Writtenwyrdd

Once more, the "rules"

"Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."  Elmore Leonard

Blood Red Pencil (which should be a daily read for most of us) offered up this link to Elmore Leonard's article in the NYT about writing. 

Great points.  I especially love the quote above.  But I have to disagree about the continued hatred of other words than "said" in dialog tags.  Sometimes (but not too frequently) it really is okay to use something else, so long as it actually adds needed meaning instead of distracts.  And, sometimes, it's even okay to add more description to a tag.*

Perhaps, for example, your pov is close in so that the reader needs to know what your character intends by saying something.  Perhaps you don't want to spell out that your character is lying, so the most expedient and clear means of relaying that to the reader (or possibly underscoring the point so they don't miss it because it's subtle) is to have your dialog be "he lied." 

"How are you feeling, Joe?"

"Miserable," he lied in a husky voice.  "I'll have to leave early for a doctor appointment at three."

Yes, you could have him say it (he said in a husky voice); but lied seems acceptable to me.

Then there are the Tom Swiftys that a crit group member of mine hates.  Even one usage in a novel was grounds to break out the firing squad on the writer in question!

Sure, saying something like '"Yes," Tom said swiftly' is really awkward and does indeed call unfortunate attention to the writing; but occasionally it makes sense.  Very very occasionally.  Possibly almost never.  But I don't believe it's okay to toss out every option.  Seems like bandwagoneering* to me!

Never using anything but said just seem dull.  Just be advised these rules are not carved in metaphorical stone.  You can break them, for the right reasons, and probably not all that often.

*You like that?  I made it up all by myself.  You can bandwagoneer me and use it if you like, though.  I won't charge you or anything!  In fact, I'll uncopyright the use of bandwagoneer (verb or noun) right now. 

Dialog thoughts

Smart Bitches has a great post on how written speech drains the emotion from the meaning:  "Text strips emotion; writers put it back."  No hand gestures, tone of voice, facial expressions means potential for misunderstandings.  We've all sent the email that is perceived as a flame or an insult when we meant no such thing; and it is true for fiction writers as well.  In fact, I posted about this earlier in the month.  (Great minds must think alike, heh.)

We all know how it's done.  We either add dialog tags along the lines of "she said, angrily"; indicate the emotion with stage business to show gestural or other information to indicate what's going on physically; or we say it flat out as part of the narrative.

The inspiration for the Smart Bitches post is a series at geek-2-geek called "We don't write, we speak with our fingers," discussing online communication.  The author says, "Unless you consciously put the emotion back in the same set of words can convey different feelings and even entirely different meanings."  A lot of good points here.