Tips For Aspiring Writers - Dialogue The intricacies of writing (Pt II) If you wish to attribute dialogue, there are three ways to do so. "Said," a tag or voice. "Said" is the easiest way of attributing dialogue. It's inobtrusive, invisible even, to the reader. A "tag" indicates a dialogue cue (HOW it is said: "Never." Tom's tone tolerated no further comment.) or body language ("Never." Tom raised his hand.). In both examples, we know that Tom spoke the word without even mentioning "said"). The last way is to use the person's voice. Once the two actors have been set up using "said" and/or tags, let their voices carry the conversation. Tom is a man of few words and short sentences, and Maria is rather shy. "Not gonna happen" would then be something more easily attributed to Tom, and "I don't know. What could I possibly do?" is more likely to have been spoken by Maria. The best dialogue is a mix of two or three of those. "Fancy a beer?" Tom opened the fridge door and glanced at Maria. "I don't usually drink, but, okay." He took two bottles from the fridge and closed the door with his butt. "Here." Maria took a beer and wiped the condensation from the glass. Tom gestured for her to take a seat. "So. Wanna tell me why you're here?" Maria pulled out a chair. "Okay. Sure. I..." "You... what?" "Maybe I should... I mean, I don't know where to..." "Spit it out." "I would like to hire you to find my dog." As you can see, tags tell us about character, make the situation come alive, move the plot forward. "Said" would have worked, too, but with less visual content. As we move through the text, we can ping-pong dialogue, with no more to guide us than the characters' individual voices. After a while, we throw in another tag to re-orient the reader. And voila, great dialogue.