How to fix your boring dialogue tags? 4 Ways to vary and better punctuate your dialogue
If your dialogue tags start to sound redundant, it’s because you are overusing them in a repetitive way. Worse of all, your readers will probably feel it too and they can easily drift away and get bored. In this article I am going to share 4 tips and tricks to keep your dialogue fresh and reader engaged.
1. Vary your dialogue tags placement
The most straightforward way is to experiment your speech tag positioning by shuffling them at the beginning, middle and sometimes the end of a dialogue. If you always put it at the same location, your reader will pick up the pattern and feel dull. Here are some examples:
Beginning: Ashley said, “Dinner is ready honey.”.
Middle: “In a minute.” Robert replied, “Let me finish up my work.”
End: “Okay, let me grab the kids as well.”, Ashley responded.
2. Replace your “said” with synonyms
Instead of using “he said” or “said Pete” all the time, replace them with synonyms that fit the emotion and tone. Matching dialogue tags with context keeps the conversation vivid and dynamic, be it angry, excited, fearful, quiet, sad, or affectionate.
Visit this page to learn all the synonyms you can replace.
3. Use action tags instead
Action tag is a way to indicate who just spoke by writing the dialogue alongside the character’s action, ditching “said” and its synonyms. It gives a fuller picture of the whole situation without requiring additional writing. Note that we can vary action tag locations similar to dialogue tags:
Ashley came out from the kitchen, “Dinner is ready honey.”.
“In a minute.” Robert took a look at his watch, “Let me finish up my work.”
“Okay, let me grab the kids as well.”, Ashley dropped the apron and walked upstairs.
4. Quit using tags
There are several ways to let your audience know who just spoke without tags at all.
Natural back and forth
When there are two dominating characters having multiple conversations, we can take advantage of the natural flow of chat to skip some tags. Note that conventionally to signal the end of the character’s dialogue without a tag, you need an ending double quotation (as always) and start the new dialogue on the next line.
Ashley came out from the kitchen and shouted to Robert, “Dinner is ready honey.”.
“In a minute, let me finish up my work.”
“Okay, let me grab the kids as well.”
From the example above it is clear Ashley started the conversation talking to Robert and he responded back while Ashley made the last dialogue.
Note we may not want to get rid of too many tags as they are crucial for readers to visualize the scene. Instead optimally place different types of tags on various locations within dialogues for the best outcome.
Use the character’s accent and slang
Some characters have distinguishable accents and slang which can help inform readers who is speaking.
For instance if one of the characters is a Texan, readers can easily tell when he is talking:
"I reckon y'all ain't from around here, are ya? Let's hightail it over to the barbecue and rustle up some grub."
Nonetheless, readers might find it hard to resonate without familiarity to the accent, thus causes confusion. So use it wisely.