You really just said that?

Hey!

It is odd how that when you are in school, you are taught the complete opposite. They want you to learn things a certain way - which can often lead to some bad habits.

When it comes to writing, one of the things I was taught was that I had to "rarely use the word 'said' when it comes to writing dialogue." Thirteen-year-old me believed them. The only downside to this was that my work was full of adverbs that made everything seem clunky and over-dramatic.

Now, having grown up a bit more, I realise that a lot of writers still use 'said' quite often. It is almost a default to them on which they build around. They don't remove the word altogether like I was made to believe.

🧮Awful adverbs (sometimes)

A lot of the time in the writing that I read, adverbs are used sparingly - mostly saved for the extreme points of dialogue, such as the volume of one's voice or when the words betray what emotion is trying to be portrayed. Examples of this are "said stiffly," or "whispered quickly."

I find that using adverbs a lot can distract the reader from the actual dialogue. It can come across as clumsy and cluttered.

💬Why using said is a good practice

Not all my teachers are bad, however. One of my favourite bits of advice I was given about writing dialogue was this:

If you have to use an adverb, your dialogue isn't saying what you really want it to.

I took this to mean that I had to let the dialogue convey what the adverb was being used to say. If someone is excited, don't just say it. Use pauses and repetition to show their jumpy form of speech.

You can couple using "said" with other additional words such as "noted" or "added." From there you can omit the speech tag if you are moving into a conversation between a few characters.

👁️‍🗨️Punctuation is great for this!

As I mentioned earlier, try to have the speech reflect what you would want to use the adverb for. Taking the earlier example, using dashes in the speech can help to show this excitement without stating it to the reader. Such as:

"I - I can't believe that happened."

It is just small changes like this that help to make your dialogue seem more realistic and less like a robot was speaking. We all want to make our characters as lifelike as possible and dialogue is one of those key areas that show what someone is truly like.

By putting in the care to not only make our dialogue distinguishable between characters but reflect their emotions in just their speech, it helps to make it more enjoyable for the reader and let them connect with the characters that we have created.

That's all from me today,
Fin :)