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Said-isms
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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2008-07-14 11:11 pm (UTC)(link)