Recently Book Daily published a series of articles by writers about the use of the word “said”.
In the interests of full disclosure, I need to say I consider “said” the single most useful dialogue tag in fiction writing. This is because readers tend to ignore it and keep reading. That’s great news for authors trying to hook readers.
Other tags may be much more descriptive and more emotional, more arousing, more decisive and lots of other adjectives as well. But they can also pull the reader out of the story and get them thinking about the author instead of the story.
Anyhow, that’s just my opinion.
Melissa Eskue Ousley began the discussion opposing the use of “said” here: http://www.bookdaily.com/authorresource/blog/post/1771430
June Trop’s follow-up article is here: http://www.bookdaily.com/authorresource/blog/post/1819128.
There are also a multitude of comments and links attached to those articles. Go, read about it for yourself.
Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com
Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.
2 comments:
I prefer said on most occasions, too, if I must use a tag at all. There's very few tags beyond said that don't bump the reader.
Absolutely true, Tracy.
Helen
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