Craft 1: On Saidisms
I'm probably a voice that's crying in the wilderness on this one, but I see it so much, and have had enough questions about it, that I thought I might as well put it in a post to have handy--what they are, and what editors think of them (as in, quick way to rejection pile). And that may not be what you care about in fanfic. It isn't with me--I'm not prolific enough--I can't ever see making a living from writing. (Never mind the matter of talent...) But that doesn't mean that tricks of the trade aren't relevant even on a hobby basis--if you care at all about getting better. Which for me is the fun of writing fanfic.
When a friend of mine wanted to get into a pro Trek anthology, I copied for her every post the acquiring editor had on an AOL forum about writing craft, publishing, and selecting the stories. We wanted to get into his head. It worked btw--she sold two stories to the anthology. From those posts I made a "handbook" of over 100 pages that still has some real life publishing wisdom--everything you could imagine from paper clips, your friend, to wordage and manuscript format--this is from that "handbook"--the word according to Strange New Worlds editor, Dean Wesley Smith:
Okay, folks. Here go a bunch more hints, more than likely talked about one per night, since these concern writing and will take some explaining. If there are questions, just ask here. I'm not doing these in any order, but just as I see three or four manuscripts with the same problem in the ones I'm sending back, I mark it down. I did the first ten as "basic hints" so here comes hint # 11:
NO SAID-BOOKISMS.
A "said-bookism" is when an author uses another word instead of the word "said." For example:
"This dust always gets me," he sneezed.
or
"I really am alone," he soliloquized.
After about three or four of these in a manuscript, I start laughing and forget about the story, and that is not a good thing to have an editor do. Just use the word "said." And note where the comma goes.
For those of you who were wondering, this is a deadly mistake.
Next hint tomorrow.
Dean
=====================
Still not convinced? Here's more:
These definitions are from the Turkey City Lexicon, associated with Science Fiction Writers of America, which lists common writing flaws (worth looking at the whole page of them when you have some time):
"Said" Bookism
Artificial, literary verb used to avoid the perfectly good word "said." "Said" is one of the few invisible words in the language; it is almost impossible to overuse. Infinitely less distracting than "he retorted," "she inquired," or the all-time favorite, "he ejaculated."
Tom Swifty
Similar compulsion to follow the word "said" (or "said" bookish) with an adverb. As in, "'We'd better hurry,' said Tom swiftly." Remember that the adverb is a leech sucking the strength from a verb. 99% of the time it is clear from the context how something was said.
Elizbeth George, Write Away, page 124 (13 bestsellers, including Deception on His Mind)
If subtext enriches dialogue, tag lines and their accompanying modifiers identify dialogue. These are the words that precede, interrupt, or follow the dialogue, indicating who the speaker is.
Sometimes a writer just starting out thinks that she needs to be especially creative with her tag lines, believing that the repetition of said lacks snap and personality. Actually, said is a little miracle word that no one should abandon. What happens when a writer uses said in a tag line is that the reader's eye skips right over it. The brain takes in the name of the speaker, while the accompanying verb--providing it's the word said--simply gets discarded. To a large extent, so do asked, answered, and replied.
But this isn't the case of all those fancier tag lines: snarl, moan, snap, hiss, wail, whine, whimper, shout, groan, sneer, growl, and all the rest of them. These call attention to themselves, and while you might use them judiciously--although, frankly, I discourage you from using them at all--and only when they suit the drama and the content of the scene you're writing; you must use them with the realization that they will leap out at the reader.
The situation is this: When the writing (and of course by that I mean the writer) is really doing its job, the reader will be aware that someone is shouting, snarling, thundering, moaning, or groaning. The scene will build up to it, so the writer doesn't have to use any obvious words to indicate the manner in which the speaker is speaking.
Sometimes adverbs can help you out, but just like the intense tags listed in the previous paragraph, adverbs are something a writer needs to be careful with. An adverb can add a degree of precision to a tag, such as said numbly. But if you're using adverbs, you need to keep in mind that the reader's attention will then be drawn to how the line of dialogue is said, rather than to what is said.
Stephen King On Writing, page 127 - 128
Some writers try to evade the no-adverb rule by shooting the attribution verb full of steroids. The result is familiar to any reader of pulp fiction or paperback originals:
"Put down the gun, Utterson!" Jekyll grated.
"Never stop kissing me! Shayna gasped.
"You damned tease!" Bill jerked out.
Don't do these things. Please oh please.
The best form of dialogue attribution is said, as in he said, she said, Bill said, Monica said.... I'm convinced fear is at the root of most bad writing... You probably do know what you're talking about, and can safely energize your prose with active verbs. And you probably have told your story well enough to believe that when you use he said, the reader will know how he said it--fast or slowly, happily or sadly. Your man may be floundering in an swamp, and by all means throw him a rope if he is... but there's no need to knock him unconscious with ninety feet of steel cable.
Elmore Leonard, "Ten Rules of Writing" (bestselling author of such books as Get Shorty)
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.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . .
. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs."
Lawrence Block, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers, page 198-200 (Award-winning, Bestselling author with over 40 novels)
If your characters are good, and if the dialogue you hand them is natural, you should leave it alone as much as possible... Said, said, said. Dean Koontz told me once that he makes it an absolute rule never to use any verb but said in dialogue... Words like state and aver and avow and affirm and declare, words that newspaper reporters use frequently so that their stories will read like newspaper stories, have little or no place in fiction. But words like drawl, and murmur and whisper indicate how a line is spoken... It is the writer's job to shout or whisper.
Dean Koontz, How to Write (Bestselling author)
You can find published novels in which authors use one flashy dialogue tag after another. Don't send me a list of those authors, please. I didn't tell you that the frequent use of such tags would prevent you from being published. I only said that they indicate that the author is an amateur or that he lacks the sensibility to appreciate the musical qualities of language. Books full of inept dialogue tags get published all the time. Of course they do. Not all published writers are good writers.
Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print, page 48 - 49 (two pro editors who have worked for major publishers)
Imagine you're in a play...the playwright runs out on the stage and yells..."Do you get it?"
You get it, of course, and you feel patronized...You don't need the author to explain it to you.
This is exactly what happens when you explain your dialogue to your readers. Consider the following:
"You can't be serious," she said in astonishment.
If you're like most novelists or short-story authors, you write sentences like these without thinking. What could be easier than to simply tell the readers how a character feels...it saves all sorts of time and trouble.
It's also lazy writing. When your dialogue is well written, describing your characters' emotions to your readers is just as patronizing as a playwright running onto the stage and yelling at the audience. "You can't be serious" conveys astonishment--no explanation is needed. And when you explain dialogue that needs no explanation, you are writing down to your readers, a sure-fire way to turn them off....Once again, Resist the Urge to Explain (R.U.E.)
Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, page 79 (literary agent and former editor)
The writer should, when possible, use no identifier at all... As my editor so keenly reminded me, it needn't always be "said," either: for variation, one can replace "said" with verbs like yelled, cried, whispered, groaned, hissed... [However,] I would strongly advise, especially beginning writers, to use extreme caution when replacing "said."
========
For good measure I'm including an exchange I had with a betee:
The problems with saidisms, I think, come in three flavors. The first are those that are physically impossible - those are inarguably a bad idea - like noding or smiling words--or hissing them when there's no 's' in sight.
The second are the ones that tell you how the convo is going--that replace said with: observed, added, agreed, insisted, continued, repeated, etc. Those are just distracting w/o adding one bit of info you couldnt' get from the text already.
The third are a shortcut to get in emotion--except there are other, smoother ways of doing that--that's why its considered lazy writing. Here's a quote from my last Great Saidism Debate (like I said--it's not just you--this comes up again and again):
> Kyle stared at her. "No," he said. "That's
> impossible."
>
> Is Kyle angry? Resentful? Bewildered? Resisting
> something he knows is true?
> Obviously he's in denial, but what flavour thereof?
> Does the denial burst
> out of him or is he speaking slowly and >painfully?
Part of the point about saidisms and them being a lazy way of writing is that if you do fall into them, that's a signal the line itself isn't carrying much weight--and the first thing you should do is look to strengthen the *line* not throw in a saidism.
What does your example convey? Not a thing except a fact, so yeah, the lines don't convey the emotion. They never could. Choose something else. Make the dialogue more interesting and there won't be a need for any "helpers."
Kyle stared at her. "No goddamned way. That's f*cking impossible." [if you want to stick close to the original]
Kyle stared at her. "No. I can't. It just won't do."
Kyle stared at her. "Are you nuts? If I even tried, Morris would have my ass."
Kyle stared at her. "No can do, toots."
Kyle stared at her. "Sweetie, what are you smokin'? That's illegal in all fifty states."
Kyle stared at her. "I won't. And you can't make me."
I think the above all conveys very different things. Add an action helper to it--he kicked at the ground, pulled out his gun, stared off in the distance, blew smoke in her face, whatever--and it would work even more.
Think screenwriting--think plays. Think how much Shakespeare conveys without any of the things prose writers can add like description of action, gesture or expression.
The best dialogue tag btw, is none at all. When you have only two characters in a scene, often you can go a long way w/o one dialogue tag. With multiple players it's more complicated, but you can use "beats" (character actions) to help break things up.
Can I stop now? Please don't tell me JKR does this. I know she does. She also uses all caps, swifties (adverbs describing dialogue) and a whole lot of stylistic tics that make editors (and me) howl in pain. Mind you, I even tried putting a lot of these in deliberately in imitation. I've been busy weeding out almost all of them in my revision of my WIP. If you have JKR's flair for plot and worldbuilding, you can get away with a lot, but that doesn't mean she's a good role model on style, and often I think she's to blame for some of the worst stylistic tics in the fandom. Hell, the archives even make us copy her stupid capitalization and hyphenation errors (You don't capitalize the names of subjects or titles other than direct address--unless, of course, you're writing HP fanfic and want to get into a moderated archive).
That doesn't mean it's good practice to imitate her.
If nothing else--please, please, please stop making characters hiss when not even one word you're tagging has a sibilant. Please???
When a friend of mine wanted to get into a pro Trek anthology, I copied for her every post the acquiring editor had on an AOL forum about writing craft, publishing, and selecting the stories. We wanted to get into his head. It worked btw--she sold two stories to the anthology. From those posts I made a "handbook" of over 100 pages that still has some real life publishing wisdom--everything you could imagine from paper clips, your friend, to wordage and manuscript format--this is from that "handbook"--the word according to Strange New Worlds editor, Dean Wesley Smith:
Okay, folks. Here go a bunch more hints, more than likely talked about one per night, since these concern writing and will take some explaining. If there are questions, just ask here. I'm not doing these in any order, but just as I see three or four manuscripts with the same problem in the ones I'm sending back, I mark it down. I did the first ten as "basic hints" so here comes hint # 11:
NO SAID-BOOKISMS.
A "said-bookism" is when an author uses another word instead of the word "said." For example:
"This dust always gets me," he sneezed.
or
"I really am alone," he soliloquized.
After about three or four of these in a manuscript, I start laughing and forget about the story, and that is not a good thing to have an editor do. Just use the word "said." And note where the comma goes.
For those of you who were wondering, this is a deadly mistake.
Next hint tomorrow.
Dean
=====================
Still not convinced? Here's more:
These definitions are from the Turkey City Lexicon, associated with Science Fiction Writers of America, which lists common writing flaws (worth looking at the whole page of them when you have some time):
"Said" Bookism
Artificial, literary verb used to avoid the perfectly good word "said." "Said" is one of the few invisible words in the language; it is almost impossible to overuse. Infinitely less distracting than "he retorted," "she inquired," or the all-time favorite, "he ejaculated."
Tom Swifty
Similar compulsion to follow the word "said" (or "said" bookish) with an adverb. As in, "'We'd better hurry,' said Tom swiftly." Remember that the adverb is a leech sucking the strength from a verb. 99% of the time it is clear from the context how something was said.
Elizbeth George, Write Away, page 124 (13 bestsellers, including Deception on His Mind)
If subtext enriches dialogue, tag lines and their accompanying modifiers identify dialogue. These are the words that precede, interrupt, or follow the dialogue, indicating who the speaker is.
Sometimes a writer just starting out thinks that she needs to be especially creative with her tag lines, believing that the repetition of said lacks snap and personality. Actually, said is a little miracle word that no one should abandon. What happens when a writer uses said in a tag line is that the reader's eye skips right over it. The brain takes in the name of the speaker, while the accompanying verb--providing it's the word said--simply gets discarded. To a large extent, so do asked, answered, and replied.
But this isn't the case of all those fancier tag lines: snarl, moan, snap, hiss, wail, whine, whimper, shout, groan, sneer, growl, and all the rest of them. These call attention to themselves, and while you might use them judiciously--although, frankly, I discourage you from using them at all--and only when they suit the drama and the content of the scene you're writing; you must use them with the realization that they will leap out at the reader.
The situation is this: When the writing (and of course by that I mean the writer) is really doing its job, the reader will be aware that someone is shouting, snarling, thundering, moaning, or groaning. The scene will build up to it, so the writer doesn't have to use any obvious words to indicate the manner in which the speaker is speaking.
Sometimes adverbs can help you out, but just like the intense tags listed in the previous paragraph, adverbs are something a writer needs to be careful with. An adverb can add a degree of precision to a tag, such as said numbly. But if you're using adverbs, you need to keep in mind that the reader's attention will then be drawn to how the line of dialogue is said, rather than to what is said.
Stephen King On Writing, page 127 - 128
Some writers try to evade the no-adverb rule by shooting the attribution verb full of steroids. The result is familiar to any reader of pulp fiction or paperback originals:
"Put down the gun, Utterson!" Jekyll grated.
"Never stop kissing me! Shayna gasped.
"You damned tease!" Bill jerked out.
Don't do these things. Please oh please.
The best form of dialogue attribution is said, as in he said, she said, Bill said, Monica said.... I'm convinced fear is at the root of most bad writing... You probably do know what you're talking about, and can safely energize your prose with active verbs. And you probably have told your story well enough to believe that when you use he said, the reader will know how he said it--fast or slowly, happily or sadly. Your man may be floundering in an swamp, and by all means throw him a rope if he is... but there's no need to knock him unconscious with ninety feet of steel cable.
Elmore Leonard, "Ten Rules of Writing" (bestselling author of such books as Get Shorty)
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.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . .
. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs."
Lawrence Block, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers, page 198-200 (Award-winning, Bestselling author with over 40 novels)
If your characters are good, and if the dialogue you hand them is natural, you should leave it alone as much as possible... Said, said, said. Dean Koontz told me once that he makes it an absolute rule never to use any verb but said in dialogue... Words like state and aver and avow and affirm and declare, words that newspaper reporters use frequently so that their stories will read like newspaper stories, have little or no place in fiction. But words like drawl, and murmur and whisper indicate how a line is spoken... It is the writer's job to shout or whisper.
Dean Koontz, How to Write (Bestselling author)
You can find published novels in which authors use one flashy dialogue tag after another. Don't send me a list of those authors, please. I didn't tell you that the frequent use of such tags would prevent you from being published. I only said that they indicate that the author is an amateur or that he lacks the sensibility to appreciate the musical qualities of language. Books full of inept dialogue tags get published all the time. Of course they do. Not all published writers are good writers.
Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print, page 48 - 49 (two pro editors who have worked for major publishers)
Imagine you're in a play...the playwright runs out on the stage and yells..."Do you get it?"
You get it, of course, and you feel patronized...You don't need the author to explain it to you.
This is exactly what happens when you explain your dialogue to your readers. Consider the following:
"You can't be serious," she said in astonishment.
If you're like most novelists or short-story authors, you write sentences like these without thinking. What could be easier than to simply tell the readers how a character feels...it saves all sorts of time and trouble.
It's also lazy writing. When your dialogue is well written, describing your characters' emotions to your readers is just as patronizing as a playwright running onto the stage and yelling at the audience. "You can't be serious" conveys astonishment--no explanation is needed. And when you explain dialogue that needs no explanation, you are writing down to your readers, a sure-fire way to turn them off....Once again, Resist the Urge to Explain (R.U.E.)
Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, page 79 (literary agent and former editor)
The writer should, when possible, use no identifier at all... As my editor so keenly reminded me, it needn't always be "said," either: for variation, one can replace "said" with verbs like yelled, cried, whispered, groaned, hissed... [However,] I would strongly advise, especially beginning writers, to use extreme caution when replacing "said."
========
For good measure I'm including an exchange I had with a betee:
The problems with saidisms, I think, come in three flavors. The first are those that are physically impossible - those are inarguably a bad idea - like noding or smiling words--or hissing them when there's no 's' in sight.
The second are the ones that tell you how the convo is going--that replace said with: observed, added, agreed, insisted, continued, repeated, etc. Those are just distracting w/o adding one bit of info you couldnt' get from the text already.
The third are a shortcut to get in emotion--except there are other, smoother ways of doing that--that's why its considered lazy writing. Here's a quote from my last Great Saidism Debate (like I said--it's not just you--this comes up again and again):
> Kyle stared at her. "No," he said. "That's
> impossible."
>
> Is Kyle angry? Resentful? Bewildered? Resisting
> something he knows is true?
> Obviously he's in denial, but what flavour thereof?
> Does the denial burst
> out of him or is he speaking slowly and >painfully?
Part of the point about saidisms and them being a lazy way of writing is that if you do fall into them, that's a signal the line itself isn't carrying much weight--and the first thing you should do is look to strengthen the *line* not throw in a saidism.
What does your example convey? Not a thing except a fact, so yeah, the lines don't convey the emotion. They never could. Choose something else. Make the dialogue more interesting and there won't be a need for any "helpers."
Kyle stared at her. "No goddamned way. That's f*cking impossible." [if you want to stick close to the original]
Kyle stared at her. "No. I can't. It just won't do."
Kyle stared at her. "Are you nuts? If I even tried, Morris would have my ass."
Kyle stared at her. "No can do, toots."
Kyle stared at her. "Sweetie, what are you smokin'? That's illegal in all fifty states."
Kyle stared at her. "I won't. And you can't make me."
I think the above all conveys very different things. Add an action helper to it--he kicked at the ground, pulled out his gun, stared off in the distance, blew smoke in her face, whatever--and it would work even more.
Think screenwriting--think plays. Think how much Shakespeare conveys without any of the things prose writers can add like description of action, gesture or expression.
The best dialogue tag btw, is none at all. When you have only two characters in a scene, often you can go a long way w/o one dialogue tag. With multiple players it's more complicated, but you can use "beats" (character actions) to help break things up.
Can I stop now? Please don't tell me JKR does this. I know she does. She also uses all caps, swifties (adverbs describing dialogue) and a whole lot of stylistic tics that make editors (and me) howl in pain. Mind you, I even tried putting a lot of these in deliberately in imitation. I've been busy weeding out almost all of them in my revision of my WIP. If you have JKR's flair for plot and worldbuilding, you can get away with a lot, but that doesn't mean she's a good role model on style, and often I think she's to blame for some of the worst stylistic tics in the fandom. Hell, the archives even make us copy her stupid capitalization and hyphenation errors (You don't capitalize the names of subjects or titles other than direct address--unless, of course, you're writing HP fanfic and want to get into a moderated archive).
That doesn't mean it's good practice to imitate her.
If nothing else--please, please, please stop making characters hiss when not even one word you're tagging has a sibilant. Please???