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[novoki]

Writing Tags

So for those that don��t know, tags are the ‘they said’ part of writing. This is something that a lot of people find difficult and, despite being such a small part of writing, can seriously ruin your story if done wrong.

So I’m here to give you guys an easy how-to guide on making sure your tags don’t suck, and that readers don’t get turned off three sentences into your story.

Step one: Throw Out the Excessive Stuff

Now this comes in two forms. Number one - specifying your characters too much. It’s perfectly fine to use ‘she’ three times in a row, your audience isn’t stupid and can pick up on who’s speaking through context clues (something I’ll touch on later). It’s absolutely one of my biggest pet peeves when people write about how “The skinny boy” said something when it’s completely not relevant to the story. Especially when there’s too much detail, like “the skinny dutch boy”. Why do we need to know he’s skinny? Why do we need to know he’s dutch? You can just say ‘boy’ and it’ll read fine! Don’t go overboard on your pronouns and adjective, especially when it’s unnecessary.

The other form is in the verb. Now, in school and classes and stuff, you get taught to use words other than ‘said’. Don’t listen to them! No, it’s horrible advice! Whilst yes, a text can get boring if people are “saying” something five times in a row, but it’s so much worse when one person said “whispered”, another “yelled”, and another “cried” all in a few paragraphs. It is very tiring as an audience to read that, so don’t be afraid to use ‘said’ every once in a while. Even better, use no tags! Readers can still pick up context clues and figure out who’s speaking.

Here’s an example:

You see this? Hurts to read, right? Too wordy, too much happening - you don’t like it, I don’t like it, Lin-Manuel Miranda doesn’t like it! So let’s tone it down a bit:

Lookie here - I only used tags twice, and I only used an original one once. The rest I used an action, or no tag at all. And it’s already much easier to read, right? Not perfect - but easier.

Step two: Place Tags in Different Orders

I feel like this is a pretty obvious one, but I’m still going to go over it because it’s quite a common mistake a lot of people make. Use a mix of sentences, too - simple, complex, clause, ect. It really improves the flow of your writing, and you’ll have more fun with it too.

An example:

This is quote boring to the reader because it has the same tone and pace throughout the whole thing. And even though we mixed verbs and actions, it’s still not the best piece of writing. Now look at this one:

Personally, I would have removed tags completely for at least one of these, but I kept them in just to show you how to mold your tags around different sentences.

Step three: Add Action

Another pretty well-known one, but a useful one nonetheless! As I’ve mentioned, completely erasing tags is a good way to go about solving this problem and one say of doing this is to replace it with an action. It can also help with the whole character confusion thing, as if you mention something a character does and then follow it with dialogue, the reader is going to assume they’re the ones who are talking now.

The fun thing with this is you can get creative with it - you don’t always have you do a ‘[action] [quote]’ you can experiment with the formula a lot. On top of this, going back to the point in the paragraph above, action can help you define that it is the same person speaking. 

For example:

In this whole passage, I’ve only used 2 tags and only one for Harvey. Yet you can still tell that the whole time it’s him who’s speaking, not everyone else. I did this by making it clear that the others weren’t doing anything - yes, I was describing their actions, but I was also describing their inaction by doing so.

Here’s an example of a passage without the use of action for tags:

Iffy, right? Right. So here’s one where I use action instead of verbs:

The last line actually brings me to my last point, which is:

Step four: Context Clues

Finally, the thing I’ve been on about for the last 10000 paragraphs is explained. And, honestly, it’s very easy. All you have to do is let your audience figure out who’s speaking. And whilst this may sound difficult, it really isn’t - you can’t assume the reader is a clueless nobody who can’t understand who’s speaking, because if you do it breaks up the immersion of the text.

Instead, leave clues in the dialogue. To make it clear one character isn’t speaking, make sure their name is mentioned so the audience knows it’s about them and not by them. I’m also positive your read will be able to deduct “wait - this character is talking about murdering people, so it must be the murderer” or “only this character speaks with this accent.”

We love examples here, so:

At no point here do I mention Dennis speaking, but it’s clear that he is. This is through context clues - the fact that Jake says his name, that Jake just spoke so the next line can’t be his, ect.

Context clues just make it a lot easier and less crowded - notice how I didn’t mention Jake saying the first line, either, but you guessed it was him because they’re the only ones in the scene.

Anyway, hope this helped you and have fun writing!