He Interjected, She Exclaimed

[image error]Or He Said, She Said

Let’s take a look at dialogue. In particular, the use of the word “said” vs. other alternatives. Deciding which way to go can be confusing. Basically, there are two ends of the spectrum on this issue:

School A says: Avoid overuse of the word “said.” Vary the text up using other dialogue tags (murmured, cried, shouted, etc…). There was a thread in one of the writing groups I belong to about this. One guy said a fellow writer had sent him a list of over two hundred possible...