I was asked a question about dialogue tags recently, so I’ve written a post about dialogue tags and action beats.

Action beats

Action beats describe what a character is doing during a conversation and can add to the setting and emotion of a scene.

Unlike dialogue tags, actions beats are punctuated slightly differently depending on where they are in relation to the dialogue. If the sentences that come before or after an action beat are full sentences, they end with a full stop and the following word is capitalised.

“It’s over there somewhere.” She made a balletic movement with her right hand.

He frowned. “Can you be a bit more specific, please?”

“Where do you think a group of show tune obsessed squirrels would live?” She turned to face him, hands on hips. “They live in a theatre.”

Realisation dawned on his face “That’s why they make a literal song and dance about everything.”

Dialogue tags

If dialogue ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, the word following it is lowercase. Dialogue only ends in a full stop if it isn’t followed by a dialogue tag. At all other times dialogue ends in a comma, even if it is a full sentence.

“Do you think maybe you read too many books about anthropomorphised animals as a child?” he said.

“Possibly,” I said.

“Great, so this is the result.”