You Don’t Need All Those Dialogue Tags
By: Aysia C.
Tags: Writing Tips, Writing, Novel

You Don’t Need All Those Dialogue Tags

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

So there’s this thing that writers do where they add a million different dialogue tags to their books. Before I hop into my ways to elevate dialogue without a million different tags, allow me to explain what a dialogue tag is.

What is a dialogue tag?

Dialogue tags are words that describe the dialogue and how a character expresses something. For example, “‘It was cold outside,’ she said. The dialogue tag, in this case, is “said.” Now, as you can imagine, people get pretty creative with these. But I’m here to tell you not to do that. Some other examples include “whispered”, “shouted”, “exclaimed” etc.

You don’t need all those dialogue tags. There are other ways to elevate your dialogue.

Ways to spice up your dialogue

Play around with improper words

This is a fun one. If you want a character to have a certain dialect or say something a certain way, use the dialogue itself as a way to express that. Mess around with dropping and adding vowels or consonants to your dialogue. Spell certain words out phonetically, instead of how they actually sound.

I’ll give you an example.

“Hey Jen, are you listening?” “Am I what?” “Are you listening to me?” “What?” “Arrrre youuuu listeninggg? I’ve been talking to you for thirty minutes now.”

I’ll give you one more. This time of more of a dialect.

“Good mornin’ Jen. I woke up today to the sun just shinin’ through my window.” “Oi yea? And what’d yer have fer breakfast?”

Could you tell they have two different accents? It takes a bit more effort than just describing the characters’ accents once or multiple times, but it is a fun way to spruce up your dialogue.

Use action tags

Instead of all the “he said, she said”, you could just describe what the character is doing before, during, or after they are speaking.

I’ll give you another example.

“He looked out the window. ‘I wish I could go outside.’ He placed his head on his hands. ‘If only I could go outside.’”

Could you sense the character’s boredom or desperation? Sometimes you can use actions to make the dialogue within it sound a certain way. The logic here is that we associate certain actions with certain emotions. Like, placing your hand in your palm could indicate boredom and sometimes people take on a certain tone when they are bored.

Work on the story around it

This kind of ties into the previous section and the same logic applies. Well done dialogue should fit in well with the story around it, and that story can help determine how the dialogue sounds in the mind of a reader. Let me show you.

“On the night of the murder, I was merely in a faint sleep. My eyes were about to officially close for the night when I heard an eerie noise bounce off the walls of the room. Eerrrk tick errrk tick. The doorknob. Startled, I sprang up and peered at the door. Eerrrk tick errrk tick. Again. Eerrrk tick errrk tick — and so it went on. I shook, I paced back and forth, I climbed the wall up then back down, and still it pursued. Eerrrk tick errrk tick. It continued. ‘The sound would drive me mad,’ I said to no one in particular.”

There’s a sense of dramatics and a bit of suspense in the story preceding the bit of dialogue, so when the reader gets to the dialogue, they will already have that tone in mind. There is no need for a “murmur” a “whisper” or a descriptive adverb ending in -ly.

Bonus. Guess what other benefit having fewer dialogue tags has? You are giving your reader leeway to interpret a scene for themselves. You are making them a part of the story-making process and engaging them.

Use one or two for long conversations

If you have a long stretch of dialogue, consider using only one or two dialogue tags. Every bit of dialogue certainly does not need a tag after it. Let’s look at two examples of the same dialogue except one has a bunch of tags and the other does not.

“When are we going to talk about it?” Jen says. “Whenever I feel like talking about it,” John replies. Jen retorts, “And when will that be?” “When I feel like it,” John says.

Now, let’s do it without all the dialogue tags.

“When are we going to talk about it?” Jen says. “Whenever I feel like talking about it,” John replies. “And when will that be?” “When I feel like it.”

Doesn’t the dialogue seem to go a bit faster the second way? This can work well if the conversation is meant to sound more natural or fast-paced. And it seems a bit cleaner too. There is a sense of finality in the final statement, and the snappiness of the two characters comes across more clearly because it is not crowded by dialogue tags.