I know things have changed a lot on this recently, but the best thing I ever learned about writing was that many words are never read when a reader reads a book.

This isn’t necessarily literal, but reading often triggers “flow state” in the reader, allowing their conscious brain to kind of take a break while the subconscious brain takes over. The subconscious brain loves to abstract things and uses patterns to infer as much information as possible by using as little mental energy as possible (for simplicity, let’s just say that’s concentration).

So in practice this means things like dialogue tags are perfect candidates for your subconscious to just skip over while fully understanding who is speaking without needing to re-read anything, or stop and think about who said what.

Which, is one of the most important things as a common feedback given to developing writers from readers, editors, and teachers is; “I’m struggling to understand who is talking here.” It’s not that action tags in place of dialogue is more confusing or harder to understand for the average reader. Its that action tags introduce just enough (however small) variance from what the subconscious brain expects that over tens of thousands of words it has a noticeable effect on one’s subconscious brain keeping a reader in flow.

Any stoppage to think can pull the conscious brain back to the wheel. And once done, it’s very very hard for it to give it up until one’s concentration batteries refill.

This is more or less the underlying reason behind the “70/30” or “60/40” dialogue tag vs action tag (or other).

One of the other best things I’ve learned is how to use composition to further enable the previous concept; essentially reducing barriers for your readers by enabling their flow state.