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[/FONT] [FONT="]‘Maybe I should have," I (or the character's name if this is third-person) said. "You were useless with the pins!’
[/FONT] [FONT="]‘Ha ha!’ she laughs sarcastically. [I would remove she laughs sarcastically and let the dialogue carry the tone.]
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Thank you alleycat, in my research this morning, I noticed that inserting the tag early on in the line of dialogue feels the least intrusive to me as I read. I shall use this here, and in many other places, I am sure.
x2 that. Adverbs in dialogue tags make me cringe. You can write in a sarcastic comment instead of sarcastic laughter, or with it, to get that point across.
and
Instead of the, 'laughs sarcastically,' why not change the dialogue to, say, "Ha. Ha."
That was what worried me, I hate it too, but was worried the 'ah ah' didn't convey the irony well enough on its own.
The verb/adverb tag there is explaining her sarcasm to the reader, which is something you want to avoid. If you want to communicate the idea that she's using sarcasm, maybe write it like this:
"Ha, ha."
Beyond that, I hope you haven't eliminated so many tags that it's hard to tell who's speaking.
I am working on making the balance right. I just hate strings of 'he said' 'she said', I have read far too many 19th century novels! I have a very unfashionable love for creative tags, which I am pummeling out of my writing!
The many explanation points also worry me. Explanation points are like spices. A little bit can add a lot. Put too much in and no one will want to eat the food. You don't necessarily have to cut those exclamation points. Just watch to see if there's a pattern.
If you really feel you need to convey the sarcasm, you could try something like: "Ha, ha," she says, rolling her eyes. Granted, I don't know whose point of view this is in, so that might not work in your situation.
!!! are a weakness of mine indeed, so I am checking them out, but obviously, I am still missing out on eradicating them.
I really like your suggestion of 'rolling eyes', I very likely will be using it. Thank you!
Are these two people just standing still, facing one another during this conversation, or are they doing something else? One way to get around the dialogue tag situation is to have your characters do something while they are talking... When there is some action mixed with the dialogue, it allows a smooth indication of who is talking without having to rely on an overabundance of tags. It also avoids talking heads syndrome or the equally dreaded twitching heads syndrome (when the action chosen is restricted to a series of facial twitches [grins, grimaces and the like] and head and shoulder movements).
''Ah ah''
Yep, I so get what you mean. My writing has too many instances of talking heads. I have reworked a whole scene sparingly adding action tags to help both keeping tracks of who speaks, but also setting the scene and adding character through how and what the MCs do, but as most of their talks take place in the kitchen, when they are either cooking or just chatting, I am really worried about making it all too repetitive. That's going to be a challenge.
"Ha ha {other person's name}. You're hilarious."
thank you, another good one!
You'll hardly ever use 'said', that way, unless there are three or more character, and even then, beats and clever formatting can be often used.
'said' is exactly what I want to avoid using,I hate strings of them, even the thought makes me shiver!
Also, lose all four exclamation points. They're unnecessary. And you have two comma splices, which I bolded. Make them all separate sentences.
I think that comma splices are ok in dialogues to make the flow more speech like. Though I agree with you, in narrative, it would be a no no.
I try to replace obnoxious tags with text that sort of anchors what was just said to one character. So it's sort of a tag... but not?
That's what I am trying to do, though maybe in your example, you have too many, and it breaks the flow of the dialogue ;-)
Thank you so very much, everyone, off I go to do more dialogue edits!
