remindmeofthe:jackironsides:homeworkforpigeons:to all my writer friends out there. Also, ‘said
remindmeofthe:jackironsides:homeworkforpigeons:to all my writer friends out there. Also, ‘said’ is invisible to your reader most of the time. This is good because you usually want the reader’s focus to be on what your characters are saying, not on the dialogue tags, unless something is actually happening in the tags, or there is additional information. Too many fancy dialogue tags and your readers focus on those instead of the dialogue itself. You want your dialogue tags to function like the lighting and sound design in a play: they add to the observer’s experience without them noticing what you’re doing, unless you’re using them for effect to draw attention to something in specific. #this is also why i rail against epithets#‘the taller one’ or ‘the younger one’#makes me stop and think#‘wait. which is taller?’#but names are invisible most of the time#using names frequently in a paragraph might strike you as awkward#but to a reader they’ll often be less awkward than using epithets#most of us don’t think of our lovers with epithets#most of us wouldn’t address them as ‘the taller one’ or ‘the blue eyed one’#which is why epithets often feel especially clunky in a close third-person perspective narrative#on writing (via @jackironsides) -- source link