Should I put character names in every line of dialogue?

Shard

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Personally, I hate when people don't mention who is talking, so I try to always include it, or at least reference it with he/she/they, etc. I can see both ways though, so I would say go with what you feel most comfortable with, but also listen to reader feedback if they say it is hard to tell.
 

TheUnsuspicious

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I had commented this on another site a few weeks ago.

Just like what others had said. You really don't need to care if your characters have personality in the way they are talking. But here's a couple method that I found through experience, especially when your character needs to talk twice in a row.

First Method: you put a whole action paragraph before the dialogue.
When B was browsing through the social media in peace, the door suddenly opened following A barging in and shocking B in his comfy position.
"Hey, you hungry? wanna eat together?" A asked in enthusiasm.
"Hmm... Sure"
B slowly closed his phone and yawned slightly.
"Where are we eating?"
However, before A even said anything, B interrupted her.
"Just in case, I'm not the one paying right?"
"..."
As the two stared at each other for a good second, A rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Stingy bastard, fine I'll pay"
But then, A crossed her arm and shot him a stern look.
"But you must help me with my study"
"Sure~~ sure~~"
Having successfully save his poor pocket, B put on a happy smile.
"So? where are we eating?"

Second Method: you skip the dialogue and summarized it inside the paragraph.
"Hey... I get that you're paying... but aren't you too shameless to only buy these cheap food?" B was left speechless at his friend.
But soon, B quickly regretted what he just said when he heard A's rambling about how it's not shameless when compared to himself.
A even began listing every single shameless thing that B had done in these past few months.
B's face quickly turned red tomato with every line uttered by his friend. And in fear, B quickly apologized to her and begged A to stop talking.
The girl snickered in delight at her friend's poor state. But after feeling a little guilty, A chuckled and said that she was joking before ordering more food for them to eat.
However, the pain of A's words was too piercing for B. So he quickly declined the ordered food and gave an excuse about going for a diet.
This in turn make the whole eating experience quite awkward for the both of them.

Third Method: you use the version of 'he said', 'she said', 'I said'. However, use it sparingly, cleverly, and make sure it has flavors.
"Hey... didn't we already had an exam about this a few days ago. Why do you still want to learn this?" B glanced at A with confusion in his eyes.
"W-well... let's just say I kinda... forget to study?"
B gave out a long sigh and said.
"You... did you get told to redo the exam by the teacher?"
B voiced out his pity for her.
"I get that you suck at math. but damn... this is..."
"H-hey! I just forget to study ok?! Don't you dare think that i'm stupid!"
But when A saw B's pitying look turning even stronger, Her face became redder and redder as she started to spout all kinds of things.
"S-so what? Even if i'm dumb. I'm still pretty! So i'm a pretty dumb student-... wait a minute..."
"A-anyway can we not focus on that! We had an agreement" A was so flustered that she couldn't even look at the boy in the eyes.
'Aagh... this is embarassing' She thought to herself as she caressed her already hot cheek.
B grinned at the active girl sitting beside him.
"don't worry, if I can't make you pass this reexam, i'll willingly be your servant for the whole month-"
However, B suddenly stopped when he saw A's eyes glint in wickedness.
"...Eee why are you looking at me like that"
B gulped awkwardly.
"F-forget it, I take my words back..."
"Ehh?! But why?!" A asked in great disbelief, she felt betrayed.
"What do you mean why?! I dare you look at your grinning mouth and ask that again!"

There are tons of ways to make the dialogue clear for your readers. but honestly, it's not even a must if each characters are clearly distinct from another. Yours is already good bro.
 

melchi

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Sprinkling names in is only a couple words. A line of text that is a quote followed by another line of text that is a quote follows by another line of text that is a quote can get confusing really fast. I know that way of writing is used a lot but I still don't like it.
 

Representing_Tromba

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For the record, Japanese webnovels don't have dialogue tags. You're expected to know who the speaker is based on context and speech quirks... The latter are almost always lost in translation though.

So... Good translations add dialogue tags to the translation, because you don't have the speech quirks to let you know who is speaking what. But if the fantranslation is being done by someone who wants to try staying truer to the raws, they'll usually not add the dialogue tags which... Can be quite messy.

So uhn... This is more of a quirk of the translation process than anything related to writing, really.
Yeah, usually good translators and professional translators will add dialogue tags to help fix this.
 

TheTrinary

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Listen, this is the just an example of what Im talkin about:

' To be honest, I would never think you, out of all people, would betray me.''

'' ... This is the result of your own choices... if you would've been a better ruler none of this would be happening.''

Zeus scoffed, ''Who should rule then? You? HAHAHA, don't make me laugh.''

'' Mortal changes their preference all the time, why can't Gods do the same? Besides, I wouldn't rule alone, I would actually listen to what the other Gods have to say and respect their opinion.''

'' Do you compare yourself to mortals? How many of them have you killed on whin or just for fun?''

Poseidon sighed, ''There will be a day when Death may come to take payment for my actions. But not today, not from you.''
----------------



As you can see, sometimes i didnt put the name Poseidon nor Zeus, thinking that the Reader would understand, but should i add their name to make more easy to understand or just leave like this?
like with most things, minimlism is better. You want to use the least amount of information without the reader losing any meaning. Will it still be understood if taken out? Then do it. Do you need it for the conversation to make sense? Keep it in.
 

Ararara

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No need to do that unless there's many people in the room (even then it can be avoided), or you're trying to slightly inflate your wordcount. Readers are pretty smart, they can figure most stuff out by themselves.
 
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