He said, She said...

Pepper653 said:

I saw something about using this too often. I've searched but unable to find it in the posts. Does anyone remember which topic it's under? or able to give me a link to an online article.


I'm being told to use something other than he said/she said and lay off the adverbs LOL!!


I've learned to eliminate this during between a conversation between 2 people, but what about if 3 or 4 people are all talking to each other.

This story is being told 'first' person

Thanks bunches,,,,,You guys ROCK!!

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You use nothing at all whenever possible, unless you need the He Said, She Said for rhythm, or for a natural pause in the sentence. If the reader can tell who's speaking, no dialogue tags are usually needed.

With three or four people, you do usually need dialogue tags, but none othe rthan He said, She said, unless you use a proper name, such as Jack said, or Sheila said.

But do not use anything other than He said, She said, Jack said, or Sheila said. Defnitely no adverbs.

Pepper653 said:

I saw something about using this too often. I've searched but unable to find it in the posts. Does anyone remember which topic it's under? or able to give me a link to an online article.

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This one's kind of a double-edged sword One of the pieces of advice given most often to beginning writers is not to be afraid to use "said" because most people think that using "said" all the time is bad and so they use other words instead and that can become a problem in itself ... On the other hand, repetitive use of "said" over and over and over again can become a problem as well ... These 10 rules of writing by Elmore Leonard (never read any of his books but love all of the movie adaptations ) might be of some use.

If a conversation is between 3 or more people, whether you use said or not depends a lot on context. For instance, you might have something like the following:

"Hey Harry, what about the foogles?" asked Danny.

"What about them?"

"Well, you said the foogles were flubbergisted last Thursday ...."

I decided that it was time to step in. "Come on guys, do we have to keep talking about the foogles?"

You can also use the narrative to convey who is speaking without using a dialogue tag:

Mary sighed. What else could they do? "We'll just have to try."
Jack nodded, though he didn't look any happier than she felt. "Let's go."

Using stage direction nearly always reads better to me than he said/she said tags. But I have a hard time not overdoing it, as I'm sure other beginning writers do as well. Sometimes I end up with two words of dialog hidden in a paragraph showing some action. Oops! I do try to tag multi-person conversations liberally unless it's really obvious who is talking to whom. I hate going through dialog where I have to go back and reread the conversation to make sure I know who is really speaking. I've been told that it's really unnatural to include people's names in dialog itself ("John, do you think..." "Why, no, Bob..." since people don't actualy talk that way, but sometimes I sometimes scrap 3+ person conversations rather than try to get it all to work.

I've never used many adverbs , so following that rule has been relatively easy -- but the rules really aren't that black and white. I've read any number of books that have more than just he said/she said and others with judicious use of adverbs. I don't think you can (or should) eliminate all other tags, nor all adverbs, just because "it's a rule".

I've seen it argued that "a good writer" shouldn't need to use anything else and should be able to show all the necessary information so that the dialog is read properly without an adverb or hissed or yelped or whatever.

While it has helped me clean up dialog, it was probably the most discouraging piece of "advice" that I've ever gotten, because even my cleaned up dialog contained a few non-standard tags. I don't think it's bad, people who have read it don't seem overly concerned about a few scattered 'he snarled' tags, but I'm still having anxiety that it's the mark of a rank amateur and all the real writers will be laughing at me.

Phouka said:

I've read any number of books that have more than just he said/she said and others with judicious use of adverbs. I don't think you can (or should) eliminate all other tags, nor all adverbs, just because "it's a rule".

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I should have mentioned this, especially since I posted a list of "rules" by Elmore Leonard. Any writing rule is more a guideline than a strict rule. You really should not be intimidated by anybody who says you should do such and such a thing because that's the rule. That's something which really irritates me - people who say something should be done in a specific way because it's a rule or because "all the professionals do it that way" The best thing to do would be to read a few books by writers that you admire or in the genre of your choice and pick apart how they write. It has helped me a lot to both identify mistakes I made and to improve my own writing ... YMMV, of course

skip the tags whenever possible, only use them, or use narrative, when a third or fourth person cuts in, but as long as who is speaking what is clear, theres no need for tags

the word "omit" is an important word for writers. Omitting dialogue attribution that is needless is just as important as adding it when clarification is necessary.

Rules

"Rules" generally are just suggestions, but they become "rules" because they work, and you do ignore them at your own risk. Yes, it isn't difficult to find books that break this "rule" and use dialogue tags such as he gased, he muttered, he whined, he hissed, etc. It also isn't difficult to find books that read poorly, and these are usually the same books.

"Rules" become rules because they work, and it remains true that a good writer does not need to use such tags, and that a bad writer is never helped by using them.

I don't think people will jump down your throat for using a very occasional adverb as a dialogue tag, but it's very rarely, if ever, necessary, and one to many does turn a book into a wallbanger.

Adverbs do not in any way help a reader understand who's speaking, and do not make the dialogue any better. They make it worse. Good dialogue never needs them, and bad dialogue is never helped by them.

Just to get back to "rules" - the best thing to do is use some common sense. My whole pet peeve is when people forget common sense, leave behind any semblance of logic and cling to the "rules" like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam I constantly hear people say "you can only break the rules if you know enough" or "you have to be a professional before you can actually break the rules". But which rules? Who decides what can be broken and what can't? I'd say this is where common sense comes in since every rule will not work the same for your book, your genre or your theme.

Of course, I'm not saying break the rules for the sake of breaking the rules or that you shouldn't pay attention to the rules because they are "rules" The adverb rule is always a good one. Adverbs are almost always a crutch and getting rid of them gets rid of excess cruft, makes your story cleaner and read better. But there are instances when instead of using ten words to say something, you could say it much more concisely using an adverb. If you cling to the notion that you should not have any adverbs at all and spend hours trying to construct a different sentence you might be wasting valuable time which might be better spent writing ... or then again, maybe not. It's all subjective and personal

Yes, it's easy I think to get carried away with the stage directions/action tags, particularly if characters are sipping coffee or chain-smoking and to me nothing wrecks dialogue more than unnecessary action tags - I want to get caught up in and follow the dialogue.

Phouka said:

Using stage direction nearly always reads better to me than he said/she said tags. But I have a hard time not overdoing it, as I'm sure other beginning writers do as well. Sometimes I end up with two words of dialog hidden in a paragraph showing some action. Oops! ....

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I just grabbed Stephen King's latest, Cell, and opened it at random to see what kind of attribution he uses. I ended up on two pages of mostly dialogue between several people. On those two pages he uses "said" or "asked" most of the time but also has a "remarked," a "pointed out," a "said pointedly," and several instances of stage direction.

Next I took Dennis Lehane's Mystic River and opened it to two pages of mostly dialogue. There are only four attributions on these two pages: a "whispered," a "hissed," and two incidents of "said."

Finally I grabbed Memoirs of A Geisha and opened it to two pages of dialogue involving several characters. The attributions here include: "said quietly (twice)," "answered," "explained to me," "told me," and perhaps a dozen appearances of "said."

Hardly a scientific sampling but these are all bestselling books by some very talented authors. While a simple "said" clearly dominates when attribution is used (and Lehane, in my opinion, is a master at writing dialogue that needs little in the way of attribution--a good study for anyone who is interested) other forms of attribution, including adverbs, are used. The ratio if I were to guess--and this is purely a guess--is about 90/10...either no attribution or a simple "said" 90% of the time, and something else 10% of the time.

Beth

I had read, forget where now, that you should only use he said/she said and drop all the "remarked, shouted, cried, queried, yelled, thundered, postulated, et ceteras."

Isn't that one of ElmerLeonard's 10 rules?

Maybe. But since I never heard of him until now I don't think that's where I heard it.

"Said" is the only invisible word in the English language.


Using all kinds of other nonsense is too purple, and should be done sparingly, if at all.