Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
I can't guarantee it will be good as it's spur of the moment, but here you go.
"I can't stand it anymore," John said, slamming the book down on the table.
vs.
"I can't stand it anymore," John exclaimed frustratedly.
In the former, I'm not telling you how John's feeling, I'm letting his action of slamming the book tell you he's angry and frustrated. In the latter I'm telling you how he said the words and what he felt.
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so when you say "dialog tags" you mean like "exclaimed", "cried", "shouted", "murmured"... ? if editors really *are* encouraging writers to use "said" in place of ALL these tags (and countless others i have not listed) i think that is pretty lamentable !! why actively encourage the impoverishment of the language ?? "exclaimed" does not mean the same as "said" *or* as "murmured" and it conveys a completely different tone. i don't say you can't or shouldn't complement these "tags" by action, as "slamming the book down" is very expressive ; but people's vocabularies are tending to shrink progressively already, why hasten this ? english is a rich and varied language, i would think it is in the publisher's best interest (and everyone else's) to encourage writers to take advantage of this.
i can remember reading a story written by a friend of mine (non professional) : at every line, he said the character "reached" somewhere / something (parvenir). when i pointed out that he used the word "reached" a lot (too much...), he argued that it was to avoid using the word "got" too much, and vary the language. but ironically he ended up doing exactly what he wanted to avoid, with a different word. i think the more different ways a writer knows how to express something, the better... it makes for more nuanced and precise writing.