Everyone has pet peeves. Little, innocuous offenses that immediately annoy us or, in some cases, unholy rage. The range of offenses is wide, from bad drivers to slow walkers to open-mouthed chewing (I feel like I might be triggering some ambient rage just from mentioning some of these). Whatever your pet peeves are, they rarely affect your life in any meaningful way. The moment someone mentions it, though? You have an entire dissertation ready to go on why That Thing is the worst.

If I had to pick a writing pet peeve that unlocks my ranting, raving side, it’s “Said is Dead”. The minute I see the advice pop up on a writing forum or I stroll down an English department and see the “Hundred Different Words to Replace Said” poster hanging in the hall, my eyes roll of their own volition. This Writing “Rule” is so easy to disassemble and yet so hard to get anyone to stop doing. Let’s look at what issue “Said is Dead” is trying to fix and how it’s gotten so out of hand.

Writing decent dialogue is a challenge to learn. Dialogue done well hides within the text, moving the story along but rarely drawing attention to itself. Bad dialogue sticks out like a sore thumb and can destroy a reader’s immersion. Walking this tightrope as a new writer can be tricky. Dialogue reveals so many things – character, action, plot, setting – that getting it wrong can make or break a story. That’s why, when writers practice dialogue, they focus on natural-sounding language or convincing characters. Formatting and dialogue tags are often an afterthought. 

The basic format for conversations between two characters involves keeping each line of dialogue in a separate paragraph and ensuring the reader can tell who’s talking. As such, beginner’s dialogue ends up composed like this:

“Dialogue,” Character said.

The dialogue tag (“Character said”) works well for novice writers. It informs the reader who’s doing the speaking and puts the focus on what they’re saying. The problem starts when the beginning writer, so focused on making a convincing conversation, doesn’t stop to think about the dialogue tags at all and ends up writing this: 

“Excuse me, I can’t find your restroom,” the old woman said.

“Bathroom’s down the hall on the left,” Jeff said.  

“I looked there and I didn’t see it,” she said. 

“I promise you, ma’am, it’s just down that hall. Last door on the left,” he said. 

“You are being very unhelpful, you know,” she said.
 
“I’ve told you where the bathroom is,” Jeff said.

“Well, it’s not there,” she said. 

“Lady, the bathroom didn’t get up and walk away,” Jeff said. 

The constant use of “said” and a lack of sentence structure variety leads to a monotonous, dull read. The dialogue itself is all we have to decipher tone and, given the mundane nature of the content, isn’t very illuminating. This is where someone might offer the advice “Said is Dead” to liven up the conversation and force the writer to consider the importance of dialogue tags.

The advice “Said is Dead” tells the writer to treat the word “said” as a dead word or a word that can’t be used. It claims that what’s killing the momentum of the conversation is the constant use of the word “said”. Instead of “said”, the writer should use a different word that describes how the dialogue is being spoken to inject a seemingly boring dialogue section with feeling. Take an example line from above: 

“I’ve told you where the bathroom is,” Jeff said.

And compare it to switching out the word said for a descriptor: 

“I’ve told you where the bathroom is,” Jeff growled.

Replacing the word “said” with “growled” gives the reader a better idea of how Jeff feels and how he sounds to those around him. In the first example, Jeff may have been lightly exasperated; now, with the knowledge that he’s growling, we know he’s annoyed and might be on his last straw. It’s a helpful clue that gives us insight into character, action, and the stakes at play.

While this advice works in theory and is easy to teach, there is a consequence to such an easy solution. Take a look at what happens to the example dialogue when we remove “said” but change nothing else: 

“Excuse me, I can’t find your restroom,” the old woman remarked.

“Bathroom’s down the hall on the left,” Jeff sighed.

“I looked there and I didn’t see it,” she tittered.

“I promise you, ma’am, it’s just down that hall. Last door on the left,” he muttered.

“You are being very unhelpful, you know,” she scolded. 

“I’ve told you where the bathroom is,” Jeff growled.
 
“Well, it’s not there,” she hollered.

“Lady, the bathroom didn’t get up and walk away,” Jeff screamed.

Killing the word “said” did add emotion and action to the scene. However, all the new tags are doing a lot of heavy lifting and slowing down the pace. Each tag adds new connotations to the dialogue ahead of it, and not all the connotations match up with the existing actions or emotions in the scene. Trying to imagine an old woman hollering about a missing bathroom or how Jeff got to the point of screaming within the span of a sentence forces the reader to pay more attention to the dialogue tags than the actual dialogue. The reader spends longer trying to decipher what is happening around the dialogue and why than on the actual words the characters are saying. 

Then, there’s my pet peeve, hiding in a way that some people may not even notice:

“Bathroom’s down the hall on the left,” Jeff sighed.

Imagine a sigh. Better yet, go ahead and sigh- a deep breath in and a heavy, audible exhale out. Now, try and speak while sighing. Hard, isn’t it? Takes concentration and effort to do? Then it’s not a natural way of speaking. Anything that would impede normal, everyday speech like sighing, giggling, laughing, wheezing, or coughing should not be used as a dialogue tag. If someone is laughing and forcing themselves to speak, then they are speaking through laughter. If someone is coughing while trying to talk, they are talking around or between coughs. I’ve read a lot of fiction where characters sigh their monologues- hell, I used to write it- and it kills me inside. If you’re going to replace “said”, you should at least be sure you’re replacing it with an actual speech descriptor, not an action that inhibits speech.

If too many “said”s is dull and monotonous, and too few “said”s is a cacophonous mess, what is the solution? I believe “Said is Dead” is toted out when someone isn’t sure how to address bad dialogue and wants to start with something easy. Usually, though, the tags aren’t the main issue. They’re a side effect of the true culprit: bad sentence structure. 

The importance of varying the length and complexity of your sentences would take an entire extra post. Suffice to say, if you have a lot of sentences of the same length, your work won’t flow well and may come across as rote or monotone. Short sentences should break up long ones. Long sentences should appear after a spat of short ones, often after concluding an action. The same can be said for dialogue. If you don’t vary your sentence structure around the words the characters are saying, the conversation will read like a transcript, not a conversation. 

Another issue is the lack of action around the dialogue. Conversations don’t take place in an empty room with each person standing in a circle and politely taking turns talking. Characters move, characters multitask, characters fidget. The words they say shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all of their character development; after all, a lot of people don’t say what they mean or mean what they say. Conversations need to be alive and messy, just like the people having them, to come across as real. 

Applying those two changes- varying sentence structure and adding action- to our original example, gives us this: 

“Excuse me, I can’t find your restroom.”

Jeff peered over the top of his newspaper to see a small, gray-haired woman shuffling towards his desk. He lifted the newspaper until she was out of view, muttering, “Bathroom’s down the hall on the left.”

A pause. He could hear her breathing, air sliding up and down her throat like a slide whistle. 

“I looked there and I didn’t see it,” she said. 

More silence. She wasn’t moving. Jeff dropped his newspaper into his lap.

“I promise you, ma’am, it’s just down that hall,” he said, pointing behind him, “Last door on the left.”

Her lips pursed so tight they disappeared behind her teeth. “You are being very unhelpful, you know.”

Jeff scowled. “I’ve told you where the bathroom is,” he growled, lifting the newspaper and snapping it loudly back into place. 

“Well, it’s not there.”

The paper crinkled in Jeff’s hands. He threw it down on his desk and stood. With an ink-stained hand, he pointed at the hallway behind him and leaned down towards the old woman’s pasty face, his own skin pale with rage. 

“Lady,” he whispered, “The bathroom didn’t get up and walk away.”

The addition of descriptions and actions have not only made the conversation more lively and easy to follow, but they’ve also given us crucial information to understand the characters and their motivations. We now know Jeff is pissed because he wants to read his paper in peace. We know that the old lady is adamant there’s nothing there and feels entitled to Jeff’s help. It’s messy, it’s weird, and it’s accomplished with both unique dialogue tags (growled, whispered) and “said”. There were even sections with no dialogue tags because the description fill in the blanks for us. 

“Said is Dead” is a reductive, often useless “Rule” that creates characters who sigh-talk and bog down dialogue with heavy-handed emotion. Rarely is it the solution to poorly written dialogue. “Said” is actually quite useful, a quiet hero that can disappear into a dialogue tag so long as the structure around it is solid. If I were to rename this rule, I’d call it “Said is Quiet”. Draw attention to it and it doesn’t fare well. Use care while building around it and “said” can be a solid foundation in any written conversation.

Now do me a favor: go back through your manuscript and circle all the “said”s and all the unique descriptors. Tally them. Figure out which work and which don’t. When you’re done, save me a headache, and be sure to delete all your “he/she/they sighed”s. My pet peeve rage thanks you.