Writing How important are dialogue tags in your fiction?

[JordanIda]

The reader is also human, and a wall of text can be blinding. Hence a sprinkle of the name of the character maybe doing something, or an occasional, "Jane said" in a wall of dialog.

Just an anchor so the reader could see a name even if they look away.

Yes, yes certainly! One must set the scene and place the characters in the room.

I'm taking the term "dialogue" too literally. I'm thinking 'di--', as in two. As opposed to monologue and conversations, involving larger parties.

In monologue or soliloquy, setting the scene and speaker is typically sufficient.

Conveying large conversations requires more direction of action. (Someone above refers to speaker attribution as "action prompts," and I like that, as it gives attribution gainful employment.)

Dialogue, that is conversation between two speakers, often requires "action prompting" as well, so character names are bound to be peppered into long exchanges. But dialogue also exemplifies the only point I was trying to make: that strong characters have distinctive voices recognizable to the reader.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

I write Original English Light Novels (OELNs), and writing in that style will require me to have chapters with about 75%-90% dialogues, so I put tags. Especially when there's a conversation between three or more characters.

 

[L1aei]

Dunno. Sometimes tagging a character by mistake can be funny, like if the protagonist is an unreliable narrator and thinks someone else said it but then picks up on the pitch or tone of voice being off from who they thought they were speaking with. That can immerse readers into the same headspace of confusion as the protagonist is in.

If I am not making sense, I can go into more depth.

 

[TinaMigarlo]

so something like this would drive you nuts?


"Do you think this is a good idea? We won't have any idea what we will be facing until they are on top of us." Lucy asked. The pair of them stood outside their mechs near the cave where they fought the Jenner and Panther.

"It is either genius or insanity." He replied, holding her in his arms. "Just promise me you will back off if I tell you to this time. I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve, but I will have a hard time using them if I have to worry about you as well."

She leaned back on his chest, laughing softly. "You can heal the critically injured, cut the arms of a battlemech with a sword, and turn armour into metal blocks with little effort. Why am I not surprised my Danna has even more skills hidden away?"

"You know, you seem to be taking this incredibly well. Most other times I have brought this up, I have received a lot of disbelief, critical questions, and distrust. This world doesn't even have magic, yet you have accepted everything I have told you without any issue."

"Because I have faith, John-sama. You have the power to do things that only the Kami would be able to accomplish, and you used that power to save me and protect my family." She said, then looked up at him. "I have held onto my faith during these past three years, and you are my reward for not giving up and falling into despair. So even though we just met, I love you with all my heart, my Danna, and I will continue to do so for the rest of my days."

"Lucy. I am falling in love with you, too. I have no idea when we will have a chance, but I want to officially make you my wife, my Tsuna. I want to adopt Rei and grow our family. Together." He replied, then kissed her.

They held each other tightly while standing on that windy cliff face, talking about their past, planning for the future, all while waiting for the inevitable hammer to drop.

Reading it is no problem. I was raised on paperbacks. What drives me c-r-a-z-y is the autistic nitpicking about all the rules writing it like that.. My way, I can just WRITE and its fine. If not fine, then it seems to be good enough. I have no complaints on my dialogue style. I have some dialogue heavy chapters and I need something repeatable and easy to make, as well as clear and direct and easily read.

 

[Dawnathon]

I was taught to never start a paragraph with a non-dialogue sentence and then add dialogue midway through. As in:

M.C. punched the wall. "Damn it!"

You would always have to start a new line for the next piece of dialogue then. But if you start a paragraph with dialogue, then some action happens, it's grammatically fine to have the dialogue of the same character continue in the same line. This is the main rationale behind maybe 90% of my dialogue tags. They're not actually needed to convey who's talking, so much as to naturally weave in actions and dialogue without as many segments between them. I'll even take liberties and use "..." to technically start lines with dialogue, if it's meant to convey a hesitation or a very noticeable silence when they would be expected to respond.

In the same regard, my dialogue tags are usually accompanied by actions, expressions, and so on. They're less important for telling the readers who's talking, and far more important for telling the readers what's being done alongside all the talking. Since the dialogue tags are more incidental this way, I don't get wortied about trying to force in variety with every single instance. Or in other words, I'm not scared of using "(s)he said". I've known people who have done some concerning levels of overthinking. It's not a bad pair if words as long as it's being used as needed. Though of course if every sentence has a "he said, she said", you probably need to reconsider some things with your writing style.