In general, I think tags should be used sparsely – use them when you feel they’re necessary for clarification, or for the flow of the piece, or if you want to be a bit more descriptive as to how the line of dialog is said. For example, let’s go back to Bob and Henry.
“But I love you,” Bob said, stepping closer.
Henry looked at him, confused, uncertain if what he was hearing was true. “You can’t mean it,” he said, his voice trembling.
“Of course I do.” Bob reached for Henry’s face, his fingers curling when Henry stepped back. “Don’t you believe me?”
“How can I? We barely know each other.” The truth was, Henry longed to feel Bob’s fingers against his skin, the soft press of flesh against flesh.
In this example, we only used two dialog tags. The first one is necessary to establish who is talking. The second one isn’t necessary because by including it on the same line as Henry’s actions (and a different line from Bob’s dialog), the reader will infer that it is Henry speaking. However, if we want to say that his voice wavered when he spoke, we can use a dialog tag here, as in this example. The rest of the convo doesn’t need tags, because people speak in turn and the action surrounding the dialog also helps remind us who is speaking. Also notice the use of the pronoun here instead of “Henry” in the second line. Although you could say “Henry said,” it isn’t necessary, because we know, based on the proceeding action, that Henry is speaking (and the fact that it is on a new line).
Additionally, if a character has a very particular way of talking, it’s easier to know who is speaking without dialog tags. I don’t just mean dialect (which should be avoided as a general rule), but obviously some people have a certain way of stringing words together or a certain phrase they often use that might clue us in right away, this is X talking.
One more tip; treat dialog with tags as you would any other sentence. If the dialog is all one sentence and ends when you get to the dialog tag, then the next line of dialogue starts as a new sentence. Otherwise, you can continue. Run-on dialog is a mistake I see a lot in my editing jobs. This sounds more confusing than it is, so let me give some examples:
“That’s true,” Bob said, taking hold of Henry’s wrist, “but I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
versus
“That’s true,” Bob said, taking hold of Henry’s wrist. “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
The first example would be: “That’s true, but I feel…” if it were all one sentence (without the dialog tag interruption), where as the second would be: “That’s true. I feel…” without it. See the difference? If your dialog is continuous (with the dialog tag interjecting), restart the dialog with a lowercase letter, as in the above example, and lead in with another comma. Otherwise, you should use a period and a capital letter for the next part of the dialog.
Make sense?
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