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A beta reader told me my dialogue tags were distracting and now I only use "said" and "asked" 90% of the time.
They pointed out three places in one chapter where I wrote "he hissed" for a character who wasn't a snake and that made me laugh enough to actually try their suggestion, so has anyone else cut down on fancy tags and found it made their scenes read faster?
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blake_black4721d ago
i read somewhere that stephen king basically lives by "said is dead" and honestly he's got a point, most of those fancy tags just pull you out of the story instead of keeping it moving. once i stopped trying to be all creative with my tags my scenes definitely flowed better, like the dialogue was doing the work instead of me trying to dress it up.
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angela4321d ago
It's such a relief when you finally realize you don't have to show off with every line of dialogue. That pressure to find a unique tag for every single spoken line just slows everything down. Once I stopped worrying about it, my writing felt way more natural and the conversations just started flowing on their own.
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