The Art of Writing: How to Write Bestselling Novels

Dialogue Tags & Beats (Important chapter)

Ever read a Wattpad book (or even a bestseller) and said, "That is not a dialogue tag!"? Some really good writers simply don't understand what proper dialogue tags are and how to use them. Not only that, but often times, people don't know how to balance them with beats so they aren't using a ton of dialogue tags. Ever read "she said" so repeatedly you wanted to claw your eyes out?

This skill is very important to learn and master because it determines how good your flow is going to sound, and any good writer will tell you that flow is everything. It's part of what draws a reader to your work, what makes them want to keep reading, and what keeps them engaged. The second your flow doesn't sound right, it takes the readers out of the story, and when that happens, they're much more likely to put your book down and go do something more engaging like play a game on their phone, watch a TV show, chat with their friends, or any number of other things. Which is why this skill is very important to learn because it's a big part of how you'll keep your readers engaged.

So, first things first...we'll start with what a dialogue tag is and isn't.

Dialogue tags are the words in a sentence of dialogue that are not part of the dialogue. They're usually in the form of said, yelled, whispered, shouted, etc. Murmured or mumbled don't count because, by definition, you can't discern what's being said if someone's murmuring or mumbling. One cannot seeth or hiss words, they can only
say words. When I use the word "say" in the context of the previous sentence, I'm talking about all the words I mentioned above like yells, shouts, etc--words that are actual forms of speaking. Now, try to growl words. Or try to hiss words. Can't do it, can you? Not in a normal way that people do it in everyday life, at least. You can either say words or you can hiss, but you can't really do both at the same time. That's a good test for a word you're considering using as a dialogue tag. And when you do that test, make sure you ask yourself if it's something normal that a person would do when speaking.

Continue is another of those words. A person cannot continue words, he or she can only say words. So when you see someone write something like the following example, it's not a dialogue tag, it's improper usage and makes no sense:

Kat continued, "That guy's a moron."

If you want to write that properly, you'd write Kat continued a wannabe beat:

Kat continued. "That guy's a moron."

But you really want to avoid using beats like continued because it's redundant and unnecessary. If Kat says something else, it's evident that she's continuing, so why say it? Use your beats only when they're adding useful information to the scene, not just to break up the dialogue.

There aren't many acceptable dialogue tags:

Said, whispered, yelled, shouted, muttered, and maybe a couple more.

Those are the acceptable dialogue tags today by publishers. Notice how asked is not on the list?

Asked is a double redundancy. The sentence is already formed as a question in most cases (though there are some instances where that isn't the case).

Example: "Are you talking to me"

Without punctuation, everyone knows that's a question. Therefore, the question mark is the first redundancy since the sentence is already in the form of a question. That's okay, though, since it's a normal part of our punctuation. That makes asked the second redundancy, because the sentence structure and the question mark both tell us it's a question already. Therefore, it's not necessary. We'll explore the reason behind eliminating the use of asked in the following section.

SAID

Publishers have done a ton of research over the years to figure out what engages a reader the most, because engagement keeps the reader reading and gives them a positive impression of the book.