Friday Food for Thought #15

Against Conventional Wisdom: Said…

Week 1, Month 11, Episode #15

About two weeks ago, I spent some time with a friend of mine (who has been helping me proof and copyedit my books) discussing one of the rules that is regularly being hammered into new writers, and my disagreement with the conventional wisdom behind it.

That rule is quite simple. Instead of more descriptive and specific dialog tags you should use ‘Said’.

Now, to understand this rule and the reasoning behind it you have to know what I mean by the term dialog tag, and what said effectively means to a reader.

A dialog tag is the short phrase before a line of dialog that tells the reader who said it.  That’s it.  That’s all.  In most cases it means phrases like: She yelled, he said, she muttered, and so forth…

Now, I understand why this is made as a rule in so many handbooks and so forth.  It basically comes down to this simple fact.  Most people use ‘non-conventional’ dialog tags improperly or use phrases that aren’t dialog tags as dialog tags.

As one of my professors said, “Just try and say something while grimacing, you can’t.”

And he’s right, you can’t.  You can’t swallow and say a line of dialog.  The problem isn’t that the phrases and their basic arrangement is wrong, it’s that people are using a comma instead of a period.  I admit that even I fall into this trap often enough on my drafts, but instead of doing as most of my advisers suggest (use said) I simply changed it thusly…

She shrugged, “What can I do?”

-Becomes-

She shrugged. “What can I do?”

I don’t like ‘said’ as a verb.  It’s an extremely neutral term with neither positive or negative weight nor meaning.  Its meaning and purpose can be explained quite simply.

In a novel we write:

 

John said, “I hate the word said.”

To do the same thing in a script or play, we write:                                 

John: I hate the word said.

Said is essentially a footnote to tell the reader who is saying the dialog.  That is all, and considering that most dialog does not exist without some sort of action being done by the speaker (stuff that actors add all the time to their performances to give it nuance) there is often very little reason to use a dialog tag in the first place.

While a play doesn’t usually have large amounts of direction for the actors for facial movements (since those are usually added by suggestion of the director or the actors themselves) a novel needs those directions.  Consider the following dialog.

She said, “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

She sighed and shut her eyes. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

She slammed the milk down. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Without the use of this direction, the tone of the line is extremely flat.  Instead of a character you’re left with a talking head.  Now since structurally changing speakers in a line of dialog is done by creating a new paragraph, there is no need to use said on every line either.  There’s a rather famous short story by Hemmingway where the last page is nothing but a conversation between two characters.  If I remember right there’s roughly a dozen lines of dialog.

Said is used once or twice, and there are no other dialog tags.

This is an extreme example, but I think you got the idea.

Now, why is it then that we’re told to use ‘said’ so often by books and advisers?  Well it’s to prevent us from making a grammatical or syntax error.

Essentially, and this is one of those more theoretical elements of writing that most people don’t get, all the actions that appear in a sentence happen at the same time.  That’s why when you have a sequence of events in a story ‘then’ becomes a word that appears with almost alarming frequency.

When you have a line of dialog like…

She swallowed, “What do you mean?”

She’s swallowing at the same time that she’s saying the line.  It doesn’t work.  Now, I know my old professor Tim Esaias really dislikes swallowing and blinking as actions, but eh… Sometimes it fits the situation.

To placate him, it’s usually swallowing a lump in someone’s throat but whatever.  Anyway, the right way to write that is just to put a period in place of the comma and walk away.  Since moving from one sentence to another implies the passage of some time (Immediately is also another word that creeps into action a lot to imply the fast movement of time for this reason) this makes it perfectly acceptable.

Well, if you can stand swallowed as a verb (sorry Tim). Which means this is the correct way to say that.

She swallowed. “What do you mean?”

I have to say that there is one place I feel said is a good word to use.  That place is when the lines are being delivered in a cool, level, or perhaps even somewhat detached manner.  As a result this means said works great for things like briefings, news conferences, and prepared speeches.

Now, I’ve got to finish up my next book… excuse me.