I'm writing a story with some interactions where a nonbinary character is meeting people they couldn't tell the gender of and I end up with a lot of confusing "theys" even when I use proper nouns for the character in question. any ideas of how to not just toss around a bunch of "they said"s and such without saying the same descriptors over and over like "the one on the right" ?
Ah, what I live for!! You market yourself as an lgbt+ editor and then all you get is straight romance or fantasy with straight romance. Bleh
Moving on! This is really interesting, because it’s probably really context dependent and I’m not sure I can give the best answer without grappling with the lines themselves. I would possibly point to my previous post with character/setting/action, to try to avoid dialogue tags by describing the character who’s speaking, the setting, or the action they’re doing. This is a good way to avoid getting confused in any situation where two characters use the same pronoun (ie, when two he/him characters are the only ones on the page). Especially character can be helpful — if the reader knows that the main character has blue hair, let’s say, and the new character has brown, then a dialogue line ending with “…they ran their fingers through their brown hair” or something like that will help differentiate who’s speaking.
Also, using names is never a bad thing, and while it can get overused, tolerance for that is usually much higher when we have a same-pronoun situation.
Another method of differentiation is different speech patterns. If we know our main character with blue hair (let’s call them Blue) has a particular way of speaking, then making the new character have a different way of speaking will set them apart in a very easy to read but hard to notice sort of way. It’s meta, and really engrained in the style, but can be awfully effective. Let’s say Blue has a somewhat posh tone — they use fancy words because they read too much and have a very refined sense of style from studying philosophy at university. The new character could then have a southern accent, and speak very slowly with lots of y’alls, and ums, because they literally grew up in a barn with their beloved horse companion and don’t know how to talk to people. An extreme example, but it showcases my point: could you ever imagine these two people having the same tone of voice, and getting their dialogue lines mixed up with each other? Usually, no. And that’s one of the great, wonderful, and magical things about dialogue. :)
To sum up, I think that would be my general advice: character/setting/action; names are okay, and overusing them is harder in a same-pronoun situation; different tones of voice (this one is my favorite because it forces a lot of characterization!).
I hope this helps + wasnt too long, and let me know if you have any further questions. :)