This is a very good article, one which should be referenced often by all authors irrespective of their skill and experience levels. But the author of the article missed one.
"Get away from me!" Lois yelled at Lex, pushing him across the room.
It's a bad idea to put action in a speech tag because it's very easy to put too much in it and have your character speaking while performing circus tricks and making dinner all at the same time.
Here's how I'd rewrite the above example (and it's referenced in the article).
Lois pushed Lex across the room. "Get away from me!"
It puts the action first and implicitly tells the reader that Lois is agitated and is almost surely shouting. It's an example of an implicit speech tag (mentioned in the article), one which is not specifically written out, but there's little doubt that Lois is the one telling Lex to get away from her.
The advice to read dialogue aloud is excellent. If a two-scene (just two central characters) is well-written, the speech will flow almost musically.
Oh! One more. In a two-scene, the author doesn't have to identify each speaker every time one speaks. Nor must the characters continually address each other by name. It's good if it's in the dialogue flow, but it's distracting if it's every time the speaker (NOT the point of view) changes.
"There's no time like the present, Lois," Clark said.
"And there's no present like time, Clark." said Lois.
"Yet we have all the time we need, Lois," said Clark.
"But it's still never enough, Clark," Lois said.
It's too easy to be distracted from whatever they're actually discussing. An actual conversation would not sound like the above (totally made-up) quote.
Anyway, all writers should strive to improve their skills. No author is perfect. The best we can do is to be better than we were in the last story.
