Other words instead of said. [Part 1]

Writing effective, compelling dialogue has multiple elements. It's not only what characters say but how they say it that matters. Or how you show who's speaking. ❛He said❜ and ❛she❜ said can dull and grow boring if overused. Read other words for said as well as tips for keeping your dialogue natural and engrossing:

First, what is a ❛dialogue tag❜?

Tags (like name tags) identify. A dialogue tag is group of words following quoted speech (e.g. ❛she said❜), identifying who spoke and/or how they spoke. Other words for ❛said❜ can indicate:

・Volume (e.g. yelled, shouted, bellowed, screamed, whispered).
・Tone or pitch (e.g. shrieked, groaned, squeaked).
・Emotion (e.g. grumbled, snapped, sneered, begged).

The relation between these elements of voice are also important. It would be strange, for example, for a character to ❛sneer❜ the words ❛I love you❜, since the word ❛sneer❜ connotes contempt which is contrary to love.

Given that there are countless verbs that can take the place of ❛said,❜ should you simply find a stronger, more emotive one and use that?

Not always. Here are some tips for using dialogue tags such as said and its substitutes well:

1. Use all dialogue tags sparingly.

The problem with dialogue tags is they draw attention to the author's hand. The more we read ❛he said❜ and ❛she said❜, the more we're aware of the author creating the dialogue. We see the author attributing who said what – it lays their guiding hand bare. Compare these two versions of the same conversation:

"I told you already," I said, glaring.

"Well I wasn't listening, was I!" he said.

"Apparently not," he replied.

Now compare this to the following:

I glared at him. "I told you already."

"Well I wasn't listening, was I!"

"Apparently not."

For some, it's a matter of stylistic preference. Even so, it's hard to argue that the first version is better than the second. In the second, making glaring an action rather than tethering it to the dialogue gives us a stronger sense of the characters as acting, fully embodied beings.

Because it's clear the glaring first-person ❛I❜ is the character speaking at first, we don't need to add ❛I said❜. The strength of the exclamation mark in the second character's reply makes any dialogue tag showing emotion (e.g. ❛he snapped❜) unnecessary. Because it's on a new line, and responds to what the other said, we know it's a reply from context.

Similarly, in the first speaker's retort, we don't need a tag telling us his tone (that it's curt, sarcastic, or hostile). The brevity, the fact it's only two words, conveys his tone and we can infer the character is still mad.

Using tags sparingly allows your reader the pleasure of inferring and imagining. The reader gets to fill in the blank spaces, prompted more subtly by the clues you leave (an exclamation mark or a pointed, cross phrase).