Ashlinn, I agree that dialogue is very different from speech, and the constant "he said, she said" within speech would be annoying on the page, because the reader does read all dialogue, but general text is often skimmed, and in that case, "he said, she said" becomes, like Grinder pointed out, as invisible as punctuation. It's a pointer to the reader, and isn't necessarily read as a word, but, if text is to be read aloud, eg a radio drama, then the "he said, she said" becomes even more important. The reason isn't apparent until you try to read your work aloud. On the page, we can use clever things like paragraphs to separate one speaker from another. In radio, unless you have different actors, then you need a trick to show that one character has stopped speaking, and another has started. One trick is to have the narrator use "he said, she said" in dialogue, so we come full circle.

Colin M

Colin,

I think you may have made a mistake in attributing that comment to me. When it comes to writing, I don't really believe in generalities. I think that each sentence and each word has to be chosen individually as is appropriate to the context, I don't believe in ruling any out altogether. I understand that in a classroom situation or in a book aimed at the masses, you have to establish some broad overall guidelines in order to produce a product that will sell but I believe that writing is a unique relationship that is established between writer and reader and so generalities are of limited use. Maybe it's a bit like all those parenting manuals. They may be useful as a reference occasionally but in the end each parent and child is a unique individual and a parent has to work out the best way to raise each child. Even the same parent has to take different approaches with different children.

Anyway that's my personal philosophy on the matter and I hope you don't think I am arrogant or naive in thinking so. I am not saying that mine is the best approach, only that it's mine.

Ashlinn

I think the statement about finding your independence is the most important thing here. A good story is a good story. You can write everything grammtically perfect, abiding by all the rules in the book to withing a millimeter, and still have something that doesn't work.

Likewise, you can have a story that is grammatically flawed, and breaks all the golden rules one after the other, and yet it's sensational.

I think to become too rigidly aware of the rules is to stifle your creativity a little.

JB

Grinder, I think your principle is a very good place to start indeed. (Let's say 'principle', since 'rule' seems to get everyone so hot under the collar - that's why I qualified what I'd just said by saying they're only my rules for myself.)

Colin, I take your point about the speakers. Though a good reader on radio can always differentiate between speakers anyway - by pitch if nothing else. I have a drama training, and I once read some dialogue of mine aloud in a workshop. The tutor said, 'if you weren't a good reader, I wouldn't have been able to tell who was saying what.' The point being not that I read it well, but that in the text itself, the characters weren't differentiated enough.

Emma

Sorry Ashlinn, I read that wrong. It was Len I should have been replying to. I read the start of his reply then somehow jumped a paragraph and went onto your thread. That's what comes of playing on the internet with a two year old climbing over you. So apologies for that, it was Len who got my goat by this line

It is precisely for the reason that spoken conversation and written dialogue are very different that the overuse of the word 'said' can quickly become an irritation to the readers' eye.

Sorry Len, don't agree.
Colin M

<Added>

I mean, I agree that speech and dialogue are very different - I put that all in my last post, I just disagree about "said" being an irritation to the eye.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

JB, are you quoting another Marilyn Manson song there?

Yes, I was thinking of that.

I'm not an adverb
to a page
that don't exist
I'm not a slave
to an adjective
that don't work for shit...

Colin M,

I respect your opinion that you do not agree with my comment that the overuse of 'said' 'can become an irritant to the readers' eye'.

When children go through the development stages of writing there is a tendency to use the word 'and' repeatedly. When they reach the stage where dialogue begins to play an effective part there will be an overuse of the word 'said'. This is understandable for they have yet to reach a point where their writing abilities provide them with other ways to express 'said' or to omit it altogether.

Apart from the word itself the overuse of 'said' smacks of amateurism and undeveloped creative writing abilities apart from it being a lump of grit to the eye. You have your opinion, I have mine.

Len

Hi I'm new here. I've had a good browse and am impressed at the knowledge expressed in comments on this site. I took my stance on adverbs from Sol Stein, as I figured that anyone who had edited greats like Dylan Thomas must know a thing or two about writing. Mr Stein is a minimalist (unlike Mr Thomas!) and had me culling words left, right and centre from my novel. However, now I'm worried that I may have extracted some of the colour from my prose.

Anyway, apologies if this is the wrong place, but since Claire Alexander is high on the list of agents I'd like to submit to, could Emma D please let me know what her opinion is on the adverb question? Also, Emma, I saw from your profile that you have a two book deal with Hodder, which is fantastic. Congratulations! However, I haven't seen your deal mentioned in the Bookseller's Rights Report, or on the Gillon Aitken Associates website. Why are you hiding your light under a bushel?

Kind regards,

Larissa.

It could be worse. There is a section in' Lost for Words' by John Humphreys where he describes how 'said' (and the past tense) are disappearing from spoken English. It was something like this.

So I go 'Why? and He goes 'I don't remember' so I go '......'

or the more modern version

So I'm like 'Why?' and He's like 'I don't know' so I'm like '......'


He also has an extract from an Edwardian lady's journal in which she contintually uses 'Do you see?' as 'junk punctuation' when she records her speech.


Jane

Sol Stein's books on style and technique are brilliant. No doubt about that. Welcome aboard Larissa.

Len, I wasn't suggesting that every spoken line should have "said" in it as a pointer, just that "said" can generally be ignored, whereas having words like "he exclaimed" "he announced" "he questioned" can cause a hiccup in the flow of the text. By comparison, occasional "said"s become invisible. A bit.

Colin M

I agree with Colin. A 'newbie' writers work is more likely to change it every sentence, he said, he exclaimed, he retorted, he suggested, he replied... because they think it's more exciting than writing said all of the time.

Personally I'm of the view that the excitement should be in the dialogue itself, and said does appear invisible. That said, it's not necessary every line, especially in a two person conversation, as the flow of the dialogue should be obvious.

All the best,

Ben

Ashlinn

I think I’m totally with you on this question. You can’t attach hard and fast rules to writing - it’s something so organic it grows whichever which way it likes, all we do by taking out the odd word or re-phrasing the occasional sentence is akin to mild pruning.

Strangely, when I saw this thread I too immediately though of Gatsby (but then it is probably my most favourite of favourite novels so I’m often thinking about it). He uses adverbs all over the place, but he uses such wonderful ones and in absolutely the right place: industriously and shiftlessly (as descriptions of dialogue) are two of my favourites and I admit to having incorporated them in my novel! (The book also has the best last line IMHO.. In fact I’ll start a thread on that…)

And I don’t think writers like Faulkner or Joyce (or more recently Arundhati Roy) were keeping to any rules when they produced their best works. I think (and I may be well off the mark) that, as someone else said before me - Len, I think - good writing is the product of good reading. Read, read and read some more. And, I think, that improved my writing more than any book on writing techniques.

Sam