One of the most contentious arguments in the writing world, and certainly the easiest indicator of amateur writing when used incorrectly, is the usage of that innocent little four-letter word: 'said'.
Because regardless of what genre you are writing in, what you intend for the length of your final product, or how traditional or experimental you are, you will almost certainly be using dialogue in some shape or form. Meaning you need to decide what dialogue tags you will use. And by far and away the most common form of a dialogue tag is 'said'. Writing advice tends to fall into two extreme camps when it comes to the usage of 'said'. One camp will insist that you avoid 'said' at all costs, and instead push yourself into new creative grounds with flavorful and interesting vocabulary. The other camp insists that you should use nothing BUT said, as any other dialogue tag is flowery, awkward and distracts from the narrative rather than add to it. Let's look at an example of what both camps proclaim to be the best course of action, then. Let's start with the avoidance of said: "Jill, what are you doing?" Jack screamed. Jill twisted around, tears rolling into the bucket in her hands. "Stay back," she cried, "Don't come any closer." "Don't be stupid Jill," Jack replied, stepping closer, "Put the bucket down. It's not worth it." "You don't understand," Jill wailed. "But I do," Jack whispered, "Remember how we always used to fetch a pail of water together as kids?" "How can I forget?" Jill whispered. "And that one time I fell down?" Jack smirked. "You broke your crown," Jill blubbed. "Yeah, and you came tumbling after," Jack added. "Those were good times," Jill pined, "Simple times. How do we get them back, Jack?" "Not this way," Jack explained, "Come on. Put the bucket down." Jill dropped the bucket, water sloshing into the grass. Jack gathered her into a tight embrace. What do you think? Although at first you might think that this isn't too bad, bear in mind that this is a tiny snippet of what is a much bigger story, and even within this sample those fancy dialogue tags were beginning to grate, I'd wager. Can you imagine what dialogue would look like several pages down the line? We're going to have to resort to archaic language like 'admonished' and shoehorning other words into dialogue tags like 'contradicted'. The problem here is that these ostentatious dialogue tags suck up all of the energy of the action. Imagine that dialogue without those tags, and suddenly you're left with a blank husk of a dialogue exchange. So from these dialogue tags, the poor reader has to decifer a huge amount of info from those tags: what the characters are feeling, how they are saying it (which can be hard: who really knows what admonishing looks like?), what actions are happening when they are saying it...the works. It makes for a pretty miserable reading experience. And it's not like you as the writer can remedy that by deciding to add all of these things back into the prose, because when combined with flamboyant dialogue tags it can become extremely melodramatic. Now let's repeat that little exercise with the other extreme - by using only 'said': "Jill, what are you doing?" said Jack. Jill twisted around, tears rolling into the bucket in her hands. "Stay back," she said, "Don't come any closer." "Don't be stupid Jill," said Jack, stepping closer, "Put the bucket down. It's not worth it." "You don't understand," said Jack. "But I do," said Jack, "Remember how we always used to fetch a pail of water together as kids?" "How can I forget?" said Jill. "And that one time I fell down?" said Jack. "You broke your crown," said Jill. "Yeah, and you came tumbling after," said Jack. "Those were good times," said Jill, "Simple times. How do we get them back, Jack?" "Not this way," said Jack, "Come on. Put the bucket down." Jill dropped the bucket, water sloshing into the grass. Jack gathered her into a tight embrace. What do you think this time? Well, we've certainly rectified the problem of the dialogue tags being too distracting. And sure, as an exchange between two people it flows better. But that's because there's nothing to go on anymore: it just reads like a dry and emotionless script. The word 'said' is neutral in its meaning and action and conveys none of the energy and power needed to really make this scene jump out of the page. So what can be done? It's clear that neither of these extremes work, so the best practice must lie somewhere in the middle. Next week, we'll dig deeper in the search of that best practice, and how to plug it into our dialogue to really bring it to life.
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Off the ShelfHere I share my ideas, musings and advice on the writing process. I also analyse some of my own writing for examples to show how I work. ShowcaseHere I will show off of some of my favorite good and great stories, gushing lovingly over why I adore them and why you should too. I will also show you the other side of the spectrum: bad examples of stories and what we can learn from them.
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