One issue I’ve seen in almost every novel I’ve edited has been with dialogue and action tags, so today, we’ll talk about some things to do and to avoid with each.

Dialogue Tags

Dialogue tags are what you put at the beginning or end of what one character says to indicate who said it (he said, she said, they asked). One of the biggest things I see with newer authors is using a lot of dialogue tags that say something other than, “he said,” or “she asked.” For the most part, it’s discouraged to use tags like sobbed, exclaimed, growled, etc. The real point of any dialogue tag is to show readers who’s talking without drawing too much attention away from the actual dialogue or the continuing story. Things like sobbed, exclaimed, and growled, take more attention away from the dialogue.

They usually aren’t very necessary either. For example, let’s look at this sentence:

“I can’t wait to see you!” she exclaimed.

Here, we see two indicators that this character isn’t just saying the sentence in an average, non-descript way. First, she says “can’t wait.” That means, she’s excited! Do people who are excited say the things they’re excited about like they were talking about the dirty dishes in the sink? Not typically. Most people have somewhat of an elevated tone when they’re excited, so readers already know that’s happening in this sentence without us having to say anything.

Second, there’s an exclamation mark at the end of the dialogue. Do you remember way back in your elementary school days when you learned about what the different punctuation does in the sentence? Exclamation marks show excitement (there’s that word again) or suggest some form of elevated tone. In my mind, I always think of sentences with exclamation points even as being said a little louder than the others.

So saying “she exclaimed” really doesn’t add anything to this sentence. Readers will have already figured out how she said it by the time the sentence ends.

Let’s look at an example that doesn’t add anything and that might actually distract from the dialogue:

“How dare you go behind my back like that?” he growled.

This sentence doesn’t have as many obvious indicators, but the ones that are there are still clear. For example, this character says, “How dare you.” How many of us say that phrase when we’re excited someone else has done something? I’d bet that’s pretty rare. So readers can assume in this situation, and with given context clues of what’s going on in the dialogue or action surrounding this, that this character is angry. The character also mentions that this person went behind their back. That’s almost never a good thing. So even without the dialogue tag of “he growled,” readers already know he’s angry about something the other character did.

This specific dialogue tag tends to take readers out of the story as well. I’ve heard many readers complain that when they see something like “he growled,” they can’t help but picture the character actually growling like a dog or some other animal. Unless you’re writing a paranormal story where this character’s a werewolf or something like that, that could be a really quick way of snatching readers out of the story and disrupting the magic of the story, whereas if we’d just said, “he asked,” readers see the indicator that we’re just reminding them who’s speaking, and they’ll continue on with very little distraction.

Action Tags

Action tags are breaks in the dialogue that show what the character’s doing while they’re speaking. These can be very useful in making sure readers stay grounded in the story, and they’re great replacements for when you don’t feel like said or asked fit well with the dialogue tag.

The main issue I see with these is punctuating them as if they were dialogue tags. Action tags should be punctuated like separate sentences. Let’s look at some examples.

In our first example (“I can’t wait to see you!”), it might be kind of strange to say, “she said,” at the end of the dialogue since the tone is more elevated here. But what do you do if you do need to indicate who’s saying this? You can show what the character is doing while she says this.

She jumped to her feet and spun around. “I can’t wait to see you!”

Since we’re talking about the character right before the dialogue, readers can assume that “she” is the one who’s talking here. This would also work if we put the action tag after the dialogue.

In our second example (“How dare you go behind my back like that?”) it might be odd to say “he asked” for similar reasons. So how can we fix this one?

“How dare you go behind my back like that?” He punched the wall on his left, leaving a fist sized hole.

This emphasizes that the character was angry without us having to put too much attention on something that doesn’t move the story along. Instead, the action tag gets the characters moving, which can hold readers’ attention and keep them locked into the story.

Exceptions

As with all writing rules, there are exceptions to these rules. Most of these exceptions deal with describing how the character’s saying the dialogue when that can’t be made clear from the words in the dialogue itself. For example, dialogue tags using words like whispered and yelled are still common enough that they don’t draw too much attention (as long as they’re not being used all the time), and they help readers picture how quiet or loud the dialogue is.

You may even find that your dialogue tags show you where your dialogue can be strengthened to be more clear by itself! Work through your novel with these things in mind, and let me know how it goes!