Dialogue Tag Lines

Dialogue Tag Lines
Recently, while editing a book for a client, I came across the following line, “’You bitch,’ she said.” In my angel innocence, I suggested that maybe “said” could be spiced up a bit to underscore the obvious inherent intensity of the line. I thought that perhaps the author would consider “screamed,” “hissed,” or “cried” as alternatives, depending upon the author’s view of the precise emotional underpinnings of the scene.

Well, I may as well have slapped the Pope. As a mother would inform a child that Santa Claus is a spirit rather than a real person, my client/author told me that dialogue tag lines were constitutionally limited to “said.”

This “rule” struck me as sufficiently restrictive and unreasonable as to require a bit of research on my part, and, lo and behold, there is respectable authority for this injunction.
The rationale would seem to be that by using “said” over and over, it becomes invisible, which is apparently a very good thing.

I have two problems with this. First, things which happen over and over, like the Chinese Water Torture and tightening screws on an assembly line, do not become invisible, only irritating. Also, it never occurred to me that as an author fashioning words on a page, I should strive, as a summum bonum, to make them invisible. I could achieve that effect by not writing at all.

Now that I’ve been enlightened, I’m acutely sensitive to dialogue tag lines used by other authors. I’m happy to report that this “rule” is honored more in the breach than in its observance.

Other rules presented to me were that adverbs are suspect, that the passive voice is felonious, and that sentences more than ten words long must be chopped up like Lizzie Borden’s parents. We’ll deal with these absurdities in later articles.