![]() ![]() Examples include ‘said’, ‘asked’, ‘replied’, ‘whispered’, ‘muttered’, ‘yelled’, ‘continued’ and ‘added’. ‘Can I stick to non-fiction editing?’ he asked.Įffective dialogue tags use verbs from which the reader can infer that the action of speech is taking place.‘I’m interested in learning about dialogue,’ ze replied.‘Are you enjoying reading that blog post,’ Louise said.Into the breach I say.A dialogue tag, or speech tag, is the short piece of text that tells a reader that a character is speaking, and which character is speaking. headlong against the preference of the average reader, literary agents and popular wisdom. better yet, if a word DOESN"t end with LY, I suggest ADDING LY. Exactly what I'm saying.īut you guys go ahead, splatter those adverbs and adjectives all over the damn place. So he avoids, removes and deletes as many as possible on edit mode. Stephen KING? A whole chapter in his book 'On Writing' These folks can see beyond the vision of it as a RULE and realize that there is that 1% situation where it doesn't detract.Īnd yes, you could open a Stephen King novel right now and find an adverb in seconds. Just happens to be a preference of thousands of writers who have written thousands of web blogs on it. I just know that when I read crappy prose, it often includes useless words such as adverbs and adjectives that are trying to shore up weak prose. There are those of frequency and those that describe situation or condition. Of course there are different classes of adverbs. So yeah, adverbs and adjectives are OK there. It either sounds like dialogue or it doesn't. nor do suggestions or recomendations or standards or trends. What happens in dialogue stays in dialogue. I suppose I should have clarified for the literal minded. The scent of musk and engine-oil caused a little flutter somewhere near her heart. ![]() "Bob." Alice leaned close, running a finger down his tie. I blogged recently elsewhere about some sort of body language dictionary and how useful it would be, but really this just comes from experience and observation of people and their behaviours. Use body language, in place of verbal speech tags in some cases. They might lean in close as they make their utterance. they may perceive a certain scent, redolent of some long-gone time. The point there being that sometimes you have to venture outside of the word class to get what you are after.Īdditionally if you want to portray someone saying something lovingly, think about their body language and/or internal dialogue, depending on PoV. There's no limit, though of course sometimes the result can be unutterable rubbish eg: "Bob," Alice breathed, "have you daubed some love oils into your beard?" "Bob," Alice purred, "your beard bristles most bushily this night!" "Bob," Alice said lovingly, "your beard looks extra bushy tonight!" With that in mind I sometimes pick a word, any word, that captures the concept of lovingness as performed by that person, and turn it into a verb if it isn't, so: The word you choose will help portray them and sketch them out. Think about the character doing the saying. This is something I think about alot, because, let's face it, "said lovingly" sounds. I know that embrace has to do with love but that is more physical rather than verbal. The phrase here where I might want a synonym of it with just 1 word is said lovingly. Robin said "That may be but it is often better to be cautious" Lisa said lovingly "But why do we need a shelter? If we were able to survive all these years without a shelter then there is no reason why we couldn't survive without a shelter with children." Robin said "We have survived all these years without a shelter but now we really need one." Here is an example where I may want a 1 word synonym of a phrase: So if I am wanting a synonym that has just 1 word of any given phrase, how should I go about it? ![]() ![]() However I have noticed that a thesaurus usually only works for single words and not for phrases like said lovingly. I know that a thesaurus is really good for finding synonyms and antonyms and that a dictionary is good to have on hand for finding the definitions of those(and some dictionaries have synonyms and their definitions also like the World Book Dictionary by Thorndike Barnhart). I am editing Life on Kepler Bb chapter by chapter and I am adding more to it. Now it may sound like I am talking about synonyms of the word phrases from the title but really I am talking about synonyms of things like said lovingly. ![]()
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