OnlineBookClub.org

I've often heard and read that a writer should never use saidisms. (Saidisms are alternative words in speech tags, such as asked, protested, exclaimed, screamed, growled, and so on.) Some bloggers refer to it as and sloppy. Others suggest that speech tags be removed as much as possible.

. . . And yet when I flip through my favorite books, those authors use quite a few saidisms.

I let a few people look over a draft of my writing. They complained that about the lack of speech tags and the repetitious use of said. I reviewed the draft and made changes, including more speech tags, a few variations of saidisms and even a handful of *gasp* adverbs. It reads much better.

What do y’all think about saidisms and speech tags? To use or not use? Give me some examples. I love examples.

J L MacLaren

I have no idea what you are talking about. What is a speech tag? These are in published books?

You say by way of explanation that saidisms are "alternative words in speech tags, such as asked, protested, exclaimed, screamed, growled"

I don't see that any of the words listed are particularly alternatives for each other, other than they are terms for different kinds of vocalizing, but they could not be used without changing thrust of a sentence. "Joey asked his mother for seconds." is far different than "Joey screamed at his mother for seconds."

-- 21 Mar 2013, 10:06 --

I figured out what was being said. I had never heard either term used by OP.

This can get annoying if it is overdone, but if it is used sparingly, it can be effective.
If you use a different term every time someone talks, that would stick out and bother me as a reader just as much as if you used "said" every time.
As a writer I would think you would want to mix this up, sometimes have people talk without saying "said" or anything at all, and if someone pouts or flounces or screams then you may want to use that word instead of "said".

These are like salt, a little is good, too much is deadly.

The first thing a good writer learns is not to abuse these words. The dialogue should speak for itself without a tag. The description should be clear enough to convey all meaning without telling the reader exactly.

Readers can use their own imagination when reading about body language, temperature, surroundings, danger, light and shade, etc. For example if a character says "What on earth is happening?" the reader knows, within the context of the story, how and why the character said it. If the cave roof is about to crumble inward, there's really no need to say the character 'gasped', 'cried' or 'screamed' because it's a given, especially if they're ducking for cover.

Some of the best dialogue I've read has no tags and the two characters speaking don't even answer each other back in the traditional 'he said' 'she said' format.

I would have to agree with everyone else. These words can be used from time to time but not too much. The story does not flow when characters are talking amongst each other and every sentence is described how it is said. Although Maud is correct as well. The best stories I have read do not use them. At lease not from what I noticed.

Dialogue is the hardest part to write for some. It is very difficult to get natural speech patterns and still get your story line across without distracting the reader. I don't think that every line of dialogue has to have a tag, especially if you have made the context prior to the conversation clear. Most of the time the reader can follow the conversation without having the words, "he said" added. Just my two cents.

Many purists say writers should use nothing but 'said' for dialogue attribution--no yelled, grunted, stuttered, screamed, etc. It's felt that the dialogue should be strong enough to convey the emotion. Furthermore, one doesn't always need to use 'said.' For example:

Jen's hands shook, and her heart raced. "How could you do that to me?"

The reader knows Jen is the one talking. The word 'said' isn't necessary, and sentence structure like that avoids repetition of 'said.'