Writing How important are dialogue tags in your fiction?

[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.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Varies depending on number of characters and type of conversation.

One of my favorite minimalist examples was from Brust's The Phoenix Guard which was kind of a tribute/parody of The Three Musketeers cycle. He has three characters talking, but the dialogue is so short and simple it doesn't really MATTER who said what, other than the initial question. There were at least six examples (and I only found three instances in the material he was supposedly lampooning - but those went on far longer than his six or so)
Character one asks a question about something, and is "tagged"
Another character replies either "Yes" or "No" untagged.
Then you get an untagged tennis match with:
"Even so?"
"Definitely so!"
"I agree."
"Very well" following, along with two or three more lines usually, and ending with the first character saying something else and then the scene moving on.

I do not recommend doing that kind of banter a lot, but sometimes it DOES feel far more natural and organic (and sometimes, doing it that way can make it funnier than normal writing, if that's your goal.).