Well, it's more with comedy, I guess. I like humour that results from the characters' personalities, so I admit that exaggerating them works better than a most nuanced characterization. Length probably has something to do with it too. I mean, in a drabble, it's difficult to focus on more than one theme, let alone more than one side of somebody's personality, for ezample.
IMO, say (and ask/answer, a little less) are useful to know who's talking -and even then, you can use names or narrator's observations if it gets confusing. You should only use the other ones to really emphasize how a particular line must be read. Speech tags, for me, work particularly badly in 1st/3rd person tight fics, because they sound unnatural with most characters voice. I was going to use my own dialogue as an example, but apparently I use one or two speech tags per fic.
It was mostly that I think that while avoiding repetition is good, you might end with the opposite effect and using thirty synonyms for 'table'. :P
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Length probably has something to do with it too. I mean, in a drabble, it's difficult to focus on more than one theme, let alone more than one side of somebody's personality, for ezample.
IMO, say (and ask/answer, a little less) are useful to know who's talking -and even then, you can use names or narrator's observations if it gets confusing. You should only use the other ones to really emphasize how a particular line must be read.
Speech tags, for me, work particularly badly in 1st/3rd person tight fics, because they sound unnatural with most characters voice.
I was going to use my own dialogue as an example, but apparently I use one or two speech tags per fic.
It was mostly that I think that while avoiding repetition is good, you might end with the opposite effect and using thirty synonyms for 'table'. :P