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Ace's Artisanal Alcove

16 days ago

The purpose of this thread is similar to the Monday Writing Questionnaire thread I started a while ago, a place for people to share thoughts on the technical side of craft. Mainly I'm starting it because I have some questions I'd be interested in people's thoughts on. The first one is this, action tags. What do you think about them? So I've personally heard the advice to not overuse dialogue tags outside of said, asked, ect. Which I think is decent advice, but as a result I find myself using a ton of action tags. I felt particularly called out when someone said that beginner writer's characters are always nodding, standing up, smiling, sighing, raising an eyebrow, ect. Because I swear I use these all the time. My characters' heads are constantly bobbing up and down, I bet their heads hurt from nodding all the time. So my question, do you think overuse of action tags are a problem? In a two person scene I usually never use standard dialogue tags, since you can just omit them, but I typically have a lot of action tags.

fresh_out_the_oven

Ace's Artisanal Alcove

16 days ago

Good to see you're back, typos and all

I use action tags, but I try not to if I can't think of an actual action the character should be doing. In other words, if I don't natural picture them doing an action, then I don't force it. If the character speaking is the narrator, then I might include some kind of thought of theirs before or after the piece of dialogue.

Sometimes when I'm really struggling I write an entire scene with no kind of tagging at all and then come back later to add in actions, tags, and other various bits of information.

Any kind of description of the character works, it doesn't have to be observing their actions— just make sure you aren't being totally random. Maybe the character is talking about purple being their favorite color, so the narrator notices they're wearing a purple necklace.
"My favorite color is purple." That tracks; my eyes shift down to the purple necklace that always lays on her neck.

I like dialogue tags. I read fast and get disoriented easily. Two-person conversations are one thing, but I personally think any more characters involved means you absolutely have to tag every piece of dialogue in some manner or fashion.

MrAce321

Ace's Artisanal Alcove

16 days ago

*naturally :) Interesting, I don't think I force action tags personally, I just use them a lot. It feels natural to do so. Really just not sure if I'm overusing them or not though, or what overusing them is. As far as three person conversations go, dialogue tags on every single line of dialogue feels like overkill. I default to the standard said or asked or what have you, but I don't put them on every line. My rule of thumb is it has to be clear from context who's speaking, and that's without taking into consideration the tone of a character's voice. Typically I find that you can get away with about half and half or less in three person conversations.

fresh_out_the_oven

Ace's Artisanal Alcove

15 days ago

Shoot, you got me there.

Well, you probably shouldn't default to that. And with "dialogue tags" I'm including action tags or general nods to which character is talking. I find that no one's as good at individual character voice as they think they are— while I can maybe guess which character is speaking based off of that, I'd rather know. Isn't it the author's job to tell me what's happening? I hate feeling like I may be misinterpreting something.

Of course, everyone is free to have their own style. I'm just stating what I prefer.

MrAce321

Ace's Artisanal Alcove

15 days ago

Yeah, I was saying that I feel like any kind of tag being on every character feels like overkill, and that you should never use just "character voice" to assume the reader knows which character is talking, so we agree there. But I was saying that it's usually obvious like half the time with no tags, even without relying on character voice at all. I feel like the writing would be bogged down too much with tags every line. Like this, Dylan faced Lily, "You're dumb!" "No you are!" "Hey now," Jay interjects. "Let's be civil." You don't need the dialouge tag for Lily, unless there's another character named Sally who likes to come to Lily's defense or something.

fresh_out_the_oven

Ace's Artisanal Alcove

15 days ago

I think Dylan directly facing Lily to say that falls under the category I set out of "general nods to which character is talking"

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Anthraxus

Ace's Artisanal Alcove

15 days ago

I always feel a compulsion to include describing what people are doing as they are talking in a dialogue scene, as few of my dialogue scenes are two people just standing/sitting there talking at each other. They are cooking dinner or doing the dishes or working on their computer or something.