: Re: Putting a dialogue a tag before a quote Sometimes I see stuff like this: X said, "..." "..." X did this, and then said, "..." Is it used to just vary sentence structure? Or to

Yes to both as Lauren said, and once you train the reader that you're a nice author who doesn't ever violate "One speaker per line" and sticks to that while mixing emotes and actions in too, you may go with a third form which is then even more smooth:

"..." X did this, "..."

Take:

Kim shook his fist and muttered, "Not you too, bastard!"
"So..." Josh raised his gun and said, "are we going to do it the easy way?"

versus

Kim shook his fist. "Not you too, bastard!"
"So..." Josh raised his gun. "Are we going to do it the easy way?"

It's the actions that describe the speaker, and you kill two birds with one stone, give variety against "he said, she said" and get the scene to live for real.

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: Re: Putting a dialogue a tag before a quote Sometimes I see stuff like this: X said, "..." "..." X did this, and then said, "..." Is it used to just vary sentence structure? Or to

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: Dealing with lackluster plot failure So, I wrote the beginning of something about novel-sized. I drafted totally sweet, lovable protagonists in an interesting, original relationship, I placed them

: How many commas is too many? I find myself often in writing using too many commas, but then going through and editing many of them back out again or restructuring to use full-stops. Is there

: Self/vanity publishing a game manual I'm writing a player's handbook for a game I'm producing. The game is fully open source, and the manual itself will be online. However, I would like to

: The classic symbol for trade is a standing set of scales, standing (as opposed to handheld/hanging, more frequently associated with justice). If you want an animal, the one most frequently associated

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