: Re: Speech tags for nameless characters I have a scene where two identical people talking to each other. There is no difference in terms of their physical appearance. The only difference is that

@Angela458

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You have two characters that are pretty much completely identical at this point in your narrative, and you are purposely withholding their names from the audience. In such a situation, I would suggest going with your second route and using "first man" and "second man" as your speech tags.

Two men stood next to a lake. The first one looked at the horizon while the second one leaned against a tree.

"I know," the first man said.

"Do you?" replied the second.

"Sure, I saw it myself."

"You did not!" As he said this, the second man picked up a stone from the ground.

Since the men are identical, and the audience doesn't know who they are, you should be very careful to distinguish who's saying what. Unless the men have noticeably different speech patterns, it will be hard to tell otherwise.

I would also like to bring up a point of consideration. Is there any reason why you're purposely being vague with the identity of these characters? You say that you "don't want them to refer to each other by names in the first lines of dialogue as it feels unnatural." In my experience, it may be awkward as a writer to throw in character names into your narrative without a full introduction, but as a reader, I see no issue with it. In fact, pretty much every book I pick up will mention the main character's name within the first lines of dialogue.

So, if it's important that the reader does not know the identity of these two men, go for the "first man," "second man" route. Otherwise, I would suggest just naming them!

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