You may have read a writing tutorial that said you should always put the “he said” tag at the end of the dialogue. That’s fine for a few words, but for long sentences it’s a bad mistake. Here’s why.
In real life, we immediately identify the person who’s talking. That means, to make our stories true-to-life, we must let readers know who is talking, by placing the tag after an opening phrase or after the first sentence.
Readers don’t want to plow through a three-line paragraph of dialogue and finally get to the tag at the end, which is like saying, “Oh, by the way. That conversation you just spent so much time reading . . . let me tell you who said it.”
That’s a good hint for writers. I’ve been caught in that situation before.