Elder the Dwarf
Maester
I actually kind of like them. If they're used way too much I guess it could be bad, but I like more descriptive writing, and I don't mind at all when writers throw them in.
-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
...he said...she declared...I yelled...
- Thread starter Wordweaver
- Start date
Lord Darkstorm
Sage
Ok, think of it this way. The reader is reading the text, and when they hit the part that identifies who is saying it, you then modify how it is said, after it has been said. Now the reader has to make a mental correction on what they just read to try and adjust it to the modifier thrown in after the fact.
Years ago I was reading someones story and one of the characters had a nice long paragraph of dialog, and after that is done, I find out she has a southern accent. I had to pause, go back, and the read it again.
People read the words sequentially, and as writers we need to keep in mind that every time we change something after it happens, the reader then has to modify that part to fit the change. More often than not, it drags the reader out of the story and forces them to rethink.
If you want to find someone to use as a role model for writing, maybe pick someone who doesn't do the things we really shouldn't be doing. To quote an author and say..."See, this person does it." is kind of like telling a copy that it's ok, someone else famous was doing it. Maybe not as drastic, but still, why an excuse to change things to a sloppier form of writing over striving for better writing? The reader doesn't really want an excuse, just good writing. Shouldn't we strive to give them that?
Years ago I was reading someones story and one of the characters had a nice long paragraph of dialog, and after that is done, I find out she has a southern accent. I had to pause, go back, and the read it again.
People read the words sequentially, and as writers we need to keep in mind that every time we change something after it happens, the reader then has to modify that part to fit the change. More often than not, it drags the reader out of the story and forces them to rethink.
If you want to find someone to use as a role model for writing, maybe pick someone who doesn't do the things we really shouldn't be doing. To quote an author and say..."See, this person does it." is kind of like telling a copy that it's ok, someone else famous was doing it. Maybe not as drastic, but still, why an excuse to change things to a sloppier form of writing over striving for better writing? The reader doesn't really want an excuse, just good writing. Shouldn't we strive to give them that?
Elder the Dwarf
Maester
I think that's a bit of an extreme example, but obviously in that case you would be right. However, I do not think it should be a rule that dialogue modifiers should be excluded. I like to see the scene exactly as the author sees it, and sometimes I think they help. Every one of my favorite authors uses them to an extent, and it has not diminished my experience of reading their books.
Dreamhand
Troubadour
Dude... that's just harsh.
Adverbs are a part of the language, man, and as such are part of the writer's toolkit. Whatever it takes to convey the message is fair game, isn't it? Each of us has our own voice and our own way of telling our stories... and that's ultimately what we're trying to do as writers, right? Tell our stories... communicate... convey experience or wonder or horror or whatever using our unique perspective as a lens for others to look through. While I agree that there are often better choices to be made, that is a completely subjective choice and reflects only my personal tastes, not some crippling weakness in my peers.Lord D, I think we all would agree we want to tell the best story we can, and the best writers will always strive to do just that. But how do you convey a whisper? How do you juxtapose contrasting emotions like: "I'm going to kill you," she smiled. I agree that waiting until the end of a paragraph for those kind of qualifiers is frustrating, but surely four words is quick enough to refine the delivery in the reader's mind, yes?
As you pointed out, the written word is a linear experience, but the life we're seeking to express in our stories is NOT linear, at least from a sensory standpoint. Physicality, facial expression, sound, smell, taste are all layered into a single instant of narrative.
Now I agree that the strongest writing provides targeted cues that allow the reader to participate and fill in the details as much as possible, but there are going to be moments when an "urgent whisper" or a "purr" simply can't be conveyed in the dialog alone. Is less always more?
Lord Darkstorm
Sage
There is a slight difference between an action and a modifier. 'He whispered' is an action, and as such is perfectly fine from my pov. 'he said inquisitively', is one that I would question. This is modifying said, and second, use of some adjectives are baffling. I'd rather have 'he inquired', although I still think that if someone is inquiring we should get that in the dialog itself. Also dialog is one of those things that benefits from variation in format.
"How can you do that?" he asked.
She paused before looking at him, "Because I could."
"But," he said just audible, "it's so wrong."
Crappy example, but the way we put our dialog should have some variations to make it less monotonous. It might have been more proper to put 'he said', over 'he asked', but my mind screams at me with a logic fault when I do.
There are a lot of good authors out there, and many of them take short cuts to make deadlines for editors. My point is that I noticed the majority of the tag modifiers in Harry Potter, and they were too often, and overall was the worst part of all her books. Fortunately the story itself made up for it. Does adding 'he said ....ly', by your favorite author make it a good thing to use....not necessarily. And if that is the excuse for not trying to write in a better way to avoid needing those modifiers, then what else will you use an excuse for? I'm sure a lot of people have used it. I bet I'm guilty of it too. It is something I try and root out and remove on edits.
"How can you do that?" he asked.
She paused before looking at him, "Because I could."
"But," he said just audible, "it's so wrong."
Crappy example, but the way we put our dialog should have some variations to make it less monotonous. It might have been more proper to put 'he said', over 'he asked', but my mind screams at me with a logic fault when I do.
There are a lot of good authors out there, and many of them take short cuts to make deadlines for editors. My point is that I noticed the majority of the tag modifiers in Harry Potter, and they were too often, and overall was the worst part of all her books. Fortunately the story itself made up for it. Does adding 'he said ....ly', by your favorite author make it a good thing to use....not necessarily. And if that is the excuse for not trying to write in a better way to avoid needing those modifiers, then what else will you use an excuse for? I'm sure a lot of people have used it. I bet I'm guilty of it too. It is something I try and root out and remove on edits.
Elder the Dwarf
Maester
I'm not trying to make an excuse, I just think that modifiers are a part of the English language for a reason, and that their use or lack thereof is part of a writing style, and not necessarily a writing sin. How does "He replied evenly" or "slowly" or "coldly" hurt a piece of writing if it is used appropriately? In my opinion it doesn't. And that is what this is: an opinion.
Dreamhand
Troubadour
Excellent points and props all around. I think this horse is dead.
Benjamin Clayborne
Auror
I don't think this is a problem for most people. The human mind is extraordinarily good at retroactively editing memories and comprehension based on new information. If you're claiming that most people have trouble with this, I'm going to have to disagree.
(Emphasis added.) You're declaring adverbial dialogue tags to be "a sloppier form of writing" without any supporting evidence for why this is the case. I'm not saying, "It's okay because GRRM does it," I'm saying, "Given that GRRM (and many other famous authors) do it, it probably isn't considered verboten by any significant portion of the audience, let alone by professional editors and authors." Sure, you don't like adverbial tags, which is obviously your prerogative -- you mentioned how you found them distracting while reading Harry Potter -- but that doesn't mean that authors need to avoid using them, just to cater to the very small number of people who don't like them.
Basically, what I'm asking is: how does using adverbial tags in my writing keep me from achieving my goals?
Does this tag express the dialogue, or does it blend with the expressiveness of the dialogue?
We're typing on the internet, everything we type is pretty close to written dialogue, and 99% of our statements don't need a dialogue tag. The same should be true for your characters. A dialogue tag more expressive than said shouldn't be needed. Said is invisible.
But so is bellowed, used once in a war scene. So is mocked, used once when characters are drunk in a tavern. IF your dialogue is well-written and the scene is expressive, other tags will blend in and help transition the flow from dialogue into the action at hand. They have their use. In fact, I would say there's even a time where the tag is actually just about required, and that's when the dialogue is so expressive that "said" now stands out visibly as an understatement.
"FOR FREEDOM!" Devor said. Or bellowed. Or gasped harshly with his dying breath. Or mocked openly as he drank his beer. One of those.
Please pardon the awful reference.
I also want to add another point, but I'm not sure if this is true for anyone besides myself. When I see "said," written on a page, I sometimes notice and expect a change from lengthy prose into short dialogue. If the short dialogue has already begun, I don't notice anything. But every now and then the word breaks my concentration and sets a slight expectation, and if I then turn the page and see lengthy paragraphs I may even be disappointed. I don't know if I'm alone in that.
Last edited:
Amazing that nobody has brought up the Turkey City Lexicon (Google it if you dare). It's a collection of writing habits to avoid. The appropriate one here is the Said Bookism, so named because, in the 1950s, there was a "Said Book" (alluded to above) that listed an amazing number of synonyms for the word said. There's nothing wrong with the word said, and as someone else pointed out, it's practically invisible.
As with anything else, of course, moderation is the key. Sometimes there is no other way to get across a character's tone of voice. A reader can't possibly know from the words themselves that a character is whispering.
As with anything else, of course, moderation is the key. Sometimes there is no other way to get across a character's tone of voice. A reader can't possibly know from the words themselves that a character is whispering.
- Thread starter
- #31
Wordweaver
Dreamer
Googled Turkey City Lexicon...wow. A boatload of helpful stuff mostly geared toward SF writing but it applies accross the board to Fantasy and pretty much anything else. I had no idea that there was a name for every thing I worry about when I'm writing. Said Bookism, Tom Swifty, Burly Detective Syndrome...Guilty. Again, all in moderation I think these things are useful, but what we should be careful of is OVERUSE.
Thanks ShortHair for the suggestion!
Thanks ShortHair for the suggestion!
lawrence
Troubadour
Currently reading Eregon, and its stuffed with adverbs. Its bugging me a bit and adds clunkiness to the story, as well as makes me check my collar for a 'MENSA application refused' label. I agree with master Clayborne and others who have reasoned eloquently...I mean said, that with a bit of care and moderation, adverbs can be employed.
They are like salt. Season lightly! They rarely add anything of value so in my opinion there should be but a few grains throughout the whole book, not spoonfulls. Simply because the effort spent on filtering out every single rogue adverb thats sneaks into your draft would be best invested into telling a great story.
They are like salt. Season lightly! They rarely add anything of value so in my opinion there should be but a few grains throughout the whole book, not spoonfulls. Simply because the effort spent on filtering out every single rogue adverb thats sneaks into your draft would be best invested into telling a great story.
There are two schools of thought on this:
The old school is that using the same word too often is bad and your speech should be as colorful as possible. So get out a thesaurus and replace every instance of the word "said" with a description that precisely conveys the tone.
"I'll get you you bastard!" she furiously roared.
"If you can catch me..." he smugly taunted.
The new school is that the dialogue should speak for itself (no pun intended) and colorful speech is painful to read in long bouts. The best thing to do is use standard words, perhaps accompanied by actions to convey the tone.
"I'll get you you bastard!" she yelled.
"If you can catch me..." he said with a smirk.
It's a matter of taste but honestly, I prefer the second.
The old school is that using the same word too often is bad and your speech should be as colorful as possible. So get out a thesaurus and replace every instance of the word "said" with a description that precisely conveys the tone.
"I'll get you you bastard!" she furiously roared.
"If you can catch me..." he smugly taunted.
The new school is that the dialogue should speak for itself (no pun intended) and colorful speech is painful to read in long bouts. The best thing to do is use standard words, perhaps accompanied by actions to convey the tone.
"I'll get you you bastard!" she yelled.
"If you can catch me..." he said with a smirk.
It's a matter of taste but honestly, I prefer the second.
Last edited:
Yeah, but try . . .
They have a use. The word is segue. They are the transition from dialogue to action.
I agree completely, and I didn't mean to give the impression that you should never use colorful words, but I failed to express myself by using a poor example. That scene was clearly a high-drama moment but in a more general sense, there's not always an interesting action to go with every line of dialogue being spoken, in which case, it's still better to use the standard "said" or "yelled" than more colorful phrases so as not to overuse them.
Last edited:
Benjamin Clayborne
Auror
I don't think it needs to be that stark a dichotomy. I keep hearing that you can just use "said" over and over and over, and "let the dialogue speak for itself." Maybe that's the case, but as lawrence said, salt lightly! You can still have some variety: a few adverbial tags here and there, to break up the monotony of said said said. Sometimes there really is no better way to demonstrate how someone said something than with a nice adverbial tag or non-"said" tag.
Most of the time, when people talk, they use the same tone of voice from sentence to sentence, so you can use "said" for the most part, or just leave it out and put in action lines to give them something to do. But any interesting conversation is going to have people reacting emotionally at one point or another.
John picked up the book. "It doesn't look evil."
Madeleine grabbed it from him. "Be careful! If you touch it the wrong way, it summons demons."
"Right. Do you normally leave eldritch artifacts lying on the coffee table?" John snorted.
"Normally the sky isn't raining blood," Madeleine said, clutching the book protectively. "We have to be careful with it."
Madeleine grabbed it from him. "Be careful! If you touch it the wrong way, it summons demons."
"Right. Do you normally leave eldritch artifacts lying on the coffee table?" John snorted.
"Normally the sky isn't raining blood," Madeleine said, clutching the book protectively. "We have to be careful with it."
To be honest with you, I think a lot of writers are too dialogue heavy and don't really develop the skills to deal with a character's action. It's true that the example I typed was extremely heavy action, but that doesn't mean the point doesn't apply to most dialogues. I think that's especially true in fantasy - how often should our heroes really be standing around chatting?
Lamar
Dreamer
A while back, I read The Mystic Arts of Removing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. In it, Huston never uses attributions for his dialog -- he doesn't even use quotation marks. Instead, he marks each speaker's dialog with an em dash. On the one hand, I found this very annoying, especially when there were more than two characters in a conversation and it was hard to follow who was saying what. On the other hand, it really cleaned up the prose to get rid of all the "he saids" and the like.
I'm always interested in finding new ways to tell a story, so I considered doing something similar. I have a small bit of experience with screenplays, so I thought inserting any dialog as it's done in a screenplay would be interesting. Fortunately, I came to my senses before I actually tried it.
What I decided to do in my current novel, however, is to not use any attributions at all. That is, there will be no "he saids" or anything of the like. Instead, I am using writing the descriptive text around the dialog in a way to indicate the speakers by proximity. It's a bit of an experiment; the trick will be to do it in a way that isn't awkward. We'll see how it goes.
I'm always interested in finding new ways to tell a story, so I considered doing something similar. I have a small bit of experience with screenplays, so I thought inserting any dialog as it's done in a screenplay would be interesting. Fortunately, I came to my senses before I actually tried it.
What I decided to do in my current novel, however, is to not use any attributions at all. That is, there will be no "he saids" or anything of the like. Instead, I am using writing the descriptive text around the dialog in a way to indicate the speakers by proximity. It's a bit of an experiment; the trick will be to do it in a way that isn't awkward. We'll see how it goes.
SeverinR
Vala
Dialog tags are only needed to identify the speaker,
if only two, it is like a ping pong game,
1 says the other replies,
"I saw her" says #1
"Really?"#2 asks
"Yep"
"What was she doing?"
"Riding her horse."
Once we established who started the conversation it bounces back and forth.
if only two, it is like a ping pong game,
1 says the other replies,
"I saw her" says #1
"Really?"#2 asks
"Yep"
"What was she doing?"
"Riding her horse."
Once we established who started the conversation it bounces back and forth.
Lamar
Dreamer
That works if the dialog is short. If it gets longer than five or six exchanges, though, it gets confusing without something to indicate who's speaking.
