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A stranger's comment about dialogue tags changed how I write conversations
I was waiting for a coffee in Denver last Tuesday and overheard two people discussing a novel. One said, "The author never lets a character just speak, every line has a tag with an action." I went home and checked my own draft, I had 47 dialogue tags in one 8 page scene. Has anyone else found that cutting most tags makes conversations feel faster, or is that just me?
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jordan_webb492mo ago
47 tags in 8 pages does sound like a lot, but I would not rewrite my whole draft over one overheard conversation. That person was probably talking about some specific book they hated, not handing down a universal rule. Tags serve a purpose when the reader genuinely can't tell who's speaking or when a pause matters. Cutting them all makes every exchange feel like two robots ping-ponging lines back and forth. I trimmed mine from 47 to maybe 30 and honestly could not feel the difference in pacing. It reads fine either way, so I stopped worrying about it.
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