On writing dialogue

[donutsweeper]

When you have a scene with several characters in it I feel I a little more careful making it obvious as who is saying what.

Sometimes I manage this by using the character's movements:

"I don't know, Jack." Owen put his feet on the desk. "Seems to easy to me."

But a lot of the times I am stuck with:

"So what's next?" Jack asked.

"We could cross reference the new data with information from the archives," Ianto suggested.

"I can run another scan," Tosh offered, "See if I missed anything?"

"We order pizza. I'm hungry," Owen said.

etc, etc.

Do you find that annoying? Is it worse or better to use 'said' over and over or would you rather the word varied? Is there another way to do it?

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

When there are only two people I tend to skip as many tags as possible, but for the whole team that's impossible.

[secbeth.livejournal.com]

I only do it when it's obivious whose mouth it's coming out of!!