Found a stat that blew my mind about dialogue tags in novels

I was looking up writing tips on a blog called The Storyteller's Lab last Tuesday, and they had a stat that said most published authors only use 'said' about 70 percent of the time for dialogue tags. That surprised me because I always thought you needed to mix it up with 'whispered' or 'muttered' or 'shouted' to keep things interesting. But apparently readers skip right over 'said' without noticing, while fancy tags actually pull them out of the story. I tried it out on a short story I've been working on for a month and cut out all those extra tags. It felt weird at first but my beta reader said the dialogue flowed way better. Has anyone else tried cutting back on dialogue tags and seen a difference in how readers respond?

2 comments

2 Comments

nancy2751mo ago

@cameron_chen63 your beta reader literally fell asleep? Maybe she was just tired from all that heavy lifting of imagining characters based on "whispered" and "muttered." I tried your approach once and my beta reader said the villain sounded like he had a speech impediment because I had him mumbling every line. Turns out just saying "he said quietly" works way better than trying to be clever with every tag.

cameron_chen631mo ago

But is that really true or is it just a trend that's going to be forgotten in a year? I tried sticking to 'said' for a whole chapter and my beta reader literally fell asleep because she said everyone sounded the same. 'Whispered' and 'muttered' and 'shouted' do a lot more than just label who's talking, they set the whole mood of the scene. Like if your villain is mumbling, that tells you something about their character that 20 extra sentences could never do. Overusing 'said' feels like you're just being lazy with your writing and letting the reader do all the heavy lifting.