Talkin’ Tags II: How THEY Write Dialogue

Last week, I posted an article about how I write dialogue, which dialogue tags I use, and why and when I use them. To be clear, I don’t think there is a right and wrong way to do this, just a way that works for your style and voice. This time, I thought it might be fun to look at some of the recent novels I’ve read, where the dialogue is top notch, and see how those authors use tags and what we can learn from them.

First, though, let me give you a quick refresher on my system. I broke down the type of dialogue tags I use based on five tiers and how often I use them. They are as follows.

1. Tier One – Simple Said. I use said roughly 80% of the time. It’s unobtrusive, nigh invisible, really, and it works well for my style.
2. Tier Two – We’re Still Just Talking. This second group of tags are ones that are pretty common and generally don’t impart any kind of emotion or drama to the dialogue. These are tags like asked, replied, responded, and even ones like added or continued. These tags generally make up about 12% to15% of the ones I use.
3. Tier Three – Taggage Baggage. The third tier of dialogue tags are ones that absolutely add emotion or drama to dialogue, but they’re still parts of regular human speech. These are things like shouted, muttered, yelled, and whispered. Some words like called or observed might be in this category, too, though they’re kind of cusp for me. I use these tags more sparingly, and I’m usually in high single digits.
4. Tier Four – Call of the Wild. The next group of dialogue tags are the one I use the least, and they’re words that could also be attributed to animal sounds, so things like roared, growled, hissed, hooted, screeched, and so on. I might use a handful of every 100,000 words, sometimes a bit more, but I’d say they fall in the 1% usage range.
5. Tier Five – Tag Free. The fifth tier of dialogue tags is, well, no tags at all. This is dialogue that simply doesn’t identify the speaker with a tag because it’s obvious in context or does so with an action beat. I do this roughly 40% of the time when I write dialogue.

Now, before I get into discussing how some other authors use tags, I want to be very clear, again, that I am absolutely not saying there is a one true way to write dialogue or that tier one is better than tiers two, three, or four. In fact, as you’re going to see, authors can approach dialogue in VASTLY different ways and still be monumentally successful.

One more note. This’ll be sample size to some degree, as I only looked at 100 lines of dialogue from each author, but I think it still gives a pretty good baseline.

Author One – Elmore Leonard

Okay, so let’s start with the Elmore Leonard who is a huge influence on the way I write, and I believe his Ten Rules for Good Writing is where the “only use said” rule came from. I grabbed 100 lines of dialogue from his novel Out of Sight, and here’s what I ended up with.

• No Tag – 62
• Said – 31
• Action Beat – 7

Well, let it never be said (hah!) that Leonard wasn’t a man of his word. He didn’t use a single dialogue tag other than said, and, honestly, most of his dialogue doesn’t use a tag at all. He doesn’t even use action beats that often. I think Leonard writes incredible dialogue, and as you can see above, you can keep it super simple and write absolutely riveting conversations between characters. Leonard’s characters are so distinct, it’s easy to tell who’s speaking without any help from the author. When he does throw in a said, though, it feels like the absolute perfect point to give reader a signpost, a reminder, and then carry on.

Author Two – Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix is one of my favorite horror authors, and his dialogue is wonderful, snappy, and quite funny. I pulled 100 lines of dialogue from his latest book Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, and this is what I came up with.

• Said – 64
• Called – 8
• Asked – 7
• No Tag – 5
• Action Beat – 3
• Apologized – 2
• Replied – 2
• Screamed – 2
• Told – 2
• Continued – 1
• Explained – 1
• Shouted – 1
• Sighed – 1
• Started – 1

Okay, now this is interesting. Hendrix uses more actual dialogue tags than Leonard, though most of that tags are still said, but he expands a lot more into the tier two tags, with the occasional dip into tier three. I think the most interesting aspect of his dialogue is how little he uses no tags or action beats. Again, Hendrix, like Leonard, writes exceptional dialogue, and here’s the thing, I didn’t notice ANY of this when I was just reading the book for pleasure. It’s only when I read specifically looking for tags that I even noticed them, and that, folks, is absolutely a sign of good dialogue. I also like how Hendrix uses some fairly nonstandard words, like told, continued, and sighed. He doesn’t use them a lot, but they add some interesting variety. I’d say Hendrix is closest to the way I personally write dialogue, though I make no claims to be as good as he is. 🙂

Author Three – Joe Abercrombie

I’ve only recently started reading Joe Abercrombie, and one of the first things that jumped out at me was his dialogue. It absolutely crackles with energy. It’s so goddamn snappy and often outright hilarious. The man is gifted in this area, but here’s the fun thing, he breaks ALL the supposed dialogue rules. Here’s 100 lines from his recent book The Devils.

• No Tag – 31
• Action  Beat – 27
• Said – 13
• Muttered – 6
• Whispered – 5
• Hissed – 2
• Wheezed – 2
• Added – 1
• Asked – 1
• Boomed – 1
• Breathed – 1
• Called – 1
• Complained – 1
• Confessed – 1
• Croaked – 1
• Frothed – 1
• Growled – 1
• Murmured – 1
• Observed – 1
• Snarled – 1
• Threw – 1

So, as you can see, Abercrombie is at the opposite end of the spectrum as Leonard. He uses a huge variety of tags, frequently dipping into tier two, three, and four, but, interestingly, he also uses no tag or an action beat almost 60% of the time. So he’s not beating you over the head with dialogue tags, which I think you’ll find is something folks who write good dialogue have in common. Again, when I first read The Devils, I didn’t notice the tags at all, despite many of them being ones that certain writing rules lawyers will say you should never use. His use of words like growled and screeched and boomed and all that absolutely ADDS to his dialogue instead of detracting from it. It’s truly a joy to read,.

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So, we have three authors, all considered to be greats in their respective genres (crime/horror/fantasy), and all of them write dialogue differently. What should we take away from that? Well, for one, like everything else in writing, there just isn’t one way or a best way to do anything. If it works, it works, even if we can’t exactly explain WHY it works.

Two, I think the way an author writes dialogue has a lot to do with their genre and their own style and voice. For example, I don’t know if Hendrix’s dialogue works if he wrote it like Abercrombie, and I’m almost positive Abercrombie’s wouldn’t work if he wrote it like Leonard.

Finally, I think it’s vitally important that you find your own voice, your own way of doing things, and that will inform the correct way for you to write dialogue or anything else. It’ll be yours, and it will always be right.