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Inexperienced authors often add adverbs to their dialogue tags, such as, "He shouted angrily." But good writing doesn't need adverbs to make your readers understand how your characters are thinking or feeling. Your dialogue should be strong enough to convey that emotion by itself.
If your meaning isn't clear without an adverb, then you need to re-examine the content of your dialogue to make it more effective. Here's an example of using an adverb with a dialogue tag:
You should aim to keep your use of adverbs to under 12% of your dialogue tags.
If more than 12% of your dialogue tags have adverbs, it's time to remove some of those adverbs. To do so, take a hard look at your writing.
When possible, you should try to omit dialogue tags completely. Dialogue tags can distract your reader and interrupt the flow of your dialogue.
Ask yourself, "Does the reader need this dialogue tag to know who is speaking?" If they don't, you can get rid of the dialogue tag. You may cut down on your adverbs with dialogue tags by just removing dialogue tags in general. Let's rework our example:
What about instances when you definitely want to keep the dialogue tag?
In these cases, see if you can beef up the dialogue and lose the adverb:
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Dialogue tags are words like "said" and "asked" that show the reader who is doing the talking. The problem is that dialogue tags also distract from the dialogue itself, especially if they are nonstandard dialogue tags like "shouted," "whispered," "repeated," "ventured," and more. Instead of using dialogue tags to tell the emotions of the character, you should show their emotions through their actions and dialogue.
Showing emotions makes your writing more engaging. Take a look at this chart we put together based on analysis of published fiction.
As you can see, published authors use "said" as their dialogue tag over 60% of the time. The second most used is "asked" at just under 10%. The other, nonstandard dialogue tags are used only used a small proportion of the time. Because of this data, we recommend keeping your use of dialogue tags other than "said" and "asked" to under 20% of your dialogue tags.
Good writing shows the reader how characters feel rather than telling the reader how the characters feel. When you "show" rather than "tell," you engage your reader more in your text because the reader gets to make inferences and use their imagination more.
Consider the following examples:
Example 1
"You left me alone at the party," Jessica spat at her boyfriend.
"You were mad at me," Mark said as he looked as his phone.
Jessica yelled, "This is over!"
Example 2
Jessica glared at her boyfriend as he played on his phone. "You left me alone at that party."
"You were mad at me," Mark said without looking up.
Jessica stormed towards the door. "This is over."
The second example lets the reader connect more with the characters. Instead of telling the reader exactly how the characters are feeling, the writer lets their actions do the talking. As a reader, you get a better sense of the characters as fully developed beings.
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Dialogue tags are words like "said" and "asked" that identify the speaker. They are necessary to help readers understand and follow conversations. But it's a delicate balance: if you overuse dialogue tags, you risk distracting your reader from your story.
A dialogue tag is like a street sign. You don't need to see a street sign every few feet along the road. You only need street signs when you approach new roads different from the one you’re on so you know where you're going.
You only need dialogue tags when you need to identify who's talking. If who's speaking is obvious to the reader, then skip the dialogue tags. We recommend using tags in less than 15% of your dialogue.
Dialogue tags can distract your reader. Your dialogue tags should be almost invisible. Here’s an example of overused dialogue tags:
"Where are you going?" asked Monica.
"I’m off to the store," said Chandler.
"Who’s all going with you?" asked Monica.
"Just Joey and Ross," said Chandler.
It's distracting to use dialogue tags with each sentence. Because there are only two people involved in the conversation, the last two sentences don’t need the tags. Having dialogue tags only serves to interrupt the flow of the dialogue and distract your reader.
Here's how you can change it:
"Where are you going?" asked Monica.
"I’m off to the store," said Chandler.
"Who’s all going with you?"
"Just Joey and Ross."
It’s obvious who’s talking in the third and fourth sentences without using dialogue tags.
Great dialogue shouldn't need more than a few dialogue tags. If more than 15% of your dialogue has dialogue tags, it's time to remove some!
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