Dialogue and tagging. Who is saying what to who?

Those are all good things to try. If you're going to alternate lines of dialogue without indicating who's speaking, don't let it go on for more than four or five lines (as a rough guideline), because it's easy for the reader to lose track. And it quickens the pace, which may be exactly what you want for a short period, but probably not for pages. Using tags (for example, Mike said, Sue whispered), action, internals, body language, etc., to mark dialogue all serve as a pacing mechanism in addition to labeling and characterizing the speakers.

I've learnt that flow is important in dialogue. All of these techniques strike me as good, but you can variate the effects on the reader depending on how you accomplish this.

Give it a go! Also, Overkill, you can post excerpts or the full works in the SYW section to see how it's working.

Some great advice here. Creative use of dialogue, tags, and actions around the dialogue are so useful. Of course the dialogue itself has to be good.

Beth is right, you can completely control the pacing with tags and actions. If your character has an immediate response, bare dialogue is enough. If the character has to think about the response, maybe she does something with her hands. For longer pauses, maybe throw in a little backstory. Like Daniel said, it's all about the flow of the scene.

I see you have read a lot about dialogue and how to approach it.

The better approach is to read a lot of dialogue in books of the type you wish to write (and others) and see how other writers achieve flow with both clarity and variety.

Use the SYW Forum and post a chapter with dialogue - preferably an opening chapter.

Good luck.

ETA- I had a peek inside your self-published novel and I gave up reading very quickly because of the absence of clear speaker identification. Identifying two speakers early is not enough reason in itself to drop identifiers during their exchange. Content and flow is very relevant.

As Beth mentioned, it's easy for readers to lose track of who is speaking when they are also being asked to absorb a cauldron of information in an unbroken run of untagged dialogue ranging from one-liners to paragraphs. Especially so at the start of the story when the reader is not yet wholly into who is who.

Bufty said:

<snip> Identifying two speakers early is not enough reason in itself to drop identifiers during their exchange. Content and flow is very relevant.

As Beth mentioned, it's easy for readers to lose track of who is speaking when they are also being asked to absorb a cauldron of information in an unbroken run of untagged dialogue ranging from one-liners to paragraphs. Especially so at the start of the story when the reader is not yet wholly into who is who.

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Also consider that after a book is published, either on paper or on a screen, your early attribution will be on one page, while the conversation probably continues onto a whole new page, adding to the likelihood of a reader getting lost.

James Scott Bell's "How to Write Dazzling Dialogue" ebook is only $4. Worth every penny.

Read, read, read. Pick up any book from your shelf (especially those in your genre) and see how that author does it. How many lines of pure dialogue are there? How many times do they use "said"? How many action beats are there?

Also, 'who is saying what to whom?'

Bufty said:

As Beth mentioned, it's easy for readers to lose track of who is speaking when they are also being asked to absorb a cauldron of information in an unbroken run of untagged dialogue ranging from one-liners to paragraphs. Especially so at the start of the story when the reader is not yet wholly into who is who.

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And then there are the neglected opportunities to explore character, develop emotion, paint in the setting, and in general fill out the scene and the story.

I don't have much to contribute except general praise for previous posters.

Dialogue is not just about conveying information--it needs to be braided into the narrative. What characters are doing, not doing, miscommunicating; couched in action, intent, diverging thoughts, internal narrative, etc etc etc pretentious waffle goes here

Overkill said:

I want to try and get away from that.

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Why?

A lot of my writing is turning out quite dialogue heavy right now so I'm finding ways to distinguish between each person so it's easier to read. Giving them a unique voice and a way of talking, phrases, similar swear words they use often etc

I never go more than 3 or 4 lines without a he/she said tag. Too easy for the reader to get lost and a simple he/she said never really seems to be to break the pacing. I don’t go more than 5 or 6 lines without describing, at least briefly, what the characters are doing. Dialogue doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It shouldn’t read like the script to a play. People do things when talking. They fidget, look down, blush, move closer, their breath stinks, they put their hand on their sword. I generally try to paint the scene without going overboard and slowing down the story.

cornflake said:

Also, 'who is saying what to whom?'

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^she beat me to it.

True, but people also 'think' while talking. Any well constructed dialogue run - especially between two people - should be able to flow more than 3 or 4 lines without a tag.

Dialogue is the lifeblood of a story and if it (the dialogue) is carefully worded and constructed it should flow and there will be no question of a vacuum. I would be careful about unnecessarily interrupting dialogue with actions simply for the sake of having the characters 'do' something. All tags in dialogue should have a purpose, namely identifying the speaker if the identity is not already clear, or adding to the interpretation of the dialogue.

JustWriteMike said:

I never go more than 3 or 4 lines without a he/she said tag. Too easy for the reader to get lost and a simple he/she said never really seems to be to break the pacing. I don’t go more than 5 or 6 lines without describing, at least briefly, what the characters are doing. Dialogue doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It shouldn’t read like the script to a play. People do things when talking. They fidget, look down, blush, move closer, their breath stinks, they put their hand on their sword. I generally try to paint the scene without going overboard and slowing down the story.

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Bufty said:

I would be careful about unnecessarily interrupting dialogue with actions simply for the sake of having the characters 'do' something.

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^^^This, definitely. Few things are worse than reading dialogue with a bunch of twitchy characters making random movements and facial expressions.

BethS said:

^^^This, definitely. Few things are worse than reading dialogue with a bunch of twitchy characters making random movements and facial expressions.

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Yes indeed, but more than 6 lines of pure dialogue without any tags or descriptive context? That’s too much for me. I’m won’t say it would never happen but it would be quite unusual.

yes... but it's not an either/or situation, between twitchy characters or long streams of unattributed banter.

Six lines of dialogue could have one or two attributions, and should ideally have some meaningful, interesting actions (and no, quirking your eyebrows into a smile is not meaningful ) and emotion fit into there somehow. It doesn't need much, just some bolstering.

JustWriteMike said:

Yes indeed, but more than 6 lines of pure dialogue without any tags or descriptive context? That’s too much for me.

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You can fill in the spaces with meaningful description. Not this: "Well, this character hasn't moved in a while. I think I'll have him scratch his belly. And the guy he's talking to can run his fingers through his beard. Yeah." But more like this: "This character is going to channel his surge of anger into his wine glass, which breaks in his hand. Oops."

You can also fill in the spaces with internals: commentary on what's being spoken aloud, or snarky thoughts, or showing a progression of thought of emotion. That kind of thing.

And then there's the general atmospheric stuff: In a sudden silence, a character is aware of a clock ticking, or watches a moth immolate itself in a candle flame, perhaps finding that symbolic or ironic. There are the senses to consider--sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. These need not be merely incidental, but can be used to convey something about the character observing or experiencing them.

It's a matter of seeing the possibilities. A fair number of learning writers (and writers who should know better) constantly fall back on what you might call stock footage: the lifted eyebrow, the pursed lips, the nod, the shrug, the frown, the smile. That's not to say you can't use those and use them effectively, but for some writers, it seems to be the only thing they know.

Or people can just SAY things. Said is invisible and fine. Not every line, but enough to understand who's speaking. I'm not arguing against action, or for endless dialogue, but I think people can go way too far trying to avoid simple tags with the twitching and stage direction.

cornflake said:

Or people can just SAY things.

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That, too. It certainly has its place.

Lakey said:

You can learn a lot about this by opening up some of the books you love and examining how those authors handle dialogue-heavy scenes. Find a scene like that in your favorite book and look at every sentence, noticing what the author does. How often does she use dialogue tags? how often does she use action instead? When she uses actions, what kind of actions are they? How do they add subtext or emotion to what’s being said in the dialogue? Do the actions emphasize what’s being said? Do they contrast with what’s being said?

I find that when I think carefully about the scenes that affect me in the books I love, and examine how they are constructed, I learn loads about how to improve my own writing.

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This is the very thing I did when I decided to even try writing. Mostly because I didn't have any other resource to work with right that minute and I knew that if I put off starting 'til later, I probably never would.

I have read thousands of books over the years. So many that I can't even remember the titles of most of them anymore. So when I was sitting there staring at a blank screen, wondering where and how to even start, the first thing I did was go fetch a few books I still had laying around the house.
The three I've kept out as reference material are Sundowner by Chris Claremont, Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey, and Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
And so far, those 3 have shown me how to solve just about every problem I've run across concerning how to tag the dialogue.
I'm not saying they've taught me everything I need to know. They don't by a long shot. But they at least gave me enough for me to reasonably be able to start a first draft. And that was far more than my own memory could provide.

Harlequin said:

yes... but it's not an either/or situation, between twitchy characters or long streams of unattributed banter.

Six lines of dialogue could have one or two attributions, and should ideally have some meaningful, interesting actions (and no, quirking your eyebrows into a smile is not meaningful ) and emotion fit into there somehow. It doesn't need much, just some bolstering.

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I heartily agree what BethS said a couple of posts above, but I'll bet you could pull off those six lines of unattributed dialogue if you'd given those characters easily identifiable ways of speaking.

Once I read a book with a straight twenty lines of unattributed dialogue (it took up a whole page). Based on the rest of the book, it was most likely done for comedic effect. Still, I had to read it like six times before I got through the couple arguing. I wouldn't recommend this unless your book is that comedic style.

KSR's New York 2140 starts out with 66 lines of unattributed dialogue. First chapter is titled "Mutt and Jeff" so the reader has at least a hint of who's talking.

ETA: That's not a typo. Sixty-six lines.