Writing Tip Wednesday: "The Said debate"

I’ve come to a realization that I can only read about two books a weeks, but I would like to provide content for at least three, so every Wednesday will be a mini-post related to creative writing tips, since that’s also something I’m familiar with. This week’s writing tip: to use said or not to use said, that is the question.

There is a debate in the creative writing community as to whether or not “said is dead”, basically should said be the dialogue tag you use or not. Back in college I had the opportunity to speak with a popular author named Jodie Thomas in a workshop-type set-up and she taught that most of the time dialogue tags become invisible and constantly trying to replace said with other words like bellowed, exclaimed and others can get annoying and I couldn’t agree more, I find it distracting when I’m trying to read a book and the author uses that tactic. However, that doesn’t mean a writer should only use said sometimes simple words like whispered, yelled or shouted should be used when appropriate.

The other problem using mostly said can cause is redundancies in writing, for instance a line like “My name is Gloria,” said Gloria is repetitive and obnoxious, to prevent this Jodie Thomas taught me to replace dialogue tags with action whenever possible in order to create a clearer picture in the reader’s head. Action can turn a line of dialogue into something completely different, to illustrate this let’s put “Gloria” into two opposite scenarios, but keep her dialogue the same in each.

1. The cute boy strutted over to Gloria’s table and set next to her.

“You must be new here. My name is Alan, what’s yours?” he asked.

Gloria looked up from her peas and carrots, “My name is Gloria.” She leaned towards him with an attempt at a coy smile on her face, but forgot to put her fork down and ended up hitting him in the face with a half-eaten carrot.

2. Gloria aimed her gun at the disarmed villain’s chest. This person destroyed her village without even knowing her name, in all honesty he didn’t deserve to know it, but her pride wouldn’t let her keep it from him. She put her finger on the trigger, ready to fire. “My name is Gloria”. After he heard her name she shot him.

Using action instead of the word said creates two entirely different stories while also adding more emotion and subtext into the story, making it richer and more engaging for the reader. As mentioned earlier, much of the time the simple word said is efficient, but it does get repetitive, so use action whenever possible and other words for said when needed.

So, blog readers, do you like the writing tip Wednesday segments, if so please let me know in the comments. If you’d like to see a different sort of segment on Wednesday let me know that as well.