To tag or not to tag?

 What do other writers think of Dorothy Dunnett?

You may or may not have heard the name, but she wrote several historical series that garnered many, many fans.
Check out this link: The Writers’ Writer – Dorothy Dunnett Centenary (dunnettcentral.org) and find out. You will find my comments there along with a dozen or so others.

They make interesting reading. Currently I am going through my latest wip and trying to tie up all the loose ends. The easiest thing in the world is to add "said "after every line of dialogue, but oh! it does make for boring reading. 

So now I have struck out many of those dreaded words and let the dialogue stand alone, or I have add an action tag to make life interesting. Often I tie two separate sentences together to make one graceful, more interesting sentence. It seems when I'm writing the first draft I go for the simplest language and often employ phrases like "and then she...."

Not good. Second time is when the editing brain goes into action and re-writes all those awkward constructions.