Just realized my dialogue tags were way too fancy after one critique

I used to write stuff like "she mused" or "he intoned" all the time. Thought it made my stories sound smart. Then this one person on a writing forum just said "your characters sound like they're performing a play, not talking." That hit me harder than I expected. I went back and replaced almost every fancy tag with just "said" or "asked" and suddenly the scenes felt alive. It's been about 4 months now and I still catch myself reaching for the thesaurus when I edit. Has anyone else had that moment where one tiny note about your prose style flipped a switch? How do you stop yourself from dressing up dialogue tags again?

0 comments

0 Comments

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.