He Said, She Said

Gone are the days of the simple “he said” or “she said”.  Today’s writers often times feel the need to end their character’s dialogue with a descriptive tag.  While there is nothing inherently wrong in doing so, it does show a certain amount of laziness when taken to the extreme.  ”Laziness!?”.  I can see your eyebrows arched on that one.  You thought ending your dialogue with a simple “she said” was lazy didn’t you?  Nope.

Don’t believe me?

“Rick,” Sarah smiled sweetly.  ”Surely you are kidding?”

“Nope,” he grinned.

“But,” she frowned. “Using ’said’ at the end of every sentence is boring.”

“Not so,” he lectured. “Remember my golden rule ’show instead of tell’?  This falls into it.”

“Ugh,” she groaned. “Here we go again…”

Now let’s look at my exchange with Sarah in another way.

Sarah lips curled into a smile.  ”Rick.  Surely you are kidding?”

“Nope,” Rick said.  His grin widened.

Sarah’s smile faltered. “But,” she said. “Using ’said’ at the end of every sentence is boring.”

“Not so,” he said. “Remember my golden rule ’show instead of tell’? This falls into it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ugh,” she said. “Here we go again..”

By replacing your dialogue’s descriptive tags with a simple “he said, she said” you open up the opportunity to show instead of tell.  ”Sarah’s smile faltered” replaced a lazy “she frowned“. And by rolling her eyes she conveyed the same bit of attitude as “she groaned”.

I’m not saying “she groaned” or “he replied” doesn’t have their places in your writing.  They do as long as they don’t take over. You can help shed the stigma that “he said, she said” seems to suffer in dialogue writing these days.  

“It’s not so hard,” Sara said with smile…