Tag, You're It!

Today I want to spend some time on dialogue. Writing effective dialogue takes skill and a little bit of a knowledge base. This is one place where high school or basic college English won’t help you out.

Punctuation

• All punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.
• Speaker tags are considered part of the sentence and are not capitalized.

Example
Incorrect
“What do you want”? She asked.

Correct
"What do you want?” she asked.

Unless you’re asking a question, the words in quotes end in a comma, IF you use a speaker tag. (I’ll explain the difference between a speaker tag and a speaker beat in a moment.)

Example
Incorrect
“I can’t believe you did that.” She said.

Correct
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said.

Tags and Beats
A speaker tag is a description of how the words were spoken and who spoke them, like said and asked.

Example
“I can’t believe you did that,” said Susan.

It’s important to keep speaker tags simple. Don’t pull out your thesaurus to find synonyms for said. Said, or asked, is almost invisible and the reader just skims over it, uninterrupted. There are two major problems when you use other words instead of said.

• First—it’s distracting. The reader hesitates, needing time to apply the correct definition of the tag you used.

Example
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he prevaricated.

• Second—you can easily fall into the trap of telling your story through the tags instead of the dialogue, especially if you add an adverb into the line. You want to make sure that the important things happen inside the quotes.

Example
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered darkly.

A speaker beat is a description of what the character is doing or saying. It’s contained in the same paragraph as the words that are spoken and this is how the reader knows who’s talking.

Example
I can’t believe you did that.” Susan crossed her arms and frowned.

A beat or a tag can come before or after the spoken lines. Just be sure it makes sense where you put the beat. Some words are spoken as a reaction to an action, so in that case it wouldn’t make sense for them to precede the action.

Example
Susan jumped and placed her hand on her chest. “You scared me. I didn’t know you were there.”

A speaker beat can also show us what he character’s feeling, unlike a tag, which just tells us.

Example
Telling
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered darkly.

Showing
Simon looked down and dug the toe of his shoe into the dirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Another Common Mistake
Beginning writers sometimes get confused about whether a short phrase is a speaker beat or a speaker tag. One I see over and over again is she smiled. She smiled is a beat, not a tag. The easiest way to tell the difference is to ask yourself if the can smile(or laugh or whatever) the words. You can’t smile words so you know to punctuate it as a separate sentence.

Example
Incorrect
“I like you,” Angela smiled.

Correct
“I like you.” Angela smiled.

I hope this clears up some of the questions you may have had about dialogue.

Don’t forget to join the conversation!
Blessings,
Edie