Rather than take recommendations about dialogue tags as prohibitions, consider them as suggestions for best practices. Since we’ve been talking about looking deeper at the reasons behind writing advice (so far a two-part series), let’s do that specifically for dialogue tags and the said issue. The occasional tag beyond said or asked is okay in any genreīut sometimes rules and suggestions simply aren’t helpful when there’s no explanation behind them or no expansion beyond the advice itself. Some genres allow for tags other than said, asked, whispered, and murmured Occasionally we get advice that promotes a situational approach. We typically see an all or nothing approach-īe creative and use any verb you want as a dialogue tag I agree though that those dialogue tags are clunky . . .īecause the said/dialogue tag rule/advice/suggestion generates a lot of confusion and questions and pushback any time the subject is brought up-and I don’t mean only here at The Editor’s Blog, but everywhere-I thought I’d try opening up the discussion by looking at the issue in ways other than through the advice we typically see. You can smile while saying something and you can laugh and distort the words by laughing them. I do it all the time and see it done in my day-to-day life too. One last thing I wanted to mention: while I don’t use “he smiled” or “he laughed” as a dialogue tag, I never understand that advice saying that it’s impossible to do so. In one of my recent articles about writing advice, a reader posted this question/observation in a comment. Maby Fiction Editor Beth Hill last modified September 11, 2016
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