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Stumbled on a weird fact about dialogue tags while reading an old writing book
I was flipping through a 1987 copy of "The Writer's Handbook" I found at a library sale in Portland last Tuesday, and it said that over 70% of published authors in that era used only "said" or "asked" as dialogue tags. That surprised me because I've been trying to vary my tags with words like "whispered" or "shouted" to spice things up. Now I'm wondering if sticking to simple tags actually makes the writing smoother for readers. Has anyone else run into advice about keeping tags minimal?
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kelly3386h ago
Yeah that thing about "only used 'said' or 'asked'" is pretty wild. My friend Jenny tried doing that in her fanfic once and her beta reader told her it made the dialogue feel flat lol. She switched back to using a mix and said it read way better.
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