I just realized my dialogue tags were completely wrong for years

Tbh I was at a local writing workshop last month when someone pointed out I used 'said' like 90% of the time and thought that was fine. Then they showed me how a single 'whispered' or 'muttered' changed the whole scene vibe. Has anyone else had a basic writing rule hit them way later than it should have?

2 comments

2 Comments

sage_rodriguez18d ago

Yeah that "said is dead" thing hit my friend Maria hard too. She was editing her novel and realized every single line of dialogue had "said" and it made the whole thing read like a robot.

sandra_black18d ago

Poor Maria, I've been there myself. It takes a while to unlearn that rule and just trust that "said" does the job fine most of the time.