These days I’m writing far more dialogue than I used to. I write lots of tagless dialogue and lots of snappy back-and-forth without beats. But of course I want to use beats as well. My dialogue is pretty good overall, but I’m not immensely experienced at it.
In my dialogue beats, I find myself using a few verbs very often, especially *nodded*, and sometimes *smiled*. I don’t use them because they’re natural to me or I can’t think of anything else, I use them because I think they’re appropriate for the situation. People nod and smile very often in real life. But in a book, it feels like it’s too much to have someone doing those things in every dialogue. How do I get out of this trap (or is it not really a problem)? Are there any good alternatives?
The best I can do right now are substituting verbs like *grin* and *chuckle* for *smile*, which are kind of lateral moves. I don’t know of any decent substitute for *nod*.
I should add that one character in particular smiles a lot, because of her personality, so it is intentional on my part that she responds in that way. Can I just start to take out those beats when they get repetitive, and hope that the reader will supply them?
These days I’m writing far more dialogue than I used to. I write lots of tagless dialogue and lots of snappy back-and-forth without beats. But of course I want to use beats as well. My dialogue is pretty good overall, but I’m not immensely experienced at it.
In my dialogue beats, I find myself using a few verbs very often, especially *nodded*, and sometimes *smiled*. I don’t use them because they’re natural to me or I can’t think of anything else, I use them because I think they’re appropriate for the situation. People nod and smile very often in real life. But in a book, it feels like it’s too much to have someone doing those things in every dialogue. How do I get out of this trap (or is it not really a problem)? Are there any good alternatives?
The best I can do right now are substituting verbs like *grin* and *chuckle* for *smile*, which are kind of lateral moves. I don’t know of any decent substitute for *nod*.
I should add that one character in particular smiles a lot, because of her personality, so it is intentional on my part that she responds in that way. Can I just start to take out those beats when they get repetitive, and hope that the reader will supply them?
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