Writing Forum

Without having read those 200K words, I would guess that would become a problem to most readers.

Of course, if you can show without a shadow of doubt who is speaking through the dialogue alone that is perfect, but I've never read a novel where all the characters were distinctive enough for that to be the case all of the time (short stories are another issue because of the limited amount of characters).
Then you can have the characters use each others names like Follett did in the above example. But then you usually have maid an buttler dialogue which, in my opinion, is much worse than dialogue tags. In the above example I actually think it work because the characters are talking over the phone, so mentioning their names doesn't seem like unnatural dialogue.
Then there's the action beats in between the dialogue itself which is an excellent way of identifying the characters, but too many beats makes the writing seem clunky and slows the pacing.

Too me, the problem with the Follett example isn't that he's using dialogue tags, but that he's using, tags, beats, and the characters' names when one would suffice.



Join the discussion at https://tobybackman.wordpress.com