domesticatedwerewolves:
freyjas:
- it’s OKAY to say “said”
- it doesn’t make you a bad writer
- you don’t always NEED to elaborate on HOW the words were said (see, was that so bad?)
- sometimes people just SAY something
- “said” is pretty much the only way to deliver dialogue without subjectivity
- you don’t always need subjectivity
- you don’t need to avoid using “said”
- it’s not a bad word
- don’t be afraid of it
FUN FACT its actually unprofessional to deviate from “said” too much
So essentially not saying “said” enough does the opposite of what you want
FUN FACT if i have to read an entire dialogue in which you use every word BUT ‘said’ i will not be able to take your dialogue seriously because oMg TeH dRaMaTiCs
because honestly unless you’re trying to differentiate a line of dialogue from the way someone would normally talk no other word will work
every time i see that list of ‘alternatives words for said’ i want to slap something
THOSE ARE NOT ‘ALTERNATIVES’ THOSE ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WORDS WITH THEIR OWN NUANCES THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU USE THEM THEY SERIOUSLY DO NOT STRENGTHEN YOUR WRITING UNLESS YOU MEAN THAT WORD E X A C T L Y
like i’m not saying you’re bound to ‘said’ forever and always just realize WHAT THOSE OTHER DIALOGUE TAGS MEAN and that OVERUSING THEM has these consequences
- slowing down dialogue because readers can ‘slide over’ said but will pause to imagine other tags
- making your dialogue sound way overdramatic because everyone is SCREAMING and HISSING and GASPING instead of just saying
- confusing your reader about what is actually going on because the flow is weird and super over-the-top
‘said’ is actually the good guy
saying you should always use another words for ‘said’ is like saying your should always use another word for ‘to be’
most synonyms don’t actually mean the same thing and instead mean something very specific… which is great if you mean that word very specifically but try not to overuse because your reader WILL notice, whereas like 95% of the time your reader will just sort of ignore the word ‘said’ because they’ve been conditioned to do
you should believe me my lack of punctuation in this post is an A+ sign i know about good writing n shit okai
