He said, she said, everybody said said

Murky · Oct 20, 2019

“Say you, say me, say it forever…”

I have come to understand that the debate over the use of ‘said’ in manuscripts, is even more divisive and fierce than whether pineapple is a valid ingredient on pizzas, and it is really not my intention to rip open those old wounds and reanimate that dead horse.

For the longest time I was an embarrassed member of the dialogue-is-tough-and-I-hate-it club, and I did not see a good way to improve myself on this point. No matter how much I practiced, the dialogue was still stale, unnatural and my progress ground to a halt every time a character had to say anything.

Remembering all the red marks on my marked school assignments, where my teachers whipped into me that it was wrong, oh so wrong, to repeat words, I became a frequent user of any thesaurus I came across.

And I did what so many of us do.
My characters smirked, grinned, chuckled, whined, scratched, jumped, kneeled, sang, grumbled, exhaled, and blinked their words. Any foreseeable verb would do, as long as it was a new one
The focus was on the verb and not what they were actually saying, and dialogue was a nightmare.

I had to do something and the guides I came across wrote that I was only allowed to use ‘said’.
But what about, whisper, ask, and yell I asked, confused and uncertain that the guide was correct. And adding to the confusion, all the posts and comments attacking the concept of ‘said’, something about ‘action’, and no real reply to my question regarding the other speech verbs.

I feared I would apply the wrong fix, and for the longest time, I tried no changes at all, but eventually the dream to be published got the better of me and I decided to give it a shot. Worst case I made a poor choice and would have to find something new, but at least I tried something.

I knew that doing everything at once and jump from total rubbish to tolerable would require some intermediate steps and I decided on divide my effort into three steps

Said it all
I first had to rid myself of my incessant need to use every verb in the English language, and I started to use ‘said’ and only ‘said’ – every single time a character spoke.
I did so with the knowledge that I would overuse the word and that it would not be necessary to have that many ‘said’, but the focus of this step was to get rid of a bad habit.
(So drastic actions needed to be taken).

Doing this I no longer had to worry about how things were spoken, and I quickly found it surprisingly easier to write dialogue. The words spoken became into focus and it felt liberating to finally be able to put on the page what the characters had been screaming, sorry, saying, to me in my mind for so long.

Writing dialogue started to fun.

Remove all the said.
Confident I (for the most part) had overcome this poor writing habit, I turned to the next step in the process.
The challenge is simple – remove as many said as possible and see if a reader could still – at all times – understand who was speaking.

Articles on this issue warned against using the names of characters too much in dialogue as well as other ways to cheat and get around the missing ‘said’ tag, and I tried to heed these warnings closely. If the interaction did not make it clear whom was speaking, I added back a ‘said’ to make it clearer.

Action, not words, said
Parallel with step two, is to have the characters do something while they speak (or just before and / or after). I have to be careful to not have the characters not spasm all over the place and behave like a rag doll high on meth. If it is not intentional, no character should grin at everything, stand, and sit back down every other piece of dialogue, or constantly scratch or move certain body parts.

With all three steps in place (at least to some degree), writing dialogue is fun now and I look forward to every time a character has something to say. I found it easier to move the plot forward, add dept to the character and indirectly discovered that dialogue is also a great way to get around the challenges with exposition. (Though I am going to severely punish myself if any character starts to say “As you know…”).

So, if you, like I, struggle with dialogue, perhaps the steps above might be helpful?
I ignored my “yeah, but” questions and just went for it.
I still have them, but have decided to just use my asked, whispered, yelled etc. for now and leave it to my reviewers to burn through their red markers to elevate my writing further.

Bufty · Oct 20, 2019

Hi, Murky,

Apart from the second sentence above, this all read fine to me and made sense. Glad the outlined procedure is working for you.

Dialogue should be fun - glad you now enjoy it. :snoopy:

The main point of dialogue tags is to make sure the reader knows who is speaking - and 'said' accomplishes that in the clearest and easiest possible manner. We use 'said' by choice when it is necessary to remind or inform the reader of who is speaking, and we should remember to place it in the relative dialogue earlier rather than later.

Re your last sentence. :Hug2:

That any particular dialogue was asked, whispered or yelled etc., can in many circumstances be made evident by the spoken words themselves and/or the scenario/context in which they are spoken.

Roxxsmom · Oct 20, 2019

I don't think there's any "rule" against using other words besides "said" to attribute dialogue, but it's something to use judiciously, when you want to call attention to how the word was spoken, not simply to avoid repeating "said." "Said" is essentially an invisible word, like "a" or "the."

As Bufty already mentioned, sometimes the words or context themselves convey the fact that someone is yelling or whispering etc., but I don't think I've read a novel recently that avoids them as tags altogether, and most writers use an occasional "muttered" or "squealed" etc. There are even a few writers who manage to slap so-called "said bookisms" into their stories pretty liberally. It's part of their voice and style, and it works for them, though that doesn't mean everyone should emulate it. Douglas Adams did it quite a lot in his Hitchhiker books, but they were narrated in a hyperbolic, droll voice.

The thing, imo, to avoid is the use of words that can't be spoken as dialog tags. Drives me crazy when I see something like this: "We should go with her, then," Tom nodded, or "I don't know," Maria shrugged. And I've been on this earth a long time now, and I'm still not sure how someone would cough or snort out a sentence. If someone actually manages to do this, it's probably worthy of more mention in the narrative than a simple tag.

If you want someone nodding or shrugging when they say words, or right before or after, there are ways to show that in dialog, but the punctuation is different.

Tom snorted. "Yeah, right. And I'm the Queen's long-lost love child too."

or

"I couldn't tell you." Maria shrugged.

Note that words like "nod" and "shrugged" tend to get overused as actions too, so these are just examples.

Paul Lamb · Oct 20, 2019

I'm glad you've mastered your struggles with writing dialog. It's one of the toughest and most important parts of writing fiction.

However,

Not only do I enjoy pineapple on the occasional pizza, but I think the dictate that only some variation of the word "said" in a dialog tag is bogus, limiting, and embarrassing. I don't know where this proscriptive fussiness came from (though I suspect it's from the Elmore Leonard 10 Rules of Writing essay, which may make sense if you're writing tough-guy thrillers, but even that's dubious), but I certainly do not subscribe to it. Never once has an editor asked me to change a dialog tag from whatever I have used back to "said." In fact, while I will use "said" most of the time, I make it a point to put at least one stronger verb in a dialog tag in every story I write. Nor do I see the Pulitzer and Booker Prize winners bothering with this so-called rule. (I once saw a character "chirp" his words, and it was perfect in context.)

I think creative writing is fraught with uncertainty and self doubt. (Is this any good? Will anyone ever read this? Should I start over? How can I do this better?) I can see the seduction of having some hard-and-fast "rules" to take away that uncertainty, but we're creative writers; we have the privilege of looking at and showing the world in creative ways. We are the ones who get to evolve the grammar. Limiting a dialog tag to "said" -- because it's an invisible word???? why would you want an invisible word in your writing? -- hamstrings our creativity and our expression.

Some years ago the New York Times wrote an obituary for The Elements of Style. I think it's time to put a lot of other so-called writing rules in the ground.

JohnLine · Oct 20, 2019

Just my two cents on the subject. I've been giving this a lot of thought recently after someone pointed out my over use of book-isms.

The problem with a line like:

"I agree." Tom nodded.

Is that there's no formal connection to Tom nodding and the spoken words "I agree." So one could just as easily write:

Jill sighed. "I agree." Tom nodded.

And you have no idea who actually spoke the words. So the correct thing to do would be:

Jill sighed. "I agree," Tom said nodding.

But I find I can never quite trust the first line: "I agree." Tom nodded.I understand it's the convention, but it's not quite right.

Here's what I wish the convention was:

"I agree;" Tom nodded.

As it let's you know that the two are directly related. Tom nodding and the spoken words are part of the same communication. I've seen this convention used in the original Sherlock Holmes stories, so it's largely a style of the times. I'm not going to try to bring it back all by myself, but I'd be happy to read a book that uses it.

Now, the one place I think you should never use "said" is after any line of dialog that doesn't end in a comma:

"Stop thief!" Tom said. Wrong. A book-ism is almost required after an exclamation mark, as there's no standard way to exclaim something.

"How are you?" Tom said. Also wrong, "ask" is the standard.

"There's something..." Tom said. And wrong again, because an ellipses can either denote hesitant speaking, or the the quote is continued later on, and you need to inform your reader which one you mean.

And the last thing that occurred to me is that technically dialog tags should never go after the quotation. And I mean it.

Tom watched Lincoln give the Gettysburg address.

"Four score and seven years ago," said Tom to himself, after Lincoln had finished.

See the problem? It breaks immersion if you don't know who said something until after it's said. It's just that having the dialog tag after the words sounds much more natural, and puts the focus on the words, where it should be.

You can, and should, still put the tags after, but you can't simply add a dialog tag after a line when you think the reader might have lost track of who is speaking. You have to use it before the reader loses track, to reinforce what they already know.

Roxxsmom · Oct 20, 2019

The default is for the reader to assume Tom was the one who said "I agree," since his nodding was in the same paragraph. That's generally how it works when one uses actions to attribute dialog. If someone other than the speaker is nodding, one generally puts it in a separate paragraph. Or one can tag it as you did in your example.

Now, just to be clear, I think "'I agree.' Tom nodded." is actually kind of redundant, truth be told. He already said he agrees, so the reader can probably imagine him nodding too. Unless his nodding is unusually emphatic or otherwise worthy of notice.

Often words like nodded, shrugged, grinned etc. are overused as placeholder attributions, and even when properly punctuated they can become repetitive (and are not always needed).

I was just using it as an example in the above post of how to properly punctuate actions when used as attributions, however.

Ultimately, it's on the writer to make it clear to the reader who is speaking or performing an action. There are different ways of accomplishing this. As long as the passage isn't confusing the reader, and it flows the way it is supposed to while creating the right tone, voice, mood etc., it's all good.

I agree with you it looks a bit odd to see "said" used with questions (instead of "asked") or when an exclamation mark is used. Of course, there was another thread a while ago about when exclamation marks become excessive. One could argue that "Stop, thief!" Tom shouted is somewhat redundant too.

Scenes like these are often better if they include more description of what the victim (or thief, depending on whose viewpoint we're in) is doing while Tom shouts.

As an aside, as I always wonder in stories where a character yells this, do people actually yell "Stop, thief!" when they are robbed, and if so, has any thief in the history of thievery actually turned around and returned their stolen goods? :greenie

Bufty · Oct 21, 2019

Just a tiny point on the 'Tom nodded' issue. If dialogue and action are related, I find it often helps the flow to put the action first.

Tom nodded. "I agree."

Murky · Oct 21, 2019

Roxxsmom said:
...
Now, just to be clear, I think "'I agree.' Tom nodded." is actually kind of redundant, truth be told. He already said he agrees, so the reader can probably imagine him nodding too. Unless his nodding is unusually emphatic or otherwise worthy of notice.

Absolutely, and something I would need to look for during edit as they can be tougher to discover during the writing process.

Roxxsmom said:
Often words like nodded, shrugged, grinned etc. are overused as placeholder attributions, and even when properly punctuated they can become repetitive (and are not always needed).

Which I have discovered during my edits. Good that you point that out.

Roxxsmom said:
I I agree with you it looks a bit odd to see "said" used with questions (instead of "asked") or when an exclamation mark is used. Of course, there was another thread a while ago about when exclamation marks become excessive. One could argue that "Stop, thief!" Tom shouted is somewhat redundant too.

Oh, this one I struggle (ish) with. It seems strange to use the tag 'asked', as the use of the question mark, kinda gives that away. So I try and reduce those tags as much as I can. Using 'said' for a question sounds odd indeed.

angeliz2k · Oct 22, 2019

The rules are more what you call actual guidelines.

Don't take them as gospel. There's a reason these bits of advice were dispensed, but generally no single bit of advice is going to apply to everyone. Some writers tend to overuse "said bookisms", so the advice was given to limit the dialogue tag to "said" (I think the nuance of "most of the time" got lost, and some people assume this means "all the time"). I think the issue comes when writers don't actually have a problem with too many said-bookisms, but they hear this advice and think that all dialogue tags but "said" need to be axed. Which is limiting, and when you're talking about creatively using a flexible language like English, it's absurd to constrain and limit people.

There are a few things to keep in mind, AFAIC: don't confuse your readers; don't use dialogue tags that tell your reader what they already know from context/the dialogue itself; don't be absurd (like "shrugging" words). [NB: the best way to figure out what your reader will already know and what might sound absurd to them is to read widely and understand how other writers put things together and what, therefore, readers are expecting.]

The best thing to do is to use a mixture of techniques. Use "said" sometimes. Use no tags at all sometimes. Use action beats here and there. Use tags other than "said" when they get your message across clearly and succinctly. Make use of all the tools the English language gives you.

He said, she said, everybody said said

Murky

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

Paul Lamb

JohnLine

Owns a pen.

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

Murky

angeliz2k

never mind the shorty