What are your tips and tricks for avoiding dialog tags?

I'm having an off-day because I'm seemingly surrounded by the mentally disabled.

 

I was going to point out how, in a discussion about how numerically frequently something is used, you don't care about numbers, but at this point never mind.

 

And we'll see you in a week, mate. Cheers.

 

Edit: I dont know why this came out blue. It's either the fault of my phone, @ChickenFreak, or @Link the Writer. Maybe all three in a conspiracy.

What you've been saying has changed every five minutes but it's never been "He only uses tags when necessary." The vast majority of published authors do that. McCarthy needs MORE of them than most, as has been explained to you, so he uses probably more than most authors.

You may not care about numbers, but they don't lie.

 

Well, returning to the OP; I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but Cormac McCarthy doesn't use tags in his novels, it might be worth giving him a read.

 

... Where have you been exactly?

 

What even happened here?

 

I hear you, Commandante. I decided now to write my first draft in script mode, e.g. Jenny: blahblah. Bob: yeah yeah.... and later, I go in and decide action, tag or standalone...

 

Clarence and Sebastian are having a good time, for sure.

 

That seems like an awful lot of unnecessary work.

I'd just write it normally, then clean it up on revisions. I can't imagine having to convert an entire manuscript written like this into regular dialogue, beats, and tags.

 

A+++++ meme usage, my dear sir. *bows down*

 

I get the idea, Wreybies. Good distributions seems to be the key. Thanks. The Harry Potter books are very entertaining, but the many said-tags bother me. There are so many on one page alone.

 

Maybe this was mentioned already, but you could write the entire novel without using conventional dialogue tags and quotation marks if you're bored with he said-she said, although using beats to clarify who's speaking can work just as well. I like to use tags to also convey how the character says something. In moderation, of course.

One of my favorite novels, Jay McInerney's Story of My Life shows dialogue less conventionally, and I guess technically he uses tags... here's a sample:

I go hello and this guy goes, hi, I'm whatever-his-name-is, I'm a friend of Skip's and I say yeah? and he says, I thought maybe we could go out sometime.
And I say, what am I, dial-a-date?

Something like this can work really well too.

 

Oh no, I don't mean changing the tense fixes the issue. My point was that the writer can deviate from the usual tags/beats/quotation marks formula:

I stared at Ben. "You think that was funny?"
'"Fuck yeah." Ben laughed.
"Panda wrestling is not funny!" I screamed.

And instead weave the dialogue into the narration as e.g. McInerney has done in that particular novel.

 

I just had an interesting realization that I feel like I might have had before, but that I'm also sure is going to stick better this time:

Putting "he said, she said" dialogue tags in the middle of the line might feel more natural than doing it at the beginning or the end.

Does anybody else have to do this?

 

Yes, to indicate a break in the flow of the dialogue, or a pause for thought.

 

This. Sometimes when you have a lot of characters having a conversation, you need to find a way to make it clear who's speaking, unless there are obvious differences in the way they speak and it's shown e.g. in the spelling. If it's a long conversation, using a beat before the line can get repetitive, but if you insert a tag, you make it clear at one glance who's speaking -- and it also offers a natural pause as was mentioned here.

In my and @T.Trian's WIP, there are four main characters who often hang out together. This is how we try to show who's talking with beats (I know the conversation doesn't make sense out of context, but that's not the point):

Spoiler

Jamie cleared his throat. “Well, fun fact, it’s probably a matter of time before they'll realize I was the one who's been telling the cops you are Hispanic, five eight, and possibly three months pregnant, so when they do, I might have to recant my statement and then they'll have an accurate description out.”

Fyen shot a surprised look at him. “Oh. Thank you, really. I'm so screwed every last bit of help means a lot to me.”

“Like tissues.” Blake sniffed. “Stan? We are still having the vapors down here, so would you mind fetching some?”

“Yeah, of course.”

 

I don't avoid dialogue tags, I just don't find them always necessary. In fact to say he said/ she said all the time just feels intrusive. If I've done the proper set up for the scene it should be pretty clear who is going to say what. For instance I'm working on a Halloween scene – two characters – Eff, and Finlay are approaching a third who is filming - LaCrystal. They discuss their costumes. I'm more interested in their actions than attributing tags. So I might say – Finlay chose his words carefully. LaCrystal packed one helluva punch. “Interesting choice.”

Eff of course lived dangerously. (which leads into his remark and then LaCrystal.)
It's all about mixing things up i.e. -

A gesture. He raised an eyebrow. “I see.”

Position of attribution - “What,” Eff said, blowing crumbs. “That's whacked.” Moving the tag around can really disguise it from being just a tag and more about fluid prose.

And then common sense like if you have two people in a discussion and they're both rallying for their own agenda/opinion/decision then it becomes easy to follow who's saying what. If they all have the same opinions, it's going to sound like an echo chamber and that's when problems start. When I make reasonably distinctive characters, half my job is done.