My 52,000 word draft (unedited) currently has 808 419 (edit: miscounted) saids in it. Some of these will be removed in the editing process, I'm sure. I wonder how that compares to other people's?
Given that every rule has an exception, you can pull a Hitchcock to save a dull conversation. Put a bomb under the table where the boring conversation will take place. Let the reader know it is there and that it will be remotely triggered at any moment by a guy who wants to kill the people in the conversation. Instant tension.
Just another take on things, but alongside 'said' doing its job very well, as well as being virtually invisible as Steerpike has said, I find other dialogue tags very old fashioned. In fact, I don't even use 'asked' for questions. Just looking at the 'said" stats above, I'm starting to get a bit paranoid now, as I hardly use anything else. Having said that, I use very few tags anyway.
A lot of it will depend on genre and how much dialogue you have in comparison to description. I know that I favour dialogue (I have over 5,000 speech marks in the text, according to Word) so I make that 17% of my 'lines' having a 'said' tag. I also have 39 'asked' and the only other ones I can find are a few 'whispered' and 'shouted'. I'm happy with that.
So that is one "said" per 124 words. I have one "say"/"says"/"said" per 42 words. Granted, a lot of this text is dialogue, and since it is a draft, I am just tagging every single line of dialogue with that verb and not worrying about banalities like verb variety or beats in dialogue. That is only one per 1068 words. Are you just not writing a lot of dialogue?
Hmmm... I like the use of ‘said’. I also like to use other tags, just for the sake of mixing things up. I am, however slightly worried about how much I use them, based on the numbers given by others in this thread! (At the risk of seeming like I’m self-promoting my own posts (sorry), HERE is a chapter from my WIP, which is a long back and forth conversation between 5 characters. It’s 3,403 words, of which 31 are ‘said’. There’s also 17 ‘asked’, 15 ‘told’ and 10 ‘replied’. I also use ‘urged’, ‘injected’ and ‘agreed’! If anyone would care to take a look at this and give some feedback in regards to how the conversation actually works, it’d be much appreciated.)
I found it more helpful to convert mine to a percentage, especially after the replies people gave me. Roughly 1/6 of my dialogue lines have a 'said' attached, which I'm happy with, and which gives you more of an idea of how often I use it as opposed to a pure number. Since I have quite a few three-person-dialogue scenes, and my 'said' count includes non-dialogue use (for example you might write "He had said that...") I'm not worried. A novel with a lot of description and action is likely to have less dialogue and so less tags. I'm writing a character-driven romance so there's a whole lot of talking.
I have 838 uses of 'said' in 95.7k partially edited words and roughly 2673 instances of dialogue. (so about 31% instances, use said) I also have 63 asked, 20 whispered, 2 replied, 90 shouted, 6 yelled and probably a handful of others.
Oh, I see it now, thanks. Daemon, don't be absurd. I'm not going to graphically describe any of my characters taking a shit. Jeez, next time, don't even reply if you're going to say something of that sort. Off the line (I shouldn't have used the word boring) conversation is- well. I'm afraid I didn't explain it all too well last post. It's real, it shows that your characters aren't solely focused on the "plot", whatever the hell that may be. For instance, if my characters are in the middle of a raging civil war ripping their country apart, they are not going to talk about the war the entire damn book. They're going to reminisce about better times, tell jokes, talk about anything other than the war. And yes, boring boring conversation can be used in the right context. And by boring, I meant for the characters, not the reader. I would never expect for two of my characters who are just meeting to fall into each other's arms and weep about how the universe slaughtered their families. I would expect for them to go off on awkward, random tangents about the things around them, or maybe they would exchange names and shake hands. Things that happen in real life. And Daedulus, I've no idea if you replied to me or someone else. But I never stated a writer ought to avoid the word said. I ventured the extreme use of moderation.
Tenderiser. It largely depends on the characters. How they feel, how they act. If its the stereotypical nerd trying his humor on the stereotypical cheerleader, she would be bored out of her mind, and waiting for the conversation to end so she could continue fixing her makeup. But no, for the reader it ought never to be boring.
Sorry for unearthing a zombie thread, but I was just wondering whether tags that you don't normally associate with speech can be used. 'Bla bla bla,' he beamed. 'Bla bla bla,' he grinned. 'Bla bla bla,' he laughed. I ask because I wonder how a person 'beams' or 'grins' a word.
Yeah those things are a bit weird as tags. I might occasionally used them as beats. E.g. Simon laughed. 'Bla Bla Bla.'
What about nodded? 'Are you ready to go?' I asked. 'Yeah,' he nodded. Or should it be as your example: He nodded. 'Yeah.'
The rumbling you feel in your posterior is neither thunder nor a passing semi-trailer; it is in fact the manifestation of Cthulhu whom you have unwittingly called. Thanks, Jud, now we have Cthulhu to deal with. So, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, there are two camps: those who feel that these tags can be used as figurative demonstration of a quality of delivery of speech, and the other camp is sharpening the guillotine because in a more technical, flat-fact sense one cannot grin a word. Try to keep collateral damage to a minimum, everyone, as I look up the incantation to send Cthulhu back whence he came.
Cthulu looks like sushi, can we just carve it up, cook it and eat it? @OurJud those examples could also be switched around, turning them into beats (actions): He beamed. 'Bla bla bla.' He grinned. 'Bla bla bla.' He laughed. 'Bla bla bla'.
I know this thread has more or less been run into the ground by this point, but I haven't been on the forums for a while, so excuse me while I show up late to the party only to reaffirm opinions that have already been stated several pages ago. As far as said goes, there seem to be two extremes, neither of which I agree with. Some seem to believe that anything other than said or asked is the devil's dialogue tag, and others seem to be allergic to the word said and wish to replace it with a series of pointless synonyms just for the sake of it. Personally, although neither side is right in my opinion, I would rather read a book where said is the only tag than one where the author bends over backward to vary the tags in fear they'll grow stale. I think as a general rule of thumb, in situations where a tag makes sense, said or asked (or replied, on occasion) should be the default and any variation ought to be justified. Some situations do call for other tags, in my opinion; whispered is one that you can't really bring across in all situations without a tag or onomatopoeia. When I finished the first draft of my first (and only, at this point) proper story, I found that as I learned more and more about writing a novel I had left a series of bad practices in my wake, many of which seemed to peter-out by the end. Exotic dialogue tags were one of them. As I went through it, I found that characters rarely said anything, but they sure did love to exclaim, declare, propose, state, retort, quip, express, decide, interject, interrupt, communicate and announce. Sometimes they would even go as far as to articulate or even vocalise. And instead of asking they would often query or question. The point is, it added nothing to the actual story (other than the hilarious cringe factor), and in the end I replaced virtually all of it with either said, asked, an action tag, or no tag at all. I feel the story lost nothing by having the characters say their lines, rather than declare them. Don't be afraid to use an alternative tag if the situation truly calls for it, but don't just do it because you feel you've used said too many times. As has been pointed out by others in this thread, dialogue tags tend to barely register with the reader when done right. Calling attention to them with exotic synonyms doesn't improve the story. And for the love of god, if you find yourself using words like eject (or, lord help us, ejaculate) then I think it's time to step away from the page and reconsider what you're trying to accomplish. I'm pretty sure I've seen an argument on these forums about whether or not putting quotes around dialogue is acceptable/necessary. I wonder how long until we have people arguing that line breaks are the mark of an amateur. Shouldn't that be a descriptive beat (action tag)? "Are you ready to go?" I asked. "Yeah." He nodded. Or, in this specific case: "Are you ready to go?" I asked. He nodded. I guess the acceptability of this type of thing is a matter of opinion, but you can't really nod the dialogue, nor can you really laugh it, but you can say the dialogue then perform some non-vocal action, or perform it during. Either way, I tend to avoid using non-vocal actions for dialogue tags (grinning, sniggering, laughing etc), and I'm pretty sure most others do too. But, I have a feeling this topic can (and probably will) turn into a thread of its own.
I haven't used the best example, perhaps, and it's not in my novel, but we'll stay with it for the sake of this discussion. Your example here feels wrong, rhythmically speaking. When someone says 'Yeah' and nods in agreement, they do it simultaneously. Whereas as your example suggest the character says 'Yeah' and then nods. Of course your second example which does away with the dialogue altogether would be a better choice. I also agree, in hindsight, that ' "Yeah," he nodded.' makes no sense.
I'm inclined to agree on the rhythm part. It feels slightly stilted and flows badly, which was partly what lead me to add the other option. But I'm aware that doesn't really answer the overall question of whether non-vocal actions can be used as a dialogue tag, rather than an action tag. Again, I've seen enough people use - "Place-holder dialogue because I'm too lazy to come up with an example," he laughed. "Place-holder dialogue because I'm too lazy to come up with an example," he coughed. - to believe that there is a precedent for this type of thing, but I'm pretty sure it's generally considered to be somewhat unorthodox to use anything other than some synonym for said in a dialogue tag. So if you want to be on the safe side I would advise against facial expressions or other types of vocalisations in dialogue tags, and leave them for action tags if necessary.
If it was really important to show him doing it simultaneously I would say "Yeah," he said, nodding. You can't nod a word whereas you can say or ask a word. "Yeah," he nodded. just looks wrong to me. I'm not sure if a fiction editor would accept it but I don't think I see it in published novels.
