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L E S S O N  2 :
SAID

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it's wednesday, my dudes, ahhhhh! sorry, i love that vine so much lol. anyway, today's lesson is on the word we all just love so much: "said."

okay, i think we can all agree that the following piece of dialogue is kind of boring—

"I can't believe you went out with Marcus last night," Katie said, twirling a bit of her blonde hair around her index finger.

"So? I really like him," Carrie said, rolling her eyes.

"Carrie, Marcus is a weirdo. Nobody will ever want to hang out with you if you date him," Katie said.

"I don't care," Carrie said.

okay so we see how basic this is, right? i actually haven't read much writing like this. many people seem to use better words than 'said' these days, and that makes me really happy. of course, there is still some people that write like this, and mostly all of them are beginners. that's totally all right because as they grow as writers, their writing will improve drastically. i can still remember when i typed the word 'said' almost every line when i was like thirteen or fourteen. anyway, not only is this lesson about not typing 'said' all the time, but it is also on placing your dialogue.

while we all learned in elementary school that we're supposed to put dialogue at the beginning of the sentence, it isn't exactly true. it's not very fun to read a bunch of 'he said, she said' dialogue like the one above even with 'said' synonyms instead of 'said.' as writers, we should shake up our paragraphs and not make each one so repetitive like starting it with quotation marks over and over again.

now, let's look at what the above dialogue would look like after applying these new rules—

"I can't believe you went out with Marcus last night," Katie dramatized, twirling a bit of her blonde hair around her index finger.

Carrie scoffed, rolling her eyes at her best friend. "So? I really like him." It was the truth. Marcus was a very cute and funny guy. It may have only been their first date, but she knew there was a connection between them.

Katie stared at her friend, an unsure expression painted all over her face. "Carrie, Marcus is a weirdo. Nobody will ever want to hang out with you if you date him."

"I don't care," Carrie retorted seriously. She really didn't care. Who cares what other people think when you really like someone? It's none of their business anyway, and if they don't like Marcus, then she wouldn't like them.

notice the differences?

please keep in mind to not overdo this to the extremity that you or your readers have no idea what the word you're using in place of 'said' means. you can still use the word 'said,' but mix it up with other words rather than just saying it over and over. :)

thanks for reading! let me know what you think!
- michaela -

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