Said-isms

[rolanni]

All righty, then.

I just read a reader review of a book (not one of ours) in which the reviewer was bitching and moaning about all the said-isms in the book. People never just said anything, the reviewer complained (um, oops), they whispered, murmured, hissed, cried, mumbled, &c -- and everyone knew that was Just Wrong.

Well, I'm going to 'fess up; I didn't know that it was wrong. And I'm going to go one step farther; "said" is an awfully boring word. Oh, it has its uses, and use it I do. But, honestly, if someone has murmured, why not say so? If she mumbles, or stammers at a certain point, that might, yanno, be a Clue. I'd think a whole page of dialogue broken only by "said" would put me right to sleep. Granted, I could be in a minority here.

So, I have some questions.

The first is, where do you learn that "said-isms" are "wrong?" and how come I never got the memo?

The second is, what are your feelings about "said-isms":

[Poll #1222698]

or -- feel free to discuss in comments.

Comments

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

I voted "wrong" because said-isms are wrong -- that is, specifically searching for a word to replace "said" with, when "said" is a perfectly good word, is wrong.

Using the perfect dialog tag to convey depth, subtlety, and subtext to a dialog, on the other hand... now that I'm all in favor of!

[elbales]

In grad school I once sat through an absolutely painful presentation. It was an upper division course, and the senior making the presentation had planned a lesson she called "Eradicate 'Said.'" Coming from a journalism background in which my professors had declared that said was a perfectly adequate word to use in quoting people, I bit my tongue as the student presenting talked about teaching high school students never, ever to use the word said.

In my opinion, a whole page of it with nary a declared, snapped, or mumbled in sight? Not so good. Never, ever using it? Abysmally bad.

All Things in Moderation. Srsly.

[(Anonymous)]

What? I was specifically taught in English to use "said-isms." They make the writing more interesting, less choppy, and far more precisely descriptive. This reviewer is an idiot.

FWIW

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

In Balance of Trade, it appears that there are 885 instances of said, and 86 of murmur.

Brought to you by the word "a" which rarely gets enough notice, but does a stalwart job none the less.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

I'm all in favor of varying the verbs in dialogue tags when it makes sense and/or adds to the story. When the dialogue tags drive me to exclaim, "Put down the thesaurus and back away slowly, and no one will get hurt!" then there's a problem. If the verb is being changed because it adds to the scene and/or the character development, great! If it's being changed just to avoid using "said", it gets awkward quickly.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I interpreted "said-ism" to mean the style of using only 'said', the reverse of what the reviewer apparently meant.

I was taught in English composition (and by my mother, who used to be an English teacher) that where possible (and reasonable) the same word should not be used too frequently. "Find another way to say it." That applies particularly to 'said', and even more to using it in the same way every time: "John said..." "Mary said...", "He said..." et cetera ad nauseam at the start of every dialogue paragraph. It winds me up. I was reading some Asimov recently and noticed "Ooh look, there's a 'replied' on that page!" (where the rest of the page was 'said').

Yes, using other words can be overdone. If the reviewer was actually correct that characters /never/ "just said" anything, that can be bad as well. It's possible (although I can't think of any examples) to have text in which the word 'said' is completely banned, and I think I'd notice that. It's also possible for authors to go so far in trying to avoid writing the same word twice that they use inappropriate words ("thesaurus syndrome"), as in Stephen Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" books (in one place he uses at least six words for a sword every one of which is incorrect for the actual weapon!). There's a happy medium[1].

I've just done a quick (and very unscientific) scan through several chapters of Saltation. I notice that while you do use 'said' it is very often qualified with an adverb (people don't "just say" something, they do so in a particular way just like they do in real life), and a lot of the time other words are used. Also a lot of the time you don't use any of those phrases at all, only quotation with no attribution, expecting the context to make it clear who is speaking. The combination of all of those styles makes it more interesting in my view.

[1] She charges $100 an hour for reading your future...

Said-isms poll

[(Anonymous)]

What?!!! is my choice.

Not being a writer, I thought I remembered it the other way around - granted my school days were a *long* time ago - that he said, she said, he said, she said was just too boring and other words meaning said should be employed for variety.

Of course, moderation is often the best course, and like all good things said-isms are subject to overuse, misuse, and abuse. That's where talent and experience as a writer comes into play, I suppose. As someone else said, I haven't noticed any such abuse on your (and Steve's) part, so I wouldn't let this aversion of some peoples' bother you. After all, there are people who don't like chocolate as well ...

Barbara in Baltimore

[painoarvokas.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly repeating what others have already said, but since there was no "okay if used well" category in the poll... :)

The rule, as taught in many how-to-write books, is that "said" is an invisible word, and thus looking for synonyms for it to avoid its repetition is folly. The name for this "looking for" behavior is "said-bookism", and it refers to looking up words in a book containing synonyms for "said".

Now, most good writing rules get transformed in popular thought into their caricatures. I've never seen a serious writer's book advocate using "said" exclusively, but people tend to remember badly learned lessons wrong :)

Personally, I agree that if the character whispers, then you say he whispers - but it usually isn't a good idea to let a character ejaculate while not sexually stimulated, even though the dictionary does allow that usage.

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

I like them a lot but I can see where they need to be used judiciously. Over used they can become a distraction but having them adds richness to the text so how much to use them is the balancing act. It is also where personal taste come in. Some people like them more than others do.

[fennelgiraffe.livejournal.com]

I think a number of comments have hit on the nub of the issue: The idea that using "said" more than once is a case of dreaded evil word repetition has become entrenched in the educational establishment*, leading some beginning writers to go to absurd lengths to avoid it. The attempt to counteract that has, in turn, become distorted to the opposite extreme by many writing communities.

*Many teachers, not all teachers.

[(Anonymous)]

My feeling is that if you're a good writer, your writing will be good, no matter what silly artificial "rules" you break--sentence fragments, said-isms, what have you. If you're a bad writer, then you can worry about rules.

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Does this mean "Said" is up there with "Get"?

[pakwa26.livejournal.com]

When I was a goil, nobody ever told me anything about the evils of Said. There was nothing about not having Said in public, or waiting until you were married to have Said. There were no whisperings about how too much Said would make you go blind, but only if you were doing it to yourself... They just told me about "Got", and how evil it was. How it could always be replaced by a a better word. How there were only 2 or 3 places you could use "got" or "get" with impunity, and mostly those were in dealing with profanities (as in "get nicked" etc) (which a good writer would never need to resort to anyway). Now, I see and hear "get/got" everywhere, from the coffee shop to the local newspaper. This distresses me far more than the occasional "said", 'so, she said, putting her keyboard away, I'm getting over it!'