How to Tag Quotations Responsibly in Fiction

You've been told that using "she/he said" every time a character speaks will make your story monotonous. This is technically true. If you used the same tag to identify every single time every character speaks, it would quickly become a turn-off to you reader. That doesn't mean, though, that you should avoid "she/he said" like the plague. In most cases it is perfectly fine and makes the most sense. Your reader will probably never notice it is there at all.

Then there are times when a character is not making a simple statement. A character who is asking a question certainly should be marked with "he/she asked" rather than "he/she said". And a character who speaks loudly should be tagged with "he/she shouted" or something else along those lines. Most normal conversations will have some questions and many dramatic conversations will include exclamations, so these are natural methods to break up the "he/she said" monotony.

Your characters can also speak in different tones of voice. A desperate character might plead instead of asking. An irate character would shout rather than calmly saying what she needs to say. A meek character may mumble. Using such tones of voice where they are appropriate adds richness to the character and the conversation.

Problems can arise when an author starts to artificially induce different tones of voice where they are not necessary or even warranted. A common mistake writers make is to believe that two or three consecutive statements must never be tagged with "she/he said". The writer will then break out his thesaurus looking for alternatives and end up making a character use all kinds of different tones of voice in what is actually a very simple conversation. Readers will pick up on this dichotomy very quickly and it will be just as distracting, if not worse, than two sentences in a row that end with "he said".

When a writer really starts to reach for alternatives to "he/she said" she can begin to come up with things that are actually incorrect. One common example of this is quotations that are tagged with facial expressions, like this:

"This is not working," frowned Doctor Brown.