One critique on my dialogue tags completely changed how I write scenes

A beta reader in a Discord group told me I used 'he said' and 'she said' way too much, so I cut 80% of them and let the action carry the conversation. Has anyone else had a specific piece of feedback that made you rethink a core habit?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendy_jackson1mo ago

Hmm, I have to push back on this a little. Cutting 80% of your tags sounds like a lot, and I'm not sure that's the magic fix everyone says it is. There's this thing where you overcompensate and suddenly every line of dialogue has a character doing something random, like "she adjusted her coffee cup" or "he shifted in his chair." Before you know it, the action becomes just as distracting as the tags, maybe more. And @kai_butler83, I get the Elmore Leonard thing, but his style works because he's Elmore Leonard, you know? For a lot of readers, a simple "he said" or "she said" is actually invisible. It's the weirdly choreographed stage directions that pull me out of a scene.

olivia_rivera881mo ago

Yeah but "he said" is pretty much invisible after a while... it's the fancy stuff that sticks out.

kai_butler831mo ago

I read an interview with Elmore Leonard where he said something like "if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." That really stuck with me. He was talking about how visible the author's hand is when you load up lines with fancy tags or adverbs. Your beta reader had a valid point. When you cut back on "he said" and "she said" and let the action speak, the reader gets pulled into the scene instead of being reminded someone is typing it. I started doing something similar after hearing that, and it made my dialogue feel a lot more natural. The trick is finding the balance though, because no tags at all can get confusing fast.