The Dread “Said” Bookism & the uses of speaking verbs
Kevin Andrew Murphy August 11th, 2006
In 1947, J.I. Rodale, arcane master of the thesaurus and rival of Roget, conspired with an enigmatic woman known only as Mabel Mulock, former head of the Allentown High School English Department, to author a book that has passed into legend, rarely spoken of by authors and then solely in hushed whispers or derisive sneers. Rather like the Necronomicon, but more perilous and less accessible.
You may call me mad, but I’ve just located and ordered a copy of this blasphemous tome, the 1949 revised and corrected edition (and likely the last as well) of The “Said” Book.
To explain what a “Said” Bookism is, I will refer to the wisdom of The Turkey City Lexicon:
“Said” Bookism
An artificial verb used to avoid the word “said.” “Said” is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than “he retorted,” “she inquired,” “he ejaculated,” and other oddities. The term “said-book” comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word “said,” which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.
A fair enough definition, excepting the lack of author attribution, but regardless, this was something I thought should be brought up for discussion after Kit’s article regarding strong verbs and weak verbs.
The verb “said” is in some ways the weakest of weak verbs as it says nothing other than the fact that someone is speaking. However, that is also its virtue, since, invisible wallflower that it is, it’s the vanilla of the speaking verbs, going with everything except questions (which generally take “asked”) and exclamations (which of course get “exclaimed” unless some other verb is used).
It’s rather sad that “he ejaculated” can no longer be seriously used as a speaking verb, but that’s more the fault of Penthouse Forum than The “Said” Book. The other synonyms for “said,” however? They still have uses.
The main use of “said” and all the other speaking verbs is to designate who is speaking in a sentence and to keep readers from confusing one character’s dialogue with another’s. Of course, there are tricks around this.
One is to have characters speaking in entirely different modes and dialects. With the exception of very short questions and answers, the speaker will be obvious once the mode of speech has been established.
Another more simple and common trick is to simply attribute the speaker by interspersing the spoken lines with action. This has two virtues: the first is that it obviates the need for a speaking verb; the second, less obvious but equally necessary, is that it indicates a dramatic pause.
When people speak, they pause. Sometimes between sentences, sometimes in the middle of them. Wherever and whenever a character would pause for breath, that’s where you put the actions or the speaking verbs. The length of the pause is the same as the number of poetic “beats” of the sentence or fragment you’re inserting.
Good old “he said” and “she said” are iambs and can be dropped into sentences wherever you have a comma but you want the pause to be longer than a regular comma but shorter than the full stop of a period. The time it takes the reader’s eye to skip over the single iamb of “he said” or “she said” is all that’s needed to indicate a slight dramatic pause. If you require a longer pause, you do it by naming the character instead of using a pronoun (characters with polysyllabic names are very good for this purpose) or by tacking prepositional phrases or dependent clauses on after your speaking verb. Which, I should stress, doesn’t always have to be “said.”
The main time you should use another word than “said” is when the content of the quoted words is insufficient to inform the reader as to the manner in which they’re spoken. For example:
“You ate the baby.”
Is that simply “said”? Is it “asked”? Is it “exclaimed”? Is it both asked and exclaimed, thus requiring an interrobang? Or multiple interrobangs as well as a dramatic pose?
 “You ate the baby!?!?!?” Pamela stood aghast.
You need a fancier speaking verb than “said” to inform the reader as to the way these words are spoken. There’s a vast world of difference between:
 “You ate the baby,” she said.
And:
“You ate the baby,” Pamela surmised.
And:
“You ate the baby,” she stated baldly.
Whether or not to use anything that might have come from the dread “Said” Book also depends a great deal on what style you’re going for. If you have diction of a certain level, “opined” and “retorted” may look right at home, though of course should be saved for those times when you need not just an indicator that someone is speaking, but that what they’re saying is in fact an opinion or a retort. If this already obvious from the content inside the quotation marks, then you shouldn’t use the odd words from The “Said” Book, not because they’re bad in and of themselves, but because they’re redundant, which is simply bad.
“Kevin, this is a great essay,†said Erin. “The ‘Dread-Said’ is one of those little things that we all struggle with when whittling away at a story. It’s also a nice complimentary piece to Kit’s essays on grammar neeps.â€
It seems like ‘thought’ is in the same boat as ‘said’ since they are both used in similar ways, I thought after posting my comments on Kevin’s piece. This turns the word ‘thought’ into one of those invisible verbs – except you’d use italics to identify thought instead of quotes. Geez, I could have saved myself years of frustration if my high school teachers had made grammar rules this interesting and easy to understand.
“You ate. The baby.”
“You ate The, baby?”
The problem with ‘said’ is that it’s invisible only in low doses. Any text that uses ‘said’ exclusively and doesn’t vary it with the millions of way in which people can express themselves will seem repetive and grate on my ears. And once I noticed an overabundance of ‘said’ I can’t stop noticing the word, and it turns into torture.
I find that a skilled use of saidisms enhances my reading experience. It’s one of the few things that David-and-Leigh Eddings got right in one of his more recent offerings. (The Elder Gods). Just because the act of delivering speech is one that happens frequently during a book does not mean it is absolved from the tenet of finding _exactly the right words_ to describe the act. More things might be said and miles be walked than any other method of delivery, but let’s hear it for skipping, crawling, creeping – and promising, observing, apologizing…
Thankfully, I learned long ago not to fear repeated “saids.” But being a relatively new writer, I’ve just recently learned of “bobblehead syndrome.” This is adding a physical action, often a nod, to tag a line.
He nodded. “Yes, I ate the baby.”
Could be smiles, frowns, scratched chins etc. I had no idea this is just as looked down upon at said-isms (if the sole purpose is to tag a line).
I’m still learning I guess.
I did indeed try to use “ejaculated” as a synonym for “said” in my book, but the copy editor nixed it. Well, she didn’t exactly nix it so much as circle it and write something to the effect of, “Are you SURE you want to use this?”
I’m in agreement with green_knight. To me, “said” is only tolerable in low doses.
One thing that frustrates me about writing dialogue in prose is that you’re pretty much restricted to stylized back-and-forth exchanges. It’s almost impossible to capture the conversations we have in real life where people interrupt one another and talk over each other. The closest I’ve come is something like this:
John sighed. “That’s the most ridiculous — ”
“Here we go again,” Sally muttered.
” — thing I’ve ever heard.”
And that trick only works in small doses too.
Green Knight–
Agreed. I once counted in someone’s manuscript seventeen uses of “said” in a row before they got to some other speaking verb. The “invisibility” of “said” is only useful so long as no one notices it–once it’s become obvious through overuse, it’s a case of “Look, who’s that skulking in the corner? They’ve been following me for the past fifteen paragraphs!”
Unfortunately, you can’t give all the rules at once. The overuse of “said” can also be viewed as a subset of “vary your verbiage.” Interspersing a little action, even the non-action of having characters strike poses or fidget with whatever there is in there hands, helps to avoid “talking head syndrome” which even “she opined” and “he blathered” cannot save you from. I personally detest smoking but I have to admit there has never been a more useful prop for indicating character mood than a cigarette. For non-smokers, the next best thing is teacups and especially teaspoons. These provide both indicators of mood without constant referrence to facial expression and body language, and moreover provide action–and thus substitutes for speaking verbs–in scenes which would otherwise just be talking heads.
There is often no necessity to use any speaking verb at all.
Don,
I hadn’t heard of “Bobblehead Syndrome” before but the term is going into my lexicon now. When writing dialogue myself, I’ve noticed you can only have a person make so many expressions before it begins to grate, unless of course you make it a character affectation and then you make a point of drawing attention to it with “she smiled” “she said, still smiling” “she continued to smile” and “she finally stopped smiling.” It’s why it’s good to give a character something to fidget with and why cigarettes are so damnably useful as a prop.
David’s trick also works, but as he mentioned, only in small doses. That’s basically the rule: Use all of them in small doses and vary it before the reader can catch on to what you’re doing unless you’re specifically doing it as a character tic: the character who always nods, smiles, or what-have-you.
Hi Kevin,
I’m not sure if “Bobblehead Syndrome” is gospel. I’ve only recently heard the term, and that was as a panel title at a convention (I forget which one). The description was something like “avoid bobblehead characters. How to avoid using ‘he nodded’ or ‘she smiled’ etc. as dialogue tags” I confess, I use such tags myself. It’s a bit easier to avoid if there are just two people speaking. As Lois just pointed out, you often don’t need anything once the two characters are established. But I’ve written some scenes with up to five characters all in conversation. “Makes me pull my hair out,” he said, smiling.
Well, it’s a good descriptive term and gets right to the heart of dialogue tags that only describe what people are doing with their heads.
As with anything, underuse of it can be as bad or worse than overuse. A well-chosen word from The “Said” Book is better than an endless string of “saids” and likewise the proper placement of a nod or a smile can add a lot to a passage of dialogue.
The worst form of bobblehead or giggleface is when people produce dialogue in physically impossible ways:
“I ate the baby,” he nodded.
“You did eat the baby,” she smiled.
“Where’s the baby, dear?” she asked, setting down her purse and keys. He eyed her from his comfy chair, picking his teeth.
“Burp,” he explained.
(Sorry. Ew ew ew. Attacked by a Giant CrossEyed Whimsy.)
-l.
“Beward the Participles of Doom!” she cried, getting up, grabbing a dagger, rushing across the room, jumping on the altar, and waving the dagger. “That’s why.”
In other words, as Laura indicated above, dangling an enormous amount of action from one speech tag is another good way to ruin dialog.
Wow, Kit! I get tired just reading that line.
To be sure, everything in moderation — saids, thoughts, smiles, nods, whatnots and whosamagiggies.
The above exchange leads me to think of another bane of writing I’ve noticed. Being knew to the biz, I don’t know if there’s a professional term for it, but I call it “blocking” after the theatrical term. It’s when an author uses dialogue interspersed with bland stage directions. It’s usually not accompanied by any kind of descriptive detail.
“Where’s the baby, dear?” she asked with a cautious smile, moving across the room to him.
“I ate it,” he replied, rising in his chair. He closed the door behind her and grinned.
It reads like a wrongly formatted movie script.
I think it’s similiar to the Bobblehead Syndrome. They may be co-maladies of the same disease — MTV-itis?
Well, I’d call that bad blocking. There’s no reason to give the reader all sorts of boring details of the inconsequential sort. If Jane enters the room and sits in the chair, the only reason to tell us that she opens or closes the door en route to said chair is to establish the detail that the room does in fact have a door, as opposed to an open archway, a beaded curtain, or whatever. Once that’s established, all you need to say is “Mary arrived” to announce the entrance of a new character, the reader assuming she came in through the door rather than through the window, down the chimney or spontaneously teleporting into the room.
The tone of the writer’s voice has a lot to do with how many speech tags you can get away with–and of what sort. I favor as few as possible (taking into account that if you don’t use enough, the reader is going to be sitting there wondering who is saying what). I like indicating the speaker by action, but (as mentioned above) that can be a staging nightmare.
Ava peered into the mirror and groomed her eyebrow. “Where’s Lobelia?”
“Um.” Rolf glanced around the room as if seeking his infant daughter.
“Rolf?”
“It was dinner time. You didn’t leave anything in the refrigerator.”
“There was a casserole in the microwave.” Ava put down the eyebrow comb and turned to face her husband. “Rolf. You ate the baby.”
He nodded, shamefaced.
“What are we going to serve the Prenderghasts when they come for dinner next week? Really, dear, it was so thoughtless.” Ava shook her head and turned back to the mirror.
Sorry, this is too much fun.
I have to admit that I quickly get bored of moderation. You just gotta branch out. I like some of the unique constructions Thomas Pynchon uses, things like:
She hadn’t moved from the car.
“Benny,” one fingernail touched his face.
Or:
“All right–” he was mad– “show me the difference.”
(Both from V., 1961, picked at pseudo-random.)
Those are unique? Nicely used, yes, but I’ve seen and used the like a lot before.
Eh, my example was meant to be bad.
Okay, maybe the Pynchonisms aren’t exactly unique. Just unusual.
Can we stop eating babies now? I’m stuffed.
Pynchon uses those constructions almost exclusively.
I wonder if there is an author who predates him in using them or if he pioneered them. Does anyone know?
It’s been a long time since I read either V or Gravity’s Rainbow, but I don’t recall that Pynchon ever used the word “said” in the context described here. Would that make him a Sans-Said Saint?
{Butting in from the Ether}
I’ve been teaching middle school for a while now, and I feel it my sad duty to confirm that “he ejaculated” seems to have been lost to us forever as a serious dialogue tag.
I’m told that Doctor Ruth lives near my building — I may place the blame at her door.
[...] level is decent. The prose flows reasonably well, I’ve mostly avoided “said bookisms” and the use of adverbial dialogue tags. The dialogue is at times a bit forced and the [...]
[...] ejaculated– I haven’t seen this one in print, but I’ve heard horror stories. [...]
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