"said"

My entire writing career (I say that I like have a career in writing...) I've been quietly observing this intense battle between two sets of people.

The first army is composed of those artists who believe that writing can be much improved by the use of interesting words, especially interesting dialogue tags. "That word 'said' is so four-score years and seven ago," they scream at top pitch, "Use 'snarled' or 'giggled' or 'howled' instead!"

The second army is perhaps a bit smaller and quieter, and is made up of those who believe that interesting word are often a bit too much, and "said" should be allowed to retain its place as supremely worshiped dialogue tag. "The word 'said' is wicked awesome," they say.

I'm sure that the first group has many famous followers and many articles and books have been written on the subject of "awesome dialogue tags", but I have found a good book that actually has a chapter entitled "Kill the Interesting Words". Here's an excerpt from it.

Many years ago, I attended a writers' group as a guest author. One of the women read a long, plainly written piece. I can't remember much about it, but it went something like this:

The boy slid down the slope and said, "I'd like to do that again, please."
"You can't," said his mother, "it's time for dinner."
"Okay, Mom," the boy said.

When she had finished reading, the leader of the group noted that her story needed more excitement. She told her to "use more interesting words" when she revised.
"And don't use the word said so much," she added.

I gasped in horror, as only a professional writer would. The story was kind of boring, but the group leader's solution was terrible. Let's take a look at why. First, as an experiment, we'll get rid of the word said.

The boy scampered down the slope and whined, "I'd like to do that again, please."
"You can't," his mother admonished, "it's time for dinner."
"Okay, Mom," the boy chortled.

When a word means something, use it. For example, whined works nicely in the first sentence.

But said sounds so much better than admonished and chortled. Those two words, in this story, are silly and pretentious.

-Anne Mazer, Spilling Ink

 Ms. Mazer and her writing partner, Ellen Potter, go on to talk about clogged prose and noisy reading-- it's quite helpful and I recommend it.

So what are my personal convictions on the word 'said'? I think "said" is easy to read. your brain doesn't really notice it like it does other reused words. it's a quiet, helpful, modest word who works hard and does what it needs to do quite nicely.

Long live "said"!