#9 He said, She said:
When I was still very new to the writing process, I had a habit of replacing the usual “he said” and “she said” tags with “asked”, “growled”, “howled” , “hissed” (yup :P I have used that one as well lol!) and some more unimaginable tags. Also, a small note, unless your character uses words that end with “s” you can’t use “she hissed”. It sounds really awkward >-< ! And don’t worry, I still make that mistake myself lol!
The reasons why I used the above dialogue tags was because I was under the impression that if I don’t use ‘said’ my writing would sound more cool (lol! Yeah, you can laugh all you want, I know it was stupid…very stupid :P).
Now, back to the main topic, the use of dialogue tags is very important in the story. It is that little miracle word which the reader unconsciously skips, and yet, manages to remember who is delivering that dialogue or speech. Instead of using a different dialogue tag for every time a character speaks, it’s better to use either ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ or ‘Stan said’ or ‘Grace said’ and the continue with the dialogue. In doing this, you don’t have to keep repeating the tags. Just add one in between a paragraph that contains a big dialogue, and the reader will instantly recognize who is speaking and who isn’t.
You also need to remember that mentioning who is talking, is also very important. Sometimes, if a scenes changes or if your character runs from one room to the other, you can’t simply jump to the dialogue, without showing who is talking. *ahem* so keep that in mind *winks* I have had countless instances in my stories, where I have felt as if the characters were floating, just throwing dialogues out at each other lol! That my friend, is a very…very dangerous situation. It was the reason why I had to delete most of my old stories, because they were, well horrible T_T
So yeah, don’t forget the dialogue tags. You can’t get rid of them or skip them. It’s better to use them, and in a manner that is simple *winks* oh btw, anybody heard that Ashley Tisdale song “He said, She said”? That was kinda how I got the title lol!
Post your thoughts in the comments section below, I would love to hear from you'll :P !! - Sanya