Hi, Rick. This is a great question. The best way to avoid the he-said-she-said pattern of dialogue is to use action beats instead of tags. So, the character says something, then they do something, then maybe they say something else. This shows the reader who’s talking without coming right out and saying “he said” and it also adds action to a conversation, giving the scene a more active feel. Here’s an example from The Emotion Thesaurus:

Sarah bolted toward an older woman wearing a matronly purple dress and enveloped her in a hug. “Nana, you made it!”
“Silly girl. A delayed flight couldn’t keep me from your special day.” She pulled back and cupped Sarah’s cheeks. “Such a beauty.”
Sarah took her grandmother’s weathered hands in her own. “I hope you know what it means to me, that you’re here. You’ve always taken care of me, and—”
“I love you, girl. Always will. Enough for both your mother and me.”

As you can see here, each line of dialogue is accompanied with an action beat. It doesn’t have to be anything big and meaningful, just small actions will do. And because the action beat and the dialogue are in one paragraph, readers will know who’s doing the talking. Occasionally, as you can see in the final line, you won’t even need a beat because the readers will follow the flow of the conversation and know who’s speaking.

This isn’t to say that you should avoid “said” altogether; it’s so common as to be almost invisible, like an article or preposition. Sometimes you need to keep the writing simple, and “said” is a great way to accomplish that. On the other hand, you want to use the more expressive tags (whispered, yelled, etc.) sparingly, because with too many, they start to stand out and sound a little melodramatic.

If you can pick up a copy of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, I highly recommend you do. It’s a treasure trove of editing tips with a whole chapter dedicated to dialogue mechanics.

I hope this helps!

Thanks Angela! Oh yes, that was a HUGE scene in Breaking Bad! Such excellent writing on so many levels.