pskelding
Troubadour
I replied to a thread similar to this and will repeat the advice I gave before. Michael Stackpole has an excellent podcast on his free (last I checked) Secrets series in which he dicusses dialogue tags and gives some clear exercises on how to minimize them. I highly recommend it.
I've become a fan of the Joe Abercrombie school of dialogue tags, I try to minimize them as much as possible and instead use gestures seen by the POV character to establish who is saying what. It seems more natural. I only use tags when I want to emphasize something or establishing in the beginning of dialogue.
I've become a fan of the Joe Abercrombie school of dialogue tags, I try to minimize them as much as possible and instead use gestures seen by the POV character to establish who is saying what. It seems more natural. I only use tags when I want to emphasize something or establishing in the beginning of dialogue.