Mar 28 2008
He Said … She Said
“Said” is a good, solid word. Don’t look down on it.
Some writers – particularly the inexperienced ones trying to sound sophisticated – hamstring their work with a long and weary list of substitutes for “said.” Those substitutes can bog your writing down and distract the reader’s attention from the dialog itself. Here’s an example:
“It’s time to go,” he exclaimed.
“Are you sure?” she uttered.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he averred.
“But I’m not ready,” she asserted.
“We don’t have a choice,” he ejaculated.
“Yes we do. We can stay here and die,” she acknowledged.
Nauseating, right?
Robert B. Parker, author of the Spencer series of detective novels, takes the opposite approach, embracing the word “said” with something approaching a lover’s obsession. In his able hands the strategy is refreshing, as the following example from his novel, Double Deuce, shows.
“You working on anything?” Hawk said.
“I was thinking about breakfast,” I said.
“I might need some support,” Hawk said.
“You might?”
“Yeah. Pay’s lousy.”
“How much?” I said.
“I’m getting nothing.”
“I’ll take half,” I said.
“You ain’t worth that,” Hawk said.
Nice. You’ll notice he even used “said” rather than “asked” for questions.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting you should never use verbs such as “asked,” “replied,” “claimed” and so on when writing dialog. I’m simply saying this: Don’t think that you have to do literary somersaults to come up with a lot of distracting substitutes for “said.” The next time you’re tempted to do so, take a few deep breaths, get control of yourself and get back to the basics. Your writing will be better for it.
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Funny, in highschool grammar, we were encouraged to use different words for said. I advocate and use the latter approach in my writing. Then, when you do drop a word like shouted or exclaimed, the reader takes notice. Kind of like how the person you know that never raises their voice. The time they do, you stop and take notice.
Good point, Chris. I agree. It’s sort of like using italics. If you use them sparingly, people pay attention when you do.
My 5 year old loves Thomas the Train shown on PBS. There is a character on the show named Cranky the Crane. I find it amusing when they have him in a dialogue and his exclamation is something like this: “Go away, you bother me!” cranked, Cranky crankily.