Says Who?

 Here's a fun little challenge, not unlike removing all the commas from a piece of writing. Remove all the dialogue tags from one of your short stories or a chapter of one of your books. If you have to, replace them with gestures or facial expressions. See if you can indicate who's speaking without using "he said," "she snarled," "I thought," etc. (Yes, remove the tags from thoughts, too.)

There are two purposes for this: one, it shows just how essential "said" is. Everyone has always heard, "Don't use said!" Well, said is wonderful (if you don't way overuse it). The other purpose is to make you think about what people do while they talk. A frown or fidget or smile or shrug can say a lot more than a dialogue tag (even coupled with an adverb) could. Also, this is just fun.

Once, I tried to write a story without using any dialogue tags. It was a mess, but when I read it aloud, I don't think anyone noticed the lack of dialogue tags, because I always clearly denoted who was speaking, by their thoughts or actions. So, while I don't recommend this technique in real life, it just goes to show: you don't always need dialogue tags.