Wednesday, December 16, 2020

"Said"

I recently downloaded a free Audible audiobook written by a well-known science fiction author (who is younger than I am).  The "cover" of the audiobook states "The New York Times Bestseller" and "Winner of the Hugo Award", so we're not dealing with some run-of-the-mill wannabe writer here.

Thus I am flummoxed by what I consider a serious writing flaw--a flaw that's amplified by the audiobook format.  Darned near every sentence in which a character speaks ends in the word "said".

"Blah blah blah," he said.  "Blee blee blee," she said.  "Neener neener neener," he said.  It's extremely grating, especially in short, staccato sentences like those above.  Said said said.  Sure, every once in awhile a character might have "asked" something, but is "said" the only such verb in the writer's repertoire?  Might not a character have "replied", or "responded", or "retorted", or "interjected", or "answered" once in awhile?  Breaking out my thesaurus I find "speak", "tell", "state", "affirm", "mention", "allege", and "recite" as synonyms for "say".  I've created quite the list to choose from without any effort to speak of.

I'm enjoying the story, but I'd enjoy it much more if every other sentence didn't end in "said".

12 comments:

orangemath said...

The first Harry Potter had a similar problem

Anonymous said...

There's apparently a debate about this.
https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/keep-it-simple-keys-to-realistic-dialogue-part-ii

Darren said...

I disagree with that author. The repetition of a word, especially at the end of consecutive short sentences, is distracting. I liked the suggestion to put a "beat of action" in, as that makes the writing sound even better.

But said said said? The author needs a more advanced vocabulary.

Anonymous said...

What book?

Steve USMA '85 said...

I totally agree with you on this.

I read a lot of Science Fiction, any reason you aren't telling us the author/book? Don't think you will get sued by critiquing a book.

ObieJuan said...

Its the woke left. First they control our pronouns, now they're limiting our verbs. Burn that book!

Pseudotsuga said...

Winner of the Hugo award = winner of the Leftist/ Progressive popularity contest. It's not about writing quality, mind you.

Darren said...

My goal here wasn't to trash the book or the author, just that one annoying flaw. So now that you know that, if you *really* want to know, I'll mention the book and the author.

Can't burn the book, though. It's an audiobook--narrated by Will Wheaton! This is the 3rd audiobook I've purchased with Wheaton as a narrator (the others being Ready Player One and Ready Player Two), and I have to admit that he does a great job.

Anonymous said...

I'm actually just looking for new books to read. Do you have GoodReads?

Darren said...

Since I don't know what GoodReads is, no, I'd say I don't have it!

If you like action/adventure novels, I'm a fan of Clive Cussler's "The Oregon Files" series. Clive died not too long ago, but I just saw a new Oregon Files book in Sam's Club and bought it. Probably the last one!

Anonymous said...

I just had the same problem with an audiobook I was listening to. Whatever happened to using some synonyms for said? It was annoying.

Luke said...

When it comes to fiction audiobooks, I really wish more were turned into radio plays, rather than a strict reading of the book. Yes, you would still need narration for some of the "visual" cues, but most of the otherwise "audio" cues could easily be done with sound effects, and conversations would be much easier to follow with multiple voices.