Editing Exercise Two: Dialogue Tags
March 18th 2010 12:06
Today's exercise is about dialogue tags.
You want dialogue to stand on its own. Dialogue tags shouldn't have to explain how your character said it. A reader should be able to tell who's speaking fairly easily without any dialogue tags at all, but you also don't want to go too long in a scene without dialogue tags.
Today, go back over the chapters you've already edited and look for any dialogue tags that use verbs other than 'said'. 'Asked', 'answered', and 'replied' are all right once in a while. Even 'yelled' or 'shouted' is all right once in a while. Anything that's downright impossible 'he gimaced', 'she chuckled', should be replaced by 'said'. And anything silly like 'he interrupted' should also be replaced by 'said'.
Change at least three dialogue tags in which you find verbs other than said.
While you're at it, look for any words ending with '-ly' that come after dialogue. Chances are, they don't need to be there. Readers should be able to tell when your character is saying something sarcastic, so 'sarcastically' shouldn't appear. And things along that line. Cut out 95% of all the '-ly' words you find in dialogue tags, and if the dialogue doesn't make sense anymore, you'll have some heavy rewriting to do-but it's all worth it if it gets you published, right?
And if the work seems like it'll go on forever, like it's impossible to do, remember that some people like to believe six impossible things before breakfast.
You want dialogue to stand on its own. Dialogue tags shouldn't have to explain how your character said it. A reader should be able to tell who's speaking fairly easily without any dialogue tags at all, but you also don't want to go too long in a scene without dialogue tags.
Today, go back over the chapters you've already edited and look for any dialogue tags that use verbs other than 'said'. 'Asked', 'answered', and 'replied' are all right once in a while. Even 'yelled' or 'shouted' is all right once in a while. Anything that's downright impossible 'he gimaced', 'she chuckled', should be replaced by 'said'. And anything silly like 'he interrupted' should also be replaced by 'said'.
Change at least three dialogue tags in which you find verbs other than said.
While you're at it, look for any words ending with '-ly' that come after dialogue. Chances are, they don't need to be there. Readers should be able to tell when your character is saying something sarcastic, so 'sarcastically' shouldn't appear. And things along that line. Cut out 95% of all the '-ly' words you find in dialogue tags, and if the dialogue doesn't make sense anymore, you'll have some heavy rewriting to do-but it's all worth it if it gets you published, right?
And if the work seems like it'll go on forever, like it's impossible to do, remember that some people like to believe six impossible things before breakfast.
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