Hot Topics: The Said Debate (Said Bookisms)

Just a reminder of our original sentence before we continue with our regularly schedule program:

“But Julie,” Mark said. “I don’t want to leave you.”

So example number 1:

“But Julie,” Mark whined. “I don’t want to leave you.”

Okay. First off whined is a rather strong word and doesn’t leaved much room for depth or interpretation, but you might be asking what's wrong with it? Well, besides being unnecessarily strong and letting no other element of the story contribute to its meaning, let’s look at conversation where every line is written with a Said Bookism.

“Mark, you should go,” Julie intoned. “It’s your dream. Besides, you’ll never shut up about it if you don’t go.”

“But Julie,” Mark whined. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Mark,” Julie scolded. “Go.”

Do you see the problem now? There’s no subtlety to that conversation. A real conversation, might – might – have one instant where something said deserved the strength of a Said Bookism, but not every conversation and certainly not every line. Let the dialogue breath. That’s not to say you can’t use Said Bookisms at all. What it means is that their use really needs to be extremely limited and should probably be one the uncreative types like yelled or mumbled.

Ah but I’m not done with Said Bookism yet, let’s try one more.

“Mark, you should go,” Julie sighed. “It’s your dream. Besides, you’ll never shut up about it if you don’t go.”

“But Julie,” Mark grimaced. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Mark,” Julie hissed. “Go.”

Now these might seem like the examples above, but they're not. These little words are actually worse. That’s because that you can’t sigh a sentence, maybe a word (very melodramatically), but not a sentence. Neither can you hiss or grimace one. You also can’t laugh one or sneer one. Basically a good rule of thumb is it if the tag can be done independently of dialogue, it shouldn’t be a dialogue tag. However these peculiar mistakes are often just a result of not understanding how dialogue tags work grammatical. So lets try that scene again, with correct grammar to make them work.

“Mark, you should go.” Julie sighed. “It’s your dream. Besides, you’ll never shut up about it if you don’t go.”

“But Julie.” Mark grimaced. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Mark.” Julie hissed. “Go.”

Using a period instead of a comma separates the two thoughts, making the "dialogue" tags into to action tags (I’ll get to that next post). The words are no longer describing how the line was said, but an action taking place between, after or before lines. My favorite thing about this example is that it points out the problem with Said Bookisms in general, mainly out how ridiculous they sound. I don’t know why Mark grimaced in the middle of the talking or why Julie hissed, but at least now the described scene is physical possible.