Ways to avoid repeating said

Also, with regard to this - this is what has been mentioned by others. It looks a lot like adding an action beat in just in order to replace a dialog tag. It can easily be omitted entirely without losing anything.

 

Well I mean I was just making my point that there were other ways of saying "said".

 

Precisely this. Elegant variation is something advertised as "good writing" by a lot of guides and know-hows, yet tends to end up killing a piece. A dozen said 's are better than reaching the point where you use "he stammered" and "he remonstrated".

 

Lately I've been dropping speech tags even interrupting the speech with action without attributing the action to anyone.
“Well, actually,” blushing, guilty look cast Delph's way. “I'm going out.” - this is from my WIP. Here it's hard to tell who said it but within it's paragraph it's clear the speech belongs to Finlay. I use said rather sparingly usually as an anchor to avoid confusion and/or when I want the words, and who said them, to be the emphasis not any action.
I limit 'fun' speech tags like - he declared, he shouted, he ranted because when they add up they sound dim - like your reader isn't aware he's ranting or shouting or what not - if you've done your work in the scene they don't need the speech tag as a reminder as it becomes a little like - "Will you marry me," he proposed. No duh.

One technique I did to limit my tags - write them all in - then cut half of them. If it doesn't make sense work out the dialogue till it does. Keep doing that and after a while you'll find you don't need half as many as you thought you did plus it forces you to make your characters more distinctive, or to work in action to make them stand out - all in all it works in your benefit.

 

Yes, I am aware of that. I never said that they shouldn't use said, I was just saying other words here and there are better than just saying "said" all the time. It was only an example.
I may not be an advanced writer than most of the members on here, but I know that is amateur writing. Like I stated already, just giving an idea of what I was talking about.

 

That sounds weird. It would pull me out of the story to read that. Sounds like online role play that would be between * *’s, due to the lack of a he, or she, or general attribution. Even if the speaker is evident action tags should still be attributed.

 

I'm okay with that I have a very weird style. It's not for everyone. I read a lot of eclectic things and if I see a writer doing something that is cool I'll try it. I'm not into a 'clean genre' style I want something a little shaggy, a little offbeat.

 

I think something like

“With a blush, a guilty look was cast Delphine’s way.”

Would work without the attribution. Maybe my problem with it is the tense.

 

Is it okay to use adverb after "said"? A lot of people have told me to avoid using adverbs unless absolutely necessary.

"You are more beautiful than a meadow overflowing with flowers," he said, nervously.
"What? Are you a retard or something? You just made me want to puke," she said disgustedly.

 

You have to be really careful with the adverbs. Use them very sparingly. You can get away with one every now and then, but if you use, say, 2 or 3 on the same page, it's overkill.

 

Thank you for finally making this crystal clear to me. So this is a beat!
We don't even have a name for it in Portuguese because this hasn't been done until recently through Anglo-Saxon literature influence. It's not always possible to do this in Portuguese. On the other hand, we have many different verbs to replace "said".
I keep an eye on these threads in case I ever need to translate. But I think my Portuguese writing will always sound "foreign". Which isn't completely a bad thing as long as the reader knows it's indeed foreign and a translation.

 

I saw a comment from a writer whose thinking is similar to mine on the dialogue tag issue, but he was able to get to the heart of it more succinctly. He said the issue is one that revolves around trust:

1. The writer doesn't trust his or her own ability. They don't trust they've adequately conveyed emotional context or some other aspect of the dialogue, so they feel the need to use a dialogue tag that tells the reader exactly waht they're trying to convey.

2. The writer doesn't trust his or her readers. They've done their job adequately, but think maybe their readers are extra thick and need to be hit over the head with redundancy in the form of dialogue tags.

I think the above is true, generally speaking.

Which doesn't mean other dialogue tags (including adverbs) are never a good idea. But if you find yourselves relying on them it is worth asking why.

 

I'm a programmer and have been using Python and the NLTK library to analyze my 92K 1st draft.

Following are usages of "said" along with the bigram's (two word phrases) counts. The tokens were forced to lower case. It may appear that inanimate objects speak.

BTW, I'll kill at least 1/4 to 1/3 of these attributes in my 3rd draft.

Spoiler

said natalie 143
said jimmy 104
said dumas 97
said shu 95
said tyler 94
said alex 78
said amber 58
natalie said 53
said courtney 51
said we 45
said bernee 42
said deion 42
said brianna 40
said mona 38
said brandon 37
said dr 37
said hwang 37
said the 37
head said 35
said that 33
said you 30
tyler said 30
said it 29
smiled said 29
said miller 24
jimmy said 23
nodded said 23
said he 23
said let 23
said no 23
alex said 22
room said 22
said she 22
yes said 22
said josh 21
said yes 21
fang said 19
right said 19
bernee said 18
hand said 18
know said 18
said looking 18
said flanders 17
said jen 17
flanders said 16
said shanice 16
amber said 15
brianna said 15
hwang said 15
go said 14
he said 14
okay said 14
percent said 14
said evans 14
said secretary 14
said sorry 14
said this 14
thank said 14
dumas said 13
said max 13
she said 13
deion said 12
miller said 12
mona said 12
said agent 12
said good 12
said james 12
said olson 12
see said 12
time said 12
door said 11

[huge list put in spoiler tags for length, by moderator]

 

.... "door said"?

Oh wait, I think I get it. And this is what you meant by "It may appear that inanimate objects speak", isn't it? But I'm guessing it's something like "Open the door," said John.

 

Absolutely! I eliminated all punctuation before analyzing the phrases.

 

Wow that is a lot of 'said'.
I am glad to say I have 100% eliminated it from everything I've written to date.

 

Could you share some examples of how you avoided said? It is considered the most innocuous and less distracting tag attributes. I will reduce it by ensuring the reader has enough info to know who is talking. Of course, whispered, murmured, called, shouted, and yelled have their place on occasion.

 

Here is a sample from a short in prog.


“What’ll it be?” The thick accent of the bartender met my ears as I rested my rucksack next to a stool.
“Coffee, please.” I perched on the stool, surveying the younger man covered in vibrant tattoos, some of which glowed under a UV light as he set about getting my order.
“New in town?” The heavily inked Saturnalian placed a mug beneath the spout of a large urn.
“Yes sir.” I sat with my hands resting on the polished bar top.
“You still in?” He pointed at the service tattoos on my forearms, as he set the steaming cup before me.
“Nah, fresh out.”
“Cream or sugar? Where were you at?”
“Please. I was out at Jupiter.”
“Ooh, I heard it was bad out there. Still ongoing?” He slid over a small tray with non-dairy creamer and sugar.
“It’s been over for about two months now.” I set about mixing the condiments into the coffee.

 

Thanks for the examples. I love SF and the military, even the futuristic defenders of the cause.

Are most of your conversations only two people? Always first person POV when dialoging? This POV seems to be conductive to eliminating most of (all in your case) those "said" tags. The reader always understands the pronoun "I" and to whom it refers, and by association, the other person.

The risk may be too many "I [verb]" constructs that may sound repetitive to the ear, but "I suppose" that is the point of 1st person POV.

My first draft use of "said" involves two to six people in conversations and is told from a 3rd person objective POV.
I am inspired to to give it another whack to see if I can reduce those tag attributes.

Thanks.

 

As mentioned upthread - use a mix of action beats, other dialogue tags and simply omitting them entirely.

But don't do it to the point where it looks like you're deliberately doing it.

Action beats can be used in third person as well as first.

 

That's 2088 "said"s in 92k words - that's 2% of your entire word count, or one in every 50 words. That, IMO, is way too excessive. Even if cut down by 1/3rd, it seems too high.

While it's not necessary to avoid "said" like the plague, as some people would suggest, there's also a need to mix it up.

 

@Cave Troll provided an example and wrote that he eliminated all of his "saids". I'll study that. I am in search of 3rd person objective examples other than Hemingway.

 

Post #8 and post #11.