I like the nonverbal reaction to something a character says. Sometimes an expression or action speaks louder than any retort ever could.
I remember reading some Hemingway... I think it was one of the short stories in the collection I have, but he used it all the time, where he basically had "said" at the beginning of a conversation and then just the dialog and no tags whatsoever for well over a page. I wasn't smart enough to follow so I had to go back to the beginning a few times to try to keep track of who said what.
There is also a man on youtube who critiques comic books, superhero books in particular. One of his biggest gripes about books over the past 10-15 years is the amount of time characters sit around talking. Sitting on a couch talking. Sitting at a table talking. People talking, just talking, is boring (genre dependent!) so sometimes the writers had them eating while talking. I have spent a lot of effort to minimize the amount of time my characters are doing nothing but talking, or eating while talking, because it just seems to be a fallback for lazy writers.
I once read a passage by Zelanzy where I could follow well enough until he threw in a bit that wasn't dialog. I had to sort it out afterward by who *would* say what.
I like the nonverbal reaction to something a character says. Sometimes an expression or action speaks louder than any retort ever could.
I remember reading some Hemingway... I think it was one of the short stories in the collection I have, but he used it all the time, where he basically had "said" at the beginning of a conversation and then just the dialog and no tags whatsoever for well over a page. I wasn't smart enough to follow so I had to go back to the beginning a few times to try to keep track of who said what.
There is also a man on youtube who critiques comic books, superhero books in particular. One of his biggest gripes about books over the past 10-15 years is the amount of time characters sit around talking. Sitting on a couch talking. Sitting at a table talking. People talking, just talking, is boring (genre dependent!) so sometimes the writers had them eating while talking. I have spent a lot of effort to minimize the amount of time my characters are doing nothing but talking, or eating while talking, because it just seems to be a fallback for lazy writers.
I once read a passage by Zelanzy where I could follow well enough until he threw in a bit that wasn't dialog. I had to sort it out afterward by who *would* say what.
Depends on what they say, of course, but a visual medium is particularly tough to make talking interesting.