Had a writing group member point out my dialogue tags were all backwards

I got called out last Tuesday during my local workshop meetup in Portland. Turns out I was writing 'she said' before the dialogue instead of after it for almost 200 pages of my novel. One guy finally asked why every line read like a stage direction. Now I'm staring at three years of work wondering how many other basic rules I got flipped around. Has anyone else had a simple grammar thing just wreck their whole manuscript?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannahs7129d ago

I once wrote an entire short story with every single piece of dialogue using just "said" and nothing else, because I thought creative tags were showing off. The workshop gently suggested I branch out a little, and my next draft had every character "whispering" or "murmuring" even when they were screaming. It's like my brain only has one setting for grammar rules and it's either full chaos or full robot mode.

wesley87329d ago

Wait though, I think you might be mixing up what counts as backwards. 'She said' before the dialogue is actually fine and really common in older books, its only a style thing not a hard rule. Don't scrap three years of work over one picky workshop comment, just flip them around in your next draft if it bothers you that much.