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That one critique about my dialogue tags totally flipped my writing
Someone in my local writing group in Portland told me I was using "said" way too much and it was pulling readers out of the story. She pointed out a scene where I had 8 different tags like "whispered" and "muttered" and "exclaimed" in one page. I changed to mostly just "said" and let the action show the emotion instead, and now my beta readers say the conversations flow way better. Has anyone else killed their favorite fancy tags after getting feedback?
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the_daniel4d ago
Ditched "hissed" and "snapped" after a reader laughed at one of my scenes.
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emmam674d ago
Cracked up reading that, @the_daniel, because I've totally been there. I once had a character "scoff" in a story and my friend read it out loud and just burst out laughing, said it sounded like a cat hacking up a hairball. Now I'm paranoid about every little dialogue tag, like I'll write "she whispered" and then panic it sounds like a ghost. It's rough out here for us amateur writers trying not to sound like fools.
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