talking among ourselves

I hate dialogue. I mean, it's important to have dialogue in a character-driven story, because some of the characters' traits only become apparent through speech; and speech allows you direct access to their thoughts. But I hate the need to put words around the dialogue, to explain who said what. I find myself having to revert to the thesaurus just to break the dreaded threesome of "said", "asked" and "replied".

So here is my attempt to be vaguely useful to other newbie writers: 37 synonyms for "said". ( Read more... )