waste those words with adverbs and attributives.

"Hey, baby," he said. He draped his arm around her shoulders.

"What?" she demanded sharply.

"Where you goin' in such a hurry?" he asked smoothly.

"Away from you." she snapped and threw his arm off and stomped away.

or

"Hey, baby." He draped his arm around her shoulders.

"What?" The ice in her tone could have frozen the heat in his megawatt smile. If he paid the least bit attention.

"Where you goin' in such a hurry?" He was smooth, with the perfect amount of practiced animal sexuality. Just enough to make him completely fake.

"Away from you." She threw his arm off and stomped away.

Same scene, same intonations, one is developed and one isn't. Both are corny, but all in all, which is more attractive and which gives you a better picture of the characters?

Anyway, I say use attributives when you need to clarify who is speaking and you need to minimalize any kind of tags to go with it. Otherwise, use props, actions, and description to do it for you.

In longer stories, like novels, attributives really aren't much concern because you have plenty of room to develop character. In short ones you have limited space to develop character. Character is developed through dialogue and actions. The simplest method to develop a character into something living is to maximize the use dialogue and action together. Within reason of course. Sometimes attributives suit the speech better than anything else.
 
Tags are important, to permit the reader to know which character is speaking.

As, KM illustrates, use of description in the interstices of dialogue is a fairly painless way for the reader to learn information about a character's state of mine, etc.

Just one caution.

When employing attributives, try to be wary of the "Swifty".

They come from the children's book series "Tom Swift & __________"

"Our balloon is descending," Tom announced, deflatedly.

"Try not to hit the high tension lines," Tom advised, in a shocked tone.

"We shall land in water, and this basked doesn't float," Tom predicted, dampeningly.

"Look! There are sharks in the water," Tom announced, through clenched jaws.

"This is the end!" Tom pronounced, finally.


Swifties are almost as much fun as malapropisms.
 
Quasimodem said:
Swifties are almost as much fun as malapropisms.

Swifties, or Tom Swifties as I refered to them above, are fun if you're doing it intentionally.

They're just annoying when done accidently without the surrounding humor that made the Tom Swift books so much fun to read.

A very good explanation of what they are -- much better than my feeble example. :)
 
I agree that dialogue tags can be boring, yet I also know that they can be a necessity.

Consequently I have been tempted to try laying out long chunks of dialogue in play script form. Clarity for the reader without the verbiage.

(I've used your dialogue KM so it acts as a comparrison).

Tom: Draping his arm around her shoulders. "Hey baby"

Sue: Abruptly. "What?"

Tom: Smoothly. "Where you goin' in such a hurry?"

Sue: "Away from you." She snapped, throwing off his arm she stomped away.

I must admit I am not happy with the way it looks but I am sure that with some refinement it could work - watch out for a story where I try it out.

jon

:devil:
 
Brave and maybe innovative, Jon, but I think that will be extremely annoying to read. I think it will make all of your sentences seem choppy. Your story won't have "flow".

Imagine that bit being read aloud. Unless the reader is an actor who wants to invent voices for each character, I can't see this working. But good luck!
 
They are like punctuation, good when used in the right places, but too often underused or overused. I try to only use them when introducing a new character into a conversation, or where it may not be clear who's speaking. The only way to check the second is if you're a good self-editor, or if you have a good editor.


Using KM's original sentences:

"Hey, baby." He draped his arm around her shoulders.

"What?" she snapped. (Just out of interest is this correct punctuation? I've stared at it for too long and now nothing looks right.)

"Where you goin' in such a hurry?"

"Away from you." She threw his arm off and stomped away.


I dislike "ly" words in these situations. It's more of a pet peeve, but I think they should be left out, or a more elegant way found to describe how your character's speaking. KM's second set of sentences seemed a lot smoother without all that "smoothly", "sharply", etc.

The Earl
 
KarmaDog,

As I said it is an experimental idea, and until I try it in practice I am unsure whether it will work. However I can think of circumstances when more than two characters are in a dialogue that drives the story and the "said" word becomes repetetive.

Like I said I intend to give it a go probably when I write a group sex story, there I think it may work.

jon:devil:
 
jon.hayworth said:
As I said it is an experimental idea, and until I try it in practice I am unsure whether it will work. However I can think of circumstances when more than two characters are in a dialogue that drives the story and the "said" word becomes repetetive.

Re: the Script style of attribution -- I've seen it used in several stories from various places on the net. I've always felt it read like a trancript of a chatroom session or a trial. I've never seen a story that it made better when used extensively.

Re: multiple characters and/or group sex scenes

There are more ways to tag daialogue than direct attribution and in some cases, it doesn't matter who says what. In real life, people often get confused about who said what -- it can actually enhance some situations if the reader can feel the confusion of too many people talking at once.

You can tag one character's dialogue in a multi-part conversation in another character's reply. Sometimes more than one bit of dialogue can be "tagged" in a character's words.

---
"Harold, that's a pile of shit and you know it. Isn't that right, Jon?"
---

Now if anyone other than John has the next line, you'll need a tag because the reader is expecting Jon to answer. If Jon answered the speaker by name, then the line above gets attributed properly without an additional tag.

It is possible to write a story without any dialogue tags at all. (I'll be submitting one shortly.) AxelTheSwede commented, "I don't know about the tag lines. You kind of stacked the deck. No exposition, strictly a dialogue exchange, with obvious references to which character was speaking."

The one thing he didn't say was, "I kept getting lost about who was talking." (Of course, there's really only two characters in the story, so it's pretty easy to follow -- especially since one has a speech impediment.)

Vernacular, dialect, indirect attribution, a clearly established interrogation scenario (where questions are one person and answers are the other's) and a dozen other tricks make dialogue tags almost unnecessary. Tags are needed in VERY few instances when you get right down to it.
 
dialogue tags

I was reading Harold's story knowing it was written to prove a point. There are no dialogue tags. The way he wrote it makes them unnecessary. Whether the absence of tags is noticeable would have to be determined by someone without prior knowledge.

The story flows just fine. There is never any confusion about who is talking. Nice story. I recommend everyone take a look when he posts it.
 
There's a "perceived wisdom" among editors that most readers just "note" but don't really "read" the tags. This becomes most noticable when listening to a recorded book when the tags become hard to ignore.

IMHO, it's better to overuse than underuse tags. While some readers might get annoyed by them, forcing other readers "out of the story" because they've got no idea who is speaking would be much worse.

In his book "On Writing" Stephen King has some interesting thoughts on tags and Swifties.

Rumple Foreskin
 
Ray...

I think every writer develops his or her own style in this. There isn't any one right way to do it. However, as KM said, in a short story you have to be economical on the words.

Personally, if it boils down to the "he said" "she said" simply for the sake of saying who said then I'd drop them. If they add to the "feel" of what's going on in the story then they can really enrich it. If the conversation is urgent and punchy then leaving out the tags will not confuse the reader (even though some of us might go back to make sure who said what!) and will dramatically convey the sense of the dialogue.

Ultimately you, as the literary artist, need to be happy with what you write. I'm not below mimicing the style of someone else's work so might I suggest that you pull the titles of some authors you admire. Read the work and ask yourself "why does it work for me?" This sort of "critical reading" can be invaluable. If you're aiming for a particular publication then you can study works from that publisher to gain an insight into what they expect.

Finally, unless you are writing for one editor or publication for whom you know the style, be careful about trying to write in a manner that you think an editor will like. They are all as fickle as teenagers and music. The value of studying a published author's style is that he or she has been published so some editor, somewhere, approved of the techniques used.

Write what you like. Rewrite what you wrote. Read it aloud. Have a friend read it aloud to you. Then ask yourself honestly if it works. Does it flow? Does it convey what you hoped? If it sounds jittery, jumpy or awkward then find out why and fix it. Soon enough it will become second nature to you.

Oh, you'll still have plenty of critics--there no shortage of them.
 
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