Swapped dialogue tags for action beats in 3 scenes and my beta readers actually noticed

Tbh I always leaned on 'she said' and 'he whispered' because it felt safe. But I tried rewriting three scenes from my chapter 5 with zero tags, just characters doing things like pouring coffee or tapping a pen between lines. My beta group at the Austin Writing Circle called it out as 'way more cinematic' without me even asking. Ngl now I'm second guessing my whole first draft habit of over tagging - has anyone else made the switch and seen their pacing tighten up?

3 comments

3 Comments

lee_reed28d ago

Yeah that's the whole trick right there! It forces you to actually show what's happening instead of just telling us who's talking. Once you start swapping tags for action, you notice pretty fast that the extra words were just padding slowing everything down.

faith_king28d ago

Did you catch that one author talking about how it makes the reader feel like they're watching a movie instead of reading a book? That really clicked for me, makes the scene WAY more alive.

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parker18328d ago

Makes every word do double duty that way.