Stuffs

okay so there are three types of writers when it comes to dialogue tags.

the first type writes this:

"i can't believe you did that," she exclaimed breathlessly, her voice trembling with barely concealed emotion.

the second type writes this:

"i can't believe you did that," she said. "i just — i can't." "i know," he said. "do you?" she said. "yeah," he said.

and the third type has been told "said is invisible" so many times they've started doing this:

"i can't believe you did that," she whispered-yelled, her eyes flashing.

all three of these are wrong. (sorry.)

this is what's actually happening in each case.

1. the purple tagger

"you BETRAYED me," he snarled furiously.

the problem isn't the snarl. the problem is furiously. if he's snarling, we know he's not delighted. the adverb is doing work the verb already did, which means you don't trust your own writing. and your reader can feel that.

also: people cannot hiss words that don't have an s in them. "i love you," she hissed. no she didn't. she CAN'T have.

fix: one strong verb OR one adverb. never both. and only when said genuinely doesn't cut it.

2. the said-only purist

said IS invisible. that's true. but a page of nothing but "said" in a tense scene creates this weird flat affect where everything feels equally weighted. the invisibility is the problem, not the solution.

"get out," she said.

versus

"get out." she didn't look up from the counter.

the second one has no attribution at all. we know who's talking. and now we know she's not even giving him the dignity of eye contact. that's CHARACTER. that's free.

action beats do more work than tags. use them.

3. the said-is-dead convert

this one genuinely pains me because it usually comes from good advice received badly. someone told you to vary your tags, and now your characters are interjecting, conceding, deflecting, and sighing their dialogue like a victorian novel.

"we need to leave," he urged. "i'm not ready," she hedged.

hedged. HEDGED. what is she, a financial advisor.

the rule isn't "never use said." the rule is: your tag should disappear, and the line itself should carry the weight. if you need urged to tell me he's urgent, the line isn't doing its job.

the actual framework (one sentence)

ask yourself: does this tag add information the line doesn't already have, or am I patching a weak line with a strong verb?

if it's patching, rewrite the line.

- rin t. ✨

Hey tumblr, a close friend of mine and her family are going through a really difficult time right now. I don't usually share things like this, but seeing what she's been facing, especially alongside her mother and siblings, has been heartbreaking. her mother just created it and asked me to share it!

If you're able to donate to her GoFundMe to help prevent their eviction, it would mean so much. If not, sharing is appreciated too. ❤️:

An incomplete list of powers that can be used for good and evil.

amalgamation – ability to merge existing creations

attack powers – blasting, shock waves, object projection, fire breath, laser vision, etc.

creation – ability to create out of nothing

dream manipulation – ability to change dreams

echolocation – ability to determine locations through reflected sound waves

elasticity – ability to stretch their body in any way

element control - ability to control the elements

emotions manipulation – ability to manipulate the emotions of others and themselves

empathy – ability to feel and replicate the emotions, moods, and temperaments of others

energy absorption – ability to absorb energy from people and objects and use it

enhanced physical skills – like senses, stamina, strength, accuracy, intelligence, speed, etc.

fear inducement – ability to evoke extreme fear and horror in others

flight – ability to fly

hypnosis – ability to hypnotise and manipulate others

immortality – not being able to die

immutability – not being able to get altered by outside forces

invisibility – impossible to see

invulnerability – being immune to all forms of physical harm

knowledge replication – ability to replicate the knowledge and skills of others

levitation – ability to levitate in the air

magic – conjuring things

mind control – having control over another’s mind

omnilingualism – ability to speak and understand every language

portal creation – ability to create portals for transport

psychokinesis – ability to move energy and matter

reality warping – ability to manipulate reality

regeneration – ability to rapidly heal

replication – ability to replicate people (including themselves) and objects

self-detonation – ability to self-explode

shapeshifting – ability to change their appearance

telekinesis – ability to move objects with their mind

telepathy – ability to communicate through their minds

teleportation – ability to instantaneously travel

temperature resistance – ability to survive extreme temperatures

vocal mind control – ability to control people with their voice

x-ray vision – ability to see x-rays

More: Hero & Villain Masterpost

As someone who grew up bilingual and has spent years watching fiction handle this with the grace of a person trying to parallel park a cruise ship: please. i am asking nicely. stop phonetically spelling out accents in dialogue. stop having your multilingual character "think in english." and stop treating languages as cute flavour when they're actually load-bearing walls. let me explain:

⊹ Phonetic accent spelling-- "ze said zis," "I canna doo eet," "ees very 'ot"--does not convey an accent. it conveys that you find the accent hard to read and mildly comedic. actual accents are not misspellings. they are specific music, rhythm, stress patterns, vowel shapes that cannot be represented in text that way. what conveys accent is word order, idiom, the things a speaker reaches for. A character who says "it doesn't matter, leave it" and a character who says "never mind, let it go" are from different places. use that. not the apostrophes.

⊹ Multilingual people do not experience their languages as separate filing cabinets they access one at a time. languages blur and overlap and interfere with each other in beautiful ways. When you're tired you reach for the word from the other language because it's closer. when you're emotional you revert to your first language because it's where your feelings actually live. when you're angry you swear in the language you learned swearing in. when you're tender you use the diminutives and endearments that don't translate. your bilingual character's language choice in every scene is characterisation. use it as such.

⊹ the thing about not having a word for something is real and it matters. Every language has concepts the others can't carry cleanly. the grief for something you never had. the specific quality of afternoon light. the feeling of wanting to be home while you're already there. when your character encounters something their language doesn't have a word for, they don't just find a workaround, they feel the gap. they feel slightly untranslatable. multilingual people live with the knowledge that some part of who they are exists only in one language and cannot be fully brought across.

⭑𓂃 they don't just lie there peacefully staring at the ceiling. okay, sometimes they do, but mostly they're shifting positions every four minutes, flipping the pillow to the cold side, kicking off blankets then pulling them back on, checking the clock and doing the math of "if I fall asleep RIGHT NOW I can get 4 hours" over and over until it's 3 hours, then 2, then none.

⭑𓂃 they have weird relationships with being tired. like, they're ALWAYS tired, but they're also wired? it's this horrible combo of exhausted body and brain that won't shut up. your character isn't just yawning cutely, they're getting irrationally angry at small things, forgetting words mid-sentence, staring at their phone for twenty minutes without reading a single thing.

⭑𓂃 the 3am thoughts are SPECIFIC and often stupid. they're not just pondering deep existential questions. they're thinking "did I say 'you too' when the barista said enjoy your coffee" and "what if everyone I know is just pretending to like me" and "why did I say that thing in 7th grade" and "I should learn to play the accordion" all at once in a horrible loop.

⭑𓂃 they try SO MANY weird things to sleep. your character has definitely tried: counting backwards from 1000, progressive muscle relaxation, that 4-7-8 breathing thing, ASMR videos, white noise, brown noise, pink noise, nature sounds, meditation apps with people whose calm voices they grew to HATE, reading boring books, warm milk (doesn't work), cold rooms, hot rooms, no screens (impossible), melatonin (hits different for everyone), Benadryl, and eventually just accepting their fate at 5am.

⭑𓂃 everything is louder at night. that refrigerator hum? DEAFENING. the house settling? TERRIFYING. neighbor's cat? MIGHT AS WELL BE A FULL ORCHESTRA. your character is hyper-aware of every single sound and it's driving them absolutely insane.

⭑𓂃 they have complex feelings about morning people. your insomniac character hearing someone say "I'm such a morning person, I just pop right up at 6am!" is experiencing homicidal levels of jealousy. they don't trust people who wake up cheerful. it feels like a personal attack.

₊˚⊹⋆ Raspy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Smooth voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Gravelly voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Honeyed voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Silky voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Husky voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Breathy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Nasal voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Melodic voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Monotone voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Scratchy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Throaty voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Whisper-soft voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Booming voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Crisp voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Musical voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Warm voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Cold voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Sharp voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Lilting voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Drawling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Tinkling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Thunderous voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Delicate voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Commanding voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Timid voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Trembling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Steady voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Crackling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Brittle voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Rich voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Thin voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Reedy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Sonorous voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Whiny voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Cigarette-worn voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Youthful voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Weathered voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Crystalline voice

a prompt list by @novelbear

✧ "what are you talking about?"

✧ "we used to be something. now, it's like i don't even know you."

✧ "we shouldn't be anything. shouldn't be doing any of this at all."

✧ "why would you ask me something like that?"

✧ "nothing. isn't that how it's supposed to be."

✧ "i don't know. you tell me."

✧ "whatever you want us to be, babe."

✧ "i want us to be free. i'm tired of hiding this."

✧ "i thought we talked about this already."

✧ "you're seriously asking me that question?"

✧ "we can be together. that's all i've wanted."

✧ "you don't seem to care, so why should i?"

✧ "i don't know but i can't do this for much longer."

✧ "a fucking disaster. is that what you wanted to hear?"

✧ "what do you mean 'what are we?' we're in love."

━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✧ ━━━━━━━━━━━━

⟢ PICK THREE DETAILS MAXIMUM! your reader doesn't need to know every piece of furniture. Give them the broken clock on the mantle, the smell of cigarettes embedded in the couch, the water stain on the ceiling shaped like Italy. Their brain will fill in the rest. You're not writing an insurance inventory!!!

⟢ Use the senses people forget. Everyone does sight and sound, but what about: the metallic taste of fear, the way humidity makes your clothes stick, the phantom itch of being watched, that gross feeling when you touch something unexpectedly wet. GET WEIRD WITH IT

⟢ MOTION IN YOUR DESCRIPTIONS!! (Please?) don't just tell me the curtains are blue, tell me they're "shuddering in the AC blast" or "hanging limp like they've given up." Static description is a sleep aid. Make things MOVE

⟢ Your narrator's voice should COLOR everything! A depressed character won't describe the sunset as "beautiful mauve and amber streaking across the sky," they'll think "the sun's dying again, doing its whole performance art thing with the clouds"

⟢ Stop with the mirror descriptions! :( "She looked in the mirror and saw her auburn hair and green eyes" NO. Banned. Forbidden. Find literally any other way. Have another character notice. Show through action. Slip details in naturally. The mirror thing is lazy and we all know it