Writing The Non-Verbal Thesaurus

[melchi]

I've been putting this advice into practice for a while now after having a panic attack over tags and tagging everything. Still use dialogue tags, but try to keep it sparing and never repetitive. It's also a concrete example of showing and not telling when body movements and expresions are used to convey emotion instead of tags.

It is something to take with a grain of salt I'd think. Using said never is dogmatic.

That being said... like others have said it is a balancing act.

LN translation style.

"Moo."

"Baa."

"bleeeeehhh"

Three animals in a barn. Figure out which animal is saying what.

Dialogue tag.

"Moo." The cow said.

"Baa." The sheep said.

"Bleeeehhh." The goat said.

--Note: Went from 0 words using tags to 6 words.

Action tag.

"Moo." The cow stomped the ground.

"Baa." The ship did sheep things.

"Bleeeeh." The goat lowered his horns.

--Note: Went from 6 words to 15 words.

If a typical book should have 80,000 to 100,000 words and your publisher says you need to compress it, I would argue having shorter tags for dialogue is a good way to do that. The real reason not to use 'said' it to avoid "talking head syndrome"

 

[CharlesEBrown]

You could always take the extreme route used in The Sandman - each of the Endless has their own font that only they speak in...