Editor's notes: I exclaimed that she retorted

Still here? I'm going to do a round-up of lots of little bugbears this time, as this is my penultimate Editor's notes post for now. 

Just say it

Some writing advice will tell you to avoid the word 'said'. And I spend a lot of editing time replacing words such as 'ejaculated', 'confessed', 'admitted', 'retorted', 'exclaimed', 'laughed', 'giggled' and 'interjected' with 'said'. I'm with Alison Tyler, who wrote on the How to Write Erotic Fiction blog, "'said' can go a long way". And she's put...