Having ‘said’ that!

Hi there!

It’s Thursday

and

I am back!

When we practice Public Speaking we are often told to put in dialogues into our speech to make it more interesting and to create a connect with our audience.

Last week, I called our Master Coach.

He said, “Hi Devyani, how are you?”

He then chuckled a little and said,” you always call me on Wednesdays. Is it because you are stressed about Thursdays?”

I said, “No I dont always call you only on Wednesdays. You have got your statistics wrong. Besides, today is Tuesday!”

“Oh dear!” he said “how did I miss that?” and gave his signature full throated laugh.

Now analyse the dialogue. Apart from noticing the jovial nature of our Master Coach, what else did you notice?😊

Did you notice how many times I have used the dialogue tag of ‘he said’ and ‘I said’?

Excessive usage of he said, she said, I said actually diminishes the value of the dialogue, makes it monotonous and boring,
thereby deviating from its main purpose – of creating interest.

So which are those words which can be used instead of ‘said’? Which are those words which would make your dialogues natural and engrossing?

Let’s discuss that. 😊

First things first:-

What is a ‘dialogue tag’?

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 is also important. It would be strange, for example, for a character to ‘sneer’ the words ‘I love you’. ‘Sneer’ connotes contempt which is contrary to love.

Use ‘said’ sparingly

The word ‘said’, like ‘asked’, gives no colour and personality to a character’s utterance.

In conversation between characters, alternatives for ‘said’ can tell the reader:

1. The individual emotional or mental states of the conversants
2. The degree of conflict or ease in the conversation
3. What is the nature of the relationship between characters (for example, if one character always snaps at the other this will show that the character is dominanting and perhaps unkind towards the other)

The following are few of the dialogue words that can be used instead of ‘said’. They have been categorised by the kind of emotion or scenario they convey:

Anger:😠

Shouted, bellowed, yelled, snapped, cautioned, rebuked.

Affection:😍

Consoled, comforted, reassured, admired, soothed.

Excitement:🤓

Shouted, yelled, babbled, gushed, exclaimed.

Fear:😨

Whispered, stuttered, stammered, gasped, urged, hissed, babbled, blurted.

Determination:😬

Declared, insisted, maintained, commanded.

Happiness:😀

Sighed, murmured, gushed, laughed.

Sadness:😟

Cried, mumbled, sobbed, sighed, lamented.

Conflict:🤺

Jabbed, sneered, rebuked, hissed, scolded, demanded, threatened, insinuated, spat, glowered.

Making up:💏

Apologised, relented, agreed, reassured, placated, assented.

Amusement🥳

Teased, joked, laughed, chuckled, chortled, sniggered, tittered, guffawed, giggled, roared.

Storytelling:👸🤴

Related, recounted, continued, emphasized, remembered, recalled, resumed, concluded.

A word of Caution

Too many dialogue tags can make your dialogue start to feel like a compendium of emotive speech-verbs.

Remember dialogue tags are the salt and spice in a dialogue and not the whole meal.🍱

Use emotive dialogue tags only where necessary and for emphasis.

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.

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.”

The second dialogue seems better.
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. When you are speaking the dialogue, you can put the correct emotions (of indignation) in this line.

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.

I hope you would find the above list of words useful. Use them appropriately, and just see the difference! 👍🏻😊

Last week, I called our Master Coach.
“Hi Devyani, how are you?”, he greeted.
” You always call me on Wednesdays. Is it because you are stressed about Thursdays?” he teased, chuckling a bit.

“No, I dont always call you only on Wednesdays. You have got your statistics wrong. Besides, today is Tuesday!”, I smirked.

“Oh dear! How did I miss that?” , he laughed, full throated, in his signature style. 😄

Isn’t it much, much better? 😊