Write Better: Tips and tricks

Said vs Whispered, spoke, lied, etc.

There's a big problem about adverbs in tags that we'll cover later. Presently, we're going to focus on verb choice. Particularly, said vs any other alternate word you can replace it with.

Said, spoke, drawled, whispered, lied, agreed, acknowledged, cheered, chortled, laughed, exclaimed, shouted, yelled, retorted, mumbled, quipped, asked, bragged, accused, called, advised, demanded, insisted, etc. 

There are literally hundreds of replacements for this word!

And hundreds of writers have written articles and blogs and sections about sticking to said.

Almost all of the writers of these articles will indeed tell you that's okay to insert something different here and there. And if they don't, it's not uncommon for folks to pry into the author's writing and hoist up an example where the person broke their own rule. "What a hypocrite!" they say. "It's bad for us to use different words to replace said, but in their first chapter they subbed in a new word six times!"

I'll say it now and I'll say it in future chapters:

Things don't work until they do. There is almost always an exception to every rule.

That being said, it doesn't mean your sentence is the right one. There's a reason most people will tell you to stay with said over its dozens of variants.

I'll do my best to provide the logic behind this.

The perk about said, is that it's a short dialogue tag. In general, it's one of those words (like "the" "at" etc) that is essentially invisible to the reader. It's difficult to explain. The word is on the page. They read it, but they don't read it. It's like your bedroom ceiling. Nine times out of ten, you know the ceiling is there and you see the ceiling but you don't really see it (unless you're bored out of your mind or there's a giant spider looming overhead).

Variations of "said" can be the spider. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but your eye is drawn to it more than usual. Usually, the bigger the spider, the more you pay attention. For our purposes, the more unusual the replacement (usually this means more syllables), the more the reader stops to think about it.

 Most of the time, if you throw in a variation people tend to lose track of it anyway, unless it's one of eye-catching giants.

Some people overuse one or two common dialogue tags (such as said/replied) and add few if any action tags, so when they do randomly throw in another word it can be very noticeable and tiresome.

Bob said, "Let's go to the beach."

"I hate the ocean," Chris replied. "And in case you haven't noticed, I don't need Clara to see my bulging gut."

"What does it matter?" Tom said. "She'll like you for who you are or she won't."

"But I like her."

"So do I," Bob said, "and I've been working out."

"Great," Chris repined.

Because it's so noticeable in these cases, the poor writer is often scolded for a different (correctly used or not) word, when really they just need to change up their method of tagging.

They used such little variety, that when they do change things up, it doesn't feel right! And then they feed into the "don't use anything but said" rants.

Many people rely on the tag to make their point, instead of the dialogue itself.

For me, this is the number one reason new writers are discouraged from using words beside said (and attaching adverbs).

We don't want you not to use it. We want you to learn how to write dialogue so convincing/strong, it conveys tone without you having to say it!

Honestly, you can't tag every sentence, so you've got to learn how to address things like mood and tone. A good way to practice that is to remove the tags and let the dialogue do the talking.

In this case, you commonly get something like "verb adverb" (he said lovingly). The writer fails to write strong dialogue and scenes, so they are stuck with a tag that conveys the meaning for them.

The dialogue tag repeats the dialogue/scene.

Sometimes writers get the dialogue and scene perfect. It says everything it needs to, and then they attach a tag that says the Exact. Same. Thing. In an effort not to have too much repetition, the tag is often the first (and easiest) thing an editor asks to be changed or eliminated.

Again, in this case it isn't wrong, it's just not always necessary.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"I didn't kill Myrtle," Juliet denied.

"Shh! They'll hear us!" Kayla whispered.

When you consider how many people are writing and how many beginners there are (especially in the age of the internet) it's easy to understand where these people are coming from when they tell you to keep it simple. Doesn't mean they're right all the time, but if you can effectively use tags you'll quickly become an exception to the rule. :)