I was recently reading a book and I came across yet another instance of “drawled” as a dialogue tag. (Actually I came across several but it wasn’t as egregious as certain other authors who I will not name.)

What exactly do Reid’s words sound like? To me, someone who grew up in southern Florida where a “drawl” is something that southerners do (southern Florida is not the South), it sounds like someone speaking with a southern accent. I’m sure that’s not what the author intended, but that’s what my brain put in there, and that took me out of the story. I’ve talked countless times about not writing something that takes you out of the story — especially when you’re using actions or dialogue tags.

This author also used “stated” several times — I can’t run a search because the book I have is a compilation of the first three books in the series so it would pull up all the entries across all three books — but while I personally noticed it I don’t know that other readers would find it as flagrantly annoying as I did.

Oh, and I’d just like to point out that this author used “shrugged” properly. It is not a dialogue tag!