Craft 1: On Saidisms

[harmony_bites]

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

Comments

[harmony_bites]

Perhaps this is simply an overuse of dialogue tags as a whole, not merely overuse of "said."

I think so--from what I've read the best dialogue attribution of all--is none. Especially in cases like the above, with only two people present in the scene, once both are identified, they can go back and forth without a tag.

You can also use beats--you describe an action or thought or gesture by a character, and attach the dialogue to it. That too can be overdone, but both of the above can help avoiding overuse of "said" And said (and asked) really disappears--the other attributes don't. I always feel a bit patronized by them--as if I can't tell for myself that someone just added that, or continued, or clarified or whatever.

Since I don't read Stephen King, I have no idea how he writes, but I've just looked at one of my favorite popular authors, Clive Cussler, and he seems to use "said" about 40% of the time, and half of those have an adverb attached.

I haven't found Clive Cussler readable. He's a favorite author btw of Dean Weasley Smith, the editor quoted above--but as with Rowling, and Browne, I don't think it's Cussler's style that keeps him afloat and in the money--it's plot--and his way of handling that--pacing, etc. A lot of pro writers are guilty of saidisms and swifties too, and I suppose if you're VERY strong in other things, you might manage to do well.

And btw, this once was very prevalent in writing. You can find LOADS of saidisms in Austen and Dickens--but it's considered passe. The more contemporary, the higher up the literary scale a work is, the fewer you find them. After having this argument with a betee, I deliberately looked for it in stories. You can find them in old classics, you can find them in popular potboilers--but look in Faukner's As I Lay Dying, or Pat Barker's Regeneration (winner of the Booker Prize - the Brit equivalent to our Pulitzer) and I challenge you to find anything other than "said," "asked" and "whispered."

But it's a handicap--and this precept about saidisms is about as universal a rule as I can find among literary agents and editors. They're *looking* for reasons to reject you. That anthology my friend got into? About 3,000 submissions for 23 places. When you're battling for that place on a magazine or anthology--this kind of thing matters.