Hatrack River Writers Workshop: "She said," said she.

This is topic "She said," said she. in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/writers/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001103

Posted by Gen (Member # 1868) on :

Is there any difference between using

quote:
"You're horrid," said Evelyn.
or
"You're horrid," Evelyn said.

for dialogue attribution? Clearly "said she" sounds strange, but the other "said Veronica" attribution is quite common. (A casual flip through books on my shelf suggests that some writers, OSC among them, prefer it.)

I'll use one or the other because of how they fit in the rhythm of the words from time to time, but I almost never have strong feelings about either one. Should they be standardized over a piece of writing? Do they matter at all?

Posted by Jsteg1210 (Member # 1993) on :

I think that more often than not a reader will almost completely glaze over the dialogue tags anyways. Assuming of course it has the name name of the character in it. It shouldn't matter; readers are used to both.

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

quote:
how they fit in the rhythm of the words

To me, it's all about context and flow. To tie it down to one general rule, no way.

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited May 02, 2004).]

Posted by lindsay (Member # 1741) on :

I personally like a mix. When reading others' work, it keeps me moving through the words without "skipping over" the words.

Both your examples work for me, and using both would keep me reading deeper into the story.

BTW, your post reminded me of advice I read years ago that Sydney Sheldon wrote. He advised keeping speech tags simple: he said; she said; whoever said. No embellishment, no mixing of ways to say it; just say who said what. He also stated to focus primarily on plot and people - advice that really zings with me.

But...dare I say it?...I like, when reading, to know "how" someone said something. (Sometimes, anyhow.)

So, tell more when need be, mix it up when you get the urge, and, basically, just tell *your* story in your most imaginative, very best voice. That's the type of book *I'll* read, anyway. : )

My two cents.

Posted by teddyrux (Member # 1595) on :

There is no difference between, Evelyn said and said Evelyn. I prefer Evelyn said. I also try to keep my sppech tags simple and consistent. If I'm sure the reader will know that Evelyn is talking, I'll use she said. Which sounds better than said she, and won't cause the reader to pause to think it out. That is why I try to keep them consistent, so the reader has one less reason to pause and think about something other than the story. If you give your readers a reason to think about anything else, they'll take it. I try to keep them to a minimum.

I'll let you know it works.

Rux
;}

[This message has been edited by teddyrux (edited May 02, 2004).]

Posted by AeroB1033 (Member # 1956) on :

Just write what you feel is right at the moment. Sometimes it'll be "said XXX", other times it'll be "XXX said". Go with the flow

Posted by Lazarus Long (Member # 2008) on :

I read somewhere (can't remember who wrote it) that you should only use "x said" because readers only use them for reference and anything else starts to get in the way.

I find that's true for my own writing.

EDIT:
Here's the quote:
3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

Its from Elmore Leonard:
http://elmoreleonard.com/index.lasso?template=excerpt&id=86

[This message has been edited by Lazarus Long (edited May 03, 2004).]

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

In the course of discussing this subject in another forum, I did some analysis of my own usage. Here's what I found:

quote:
Well, to me "said he/she/I" sounds somewhat archaic, but if it's not a pronoun following "said," then I don't have that problem.
I just went through one of my stories looking at each instance of "said" as a dialog tag. The vast majority were "--- said." The two instances of "said ---" were both in cases where the tag interrupted the dialogue.
I then went and looked at every time I interrupted the dialogue with a tag, and here's what I found:
"Oh," she said. "There is ..."
"But sir," said Vanadia, "We've ..."
"Well, sir," she said, "I know ..."
"... for you," she said. "I have ..."
"... and gentlemen," said the announcer, "please give ..."
If the interrupting tag used a pronoun, I used "--- said," otherwise I used "said ---."
Of course, that was just one of my stories, so I picked another, and this is what I found.
There were no instances of "said [pronoun]."
When the tag interrupted dialogue but did not use a pronoun, five times I used "said ---," and twice I used "--- said."
When the tag was before the dialogue, it was always "--- said."
When the tag followed dialogue, four times I used "said ---," and once I used "--- said."
So it looks like my general instinct is to keep "said" next to the dialogue unless I'm using a pronoun, and when the tag interrupts the dialogue, to use "said ---."

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited May 03, 2004).]

Posted by Eric Sherman (Member # 2007) on :

I belive theres a topic on this is the Uncle Orson section of the site thats helpful.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

I usually omit the tags unless there's a compelling reason to use them. Quotation marks tell the reader something is being said. Context will usually tell them who said it.

But I also like to mix in non-verbal dialogue elements, so I rarely have a bunch of spoken lines with no indication of which person is speaking. I also like to use voice indicators like "whispered" "shouted" "spat" and anything else that the speaking character actually does vocally.

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

I also usually avoid dialogue tags, unless there's no other way to tell who's speaking. I tend to think of action as non-verbal dialogue so it is often interspersed with my verbal dialogue. That said, I tend to stick with "Blank said" unless there is a specific, necessary reason to use a different tag or a rhythmic/flow reason.

In the example we started with I'd definitely use, '"You're horrid," Evelyn said,' because the other causes a slant rhyme between 'said' and '-rid' which would bother me.

There's an anecdote that when Heinlein wrote "Stranger in a Strange Land" they would only publish it if he cut it in half. He said that he started by removing every dialogue tag.

[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited May 04, 2004).]

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

I tend to use a 'said' tag the first time any character speaks in a passage of dialogue, whether that's mixed with action or not. E.g.:

Mike sat in the chair Morgan indicated. "I hope it isn't serious," he said.

Any future line Mike says in the same scene would probably not have a tag, unless it wasn't clear who was speaking.

Given that only Mike & Morgan have been mentioned in this scene so far, it would be safe to assume that the next line of dialogue will be Morgan's, so I might or might not attribute it, depending on how the tag sounded. If there's a long pause in the first sentence, I'll almost always break it for a tag, because it adds emphasis.

I don't only use said. I also use asked, replied, shouted, whispered, and interrupted from time to time. The advice to only use said is an extreme reaction against the tendency of novices to use as many different words as they can possibly think of, which almost always ends up with distracting tags that don't say what they mean...

Posted by AeroB1033 (Member # 1956) on :

I think the instances where a tag other than "said" is useful are few and far between. Occasionally you just have to get the meaning across and the dialogue doesn't do it, but generally, if you write the dialogue well enough, you only need to use "said" (for attribution), and even then only rarely. Nothing screams novice to me like:

"Fred! How's it goin!" Sam shouted amiably.
"Not bad, not bad at all," Fred intimated.
"The wife and kids?"
"They're doing great," Fred replied.
"Hey, bud," Sam had moved closer in with a mischevious grin, "I got some tickets to the game Friday... you in?" he whispered.

---

Compare that to this:

"Fred! How's it goin!" Sam said.
"Not bad, not bad at all."
"The wife and kids?"
"They're doing great."
"Hey, bud," Sam had moved closer in with a mischevious grin, "I got some tickets to the game Friday... you in?"

Posted by Gen (Member # 1868) on :

Dialogue tagging in general I feel like I have down; I generally write the first draft tagging with action where possible instead of using "she said", and then I add tags where things get confusing. Stranger tags than "said" and "asked" and the occasional "answered" don't get added unless the information they convey absolutely can't be put into the tone of the dialogue-- same rules I use for killing adjectives in general.

I was more just wondering about the order, in cases where there isn't a clear rhythmic reason to use "XXX said" or "said XXX" (or, of course, "XXX asservated" and "postulated XXX horridly"). I'm more likely to use "XXX said", but I have this vague impression that the "said XXX" construction is more in use in fairy tales and YA literature. No idea where that impression came from, of course, and no evidence to back it up.

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

(Crossposted with Gen; this replies to Aero above)

Absolutely. In my work, about 90% of all tags are 'said'. Probably about 8% of the rest are 'asked'.

Too much variety distracts. But having your character ask a question, and then putting 'he said' on the end of it distracts too, IMHO.

Perhaps no tag is better, I'm not sure. I use 'asked' a fair amount though, just to be certain that my text is easy enough to understand.

[This message has been edited by Jules (edited May 04, 2004).]

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

Going back to the 'cadence' thread, I use dialogue tags for flow. The tags, their exact form, their placement in a sentence, or their absence. It all depends on context.

Posted by rickfisher (Member # 1214) on :

Gen--"said XXX" is more likely to be found in fairy-tales, but also in many older works. It has become somewhat old-fashioned, and is most obvious when the XXX is a pronoun: "said I," "said she," etc. Almost no one would write these constructions today, though at one time they were quite popular. When it's something other than a pronoun, like "said Sam," it doesn't seem so noticeable. But it's my opinion that the "said xxx," construction bothers people even when they don't quite realize they've been bothered, so I try to steer clear of it.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

quote:
"Fred! How's it goin!" Sam shouted amiably.
"Not bad, not bad at all," Fred intimated.
"The wife and kids?"
"They're doing great," Fred replied.
"Hey, bud," Sam had moved closer in with a mischevious grin, "I got some tickets to the game Friday... you in?" he whispered.

The use of "amiably" is completely redundent. "How's it goin'" is automatically amiably unless otherwise specified. It is also not whispered or said quietly unless otherwise specified, though I could stand shouted, if it fit.

"Intimated" is entirely the wrong word to describe "not bad at all" unless the person saying it has otherwise been striving to maintain the fiction that things are very bad indeed. It is also the wrong word to describe a response to a shouted query...you never intimate anything in reply to a shout, the very idea of doing so is ludicrous.

"Replied" is simply unnecessary. The only situation in which I would use it is where the POV character couldn't hear the question to which the speaker is replying. That does happen, of course, in both life and fiction. But here, it has not.

"Whispered" is merely grotesque in this case. The change in intimacy here is almost homoerotic, which is clearly not the intent of the passage.

Of course, I understand that AeroB wrote this specifically for the purpose of showing how distracting the wrong dialogue tag can be (or at least I hope this is the case, I shudder to think that some person might have written this thinking it was actually good). And it shows that admirably.

But that is all it shows, that the wrong tag is to be avoided. It doesn't speak to the issue of whether you should use tags. I can look at every single tag used and demonstrate that it is simply a bad usage without referance to how many other tags are present. There is, of course, the synergy between the hidiousness of an amiable shout and an intimate reply...but even without that combination, either tag is bad on its own merits.

There is the cumulative effect, of course. But cumulatives don't pile up in separate catagories, neatly divided by the reader into hokey dialogue, unrealistic actions, and goofy tags. They all pile up together, the dumb line with the laughable leap and the passionate deadpan.

You might as well argue that you should avoid dialogue because sometimes people have their characters say idiotic things (right now I'm remembering that scene from The Da Vinci Code, oh! that was some stupid dialogue).

As I said, I usually don't use "said" as a dialogue tag. I use it the way it is supposed to be used, as a verb.