Pacing and Dialogue tags
Hi everyone,
I’ve nothing much to report today. Still doing my micro-tension draft. I found three pages (3/10) that needed additions.
So I thought I’d look back at stuff that bothered me when I was doing my first draft.
Okay, so one of those things was writing in the first person present tense and writing the tags:
‘I say,’, ‘he says’ with no other embellishments since readers just gloss over them. And how to deal with dialogue tags in general.
I looked at books that were written in the first person, both present tense and past tense and I highlighted all the dialogue tags on my kindle. And yes, there was a lot of simple ‘I say’, ‘I said’ with nothing else.
What I found when doing this, is that I like it when there is an action/thought tag and nothing else.
For example: action tag: I shoved my notes in my bag, tearing them in the process. “Sorry, I can’t stay.”
Or thought tag:
I don’t believe him. And I refuse to spend more time with a liar than I have to. “Sorry, I can’t stay.”
I learned as well, that if you want to speed up the pace, you need to pare down dialogue tags and sometimes delete them altogether.
Here’s three examples of the same conversation:
One with lots of tags, one with just a few, and one with none.
The pacing of each is different.
Lots of tags:
I block the stairs so she can’t avoid this conversation again. “Is it true?”
She fidgets with her hair. A nervous habit she’s never been able to break. “What does it matter? He raised you.”
I clench my fist. Why can’t she tell the truth for once. “Was he my father?”
She pushes past me. “I can’t deal with this. We buried my husband today.”
I stare at her as she climbs the stairs. “But not my father.”
She glances at me over her shoulder. “He was your father in every way that mattered.”
“Except in the most important way,” I whisper to her retreating back.
Some tags:
I block the stairs so she can’t avoid this conversation again. “Is it true?”
“What does it matter? He raised you.”
“Was he my father?”
She pushes past me. “I can’t deal with this. We buried my husband today.”
“But not my father.”
“He was your father in every way that mattered.”
“Except in the most important way,” I whisper to her retreating back.
No tags:
“Is it true?”
“What does it matter? He raised you.”
“Was he my father?”
“I can’t deal with this. We buried my husband today.”
“But not my father.”
“He was your father in every way that mattered.”
“Except in the most important way.”
There’s a balance between the number of dialogue tags and pacing. In other words, there’s a trade-off between giving the reader context, the POV character’s internal world and the pace of the conversation.
How many dialogue tags I choose and their length depends on the scene and the content of the conversation.
I learned sometimes that less is more, though. Too many dialogue tags, and tags that are too long can be clunky and make the conversation feel disjointed.
Also, I came to the conclusion that an author can write about 4-5 lines of dialogue between two people without tags but probably not more before the reader needs the context/setting to be re-established.
Highlighting all the tags in several books I enjoyed, really helped me work out what I like and don’t like. And since I’m writing a book I’d like to read, that’s important.
My conclusion? Choosing how many tags you want and their length and type is very much a stylistic choice. There is no right or wrong. But there is what you like and what you don’t like. If you don’t know what that is, then find out so your book is closer to your ideal book and definitely a book that only you could write.
That’s it for me.
Chat to you tomorrow.
Happy writing,
Joanne.
Micro-tension pages: 77 pages
