Our Forum On Writing

Now that is a useful list, thank you.

Lela,

Glad you brought this up. I am a strong advocate of using "said" most of the time.

I'm going to use an example given from Gary Provost's 'Beyond Style', which emphasizes NOT overusing attritions.
"'
"I''m not afraid of you," I announced.
"Oh," Joel snarled. "What are you going to do, scare me off with a song?"
"Maybe," I shot back.
"Or maybe you're going to hit me with a karate chop," he chided.
"Someday you'll be sorry," I muttered.
"When you least expect it," he threatened...'"

Personally, I find the above passage a little ridiculous and juvenile. At some point in my writing efforts I would have agreed with you, and this argument I'm presenting now is the sort of thing that makes me pick up a book at random to see how real authors are doing it. Lo and behold, when they are indicating who said what, which is less often than you might think, its usually with 'said.'

Sometimes you want to emphasize dialogue with a stronger word, and that's fine. But if you do it too much, you rob the dialogue itself of its meaning.

More often then not, a reader can get how the character is saying something based on what they're saying.

"I love you" or "I hate you" shouldn't normally need anything else for full effect.

Personally I prefer something similar. Rather than indicating the speaker by saying who "said" what, I might describe how the speaker is acting, which may or may not include how is speaking. Regarding your example, I'd probably saying something like:

"Maybe." I spoke hurriedly, wishing the conversation would just end.

No argument with that here. It's hard enough to draw a picture of characters and what is happening between them, naturally. To throw away one of the best opportunities as part of the natural dialogue of the story, is just a waste.

Good. I'm glad it's a help. I've found myself going back to it quite a bit. It's helped pimp slap my brain back into submission a few times.

I can see where this will come in handy. Trying to come up with alternatives for said, can be a real pain in the butt. How often do you add to it?

I've actually used this three times today.