He Said, She Said--Some Dialogue Tips
On one of the lists that I'm on, there was an extremely heated conversation about whether or not to us anything but said or asked as a dialogue tag. People were adamant that that was the only way, those in opposition were just as sure that other tags were better. Here is what I say: Robert Parker always used said as a dialogue tag--but his writing style was rather on the minimalist side. Don't get me wrong, I loved his books. And yes, the word "said" did become invisible. However, if you ever listened to an audio version of his books, "said" became tedious. So do I think you should use synonyms for "said" such as he pondered, exclaimed, exchanged, remarked, etc.? Or questioned, and other such synonyms for "asked"? The answer is no. The ideal would be that each character would have such an individual manner of speaking, that the reader could tell who was talking without any dialogue tags at all. However, that isn't always possi...