Diana was off and looking for articles again to help with writing skills and I stumbled over 400 Alternative words for "Said". I think the best note in there was Don't use SAID at all unless you really need to distinguish who is speaking. And why use said, that terribly boring word when you can using one of these others for a little flavor! Some of my favorite: BARKED, EXCLAIMED, QUIPPED, and RETORTED. What do you like?
You can tell Asmo is being lazy when he uses "muttered", "barked", "snapped", "whimpered" or "retorted". My posts are full of the bastards.
I -SAID- DON'T USE SAID AT ALL UNLESS YOU HAVE TO DISTINGUISH WHO IS SPEAKING, TORSTY. D:< That includes alternate words for said. Damn foreigners! D:<
People call these "said bookisms" or just "bookisms." There are a lot of writer advice pages that insist you NEVER use them to supposedly counteract the tendency for a lot of writers to, at some point, compulsively avoid using "said." I once went looking for a list like this many years ago only to instead find hundreds of pages insisting they were bad anyway. I find that a little sad. Poor carpenters. I see lists like these as a pretty neat tool, though I won't hesitate to use "said" unless the passage really demands something else.
Yeah, I've noticed a lot of articles will say "THIS IS BAD" because they get stuck in trying to avoid annoying repetitiveness. ...But then they go overboard by saying "NEVER DO IT EVER" instead of "PAY ATTENTION"!
** takes note ** ... i used to do the opposite, whenever i need to distinguish who is saying what, i use "said ______" or its derivatives. but then again, since people get too confused with my writing, i put "said _______" (or its derivatives) after every quote. but then again, maybe i need to look for another approach, since my writing is generally confusing anyways, with or without "said".
Well, don't forget that if it's just 2 people talking, you don't have to distinguish at all. That's how I get out of a lot of "____ Said, ____ Replied" stuff. Unless something interrupts the conversation, you don't have to either. ^_^
Thanks for posting this, it will be most useful! ^^ I haven't RPed in a while, and over the last three years most of my writing has been in the way of essays and press releases. I'll probably use this for a while, since I've become quite lazy in my 'fiction writing'. :P
My fiction class just told me that using even THOSE words is too much telling...for literary fiction, the emotion must be expressed in the wording not the descriptor after the fact. :( Everything I grew up learning is a lie...a terrible lie! *Tears his stories off the wall in tears*
As a good friend of mine used to say: There's more than one way to peel a cat (English not his first language). Check all the different writers there are out there and you'll see that no two are the same. There's no set formula for good writing (though are there are some good guidelines). That's not to say that there isn't obviously godawful writing . . .
