: Re: Advice on how to beat word repetition in dialogue Long story short: I default to simple words like "Said" in dialogue much too often. I'm hesitant to abuse the thesaurus due to advice I've

@Merenda569

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I tend to agree with not abusing the thesaurus on this one. I don't write a lot of dialogue, but I read a lot. As a reader, I pay attention to the dialogue itself and tend to view "said" as a punctuation mark. I would find it choppy if each piece of dialogue had a different attribution. Using "said" repeatedly (most of the time) allows the reader to focus on which person is saying what to whom. This is discussed pretty extensively in an article I've posted below. There is a lot of other good information in the article too, which discusses using action or "beat of action" during dialogue instead of changing attributions. In fact, based on the examples, you wouldn't even need attributions in those cases.

Edited to add: Just to further the point, each time you use a word outside the "norm" of dialogue, it forces the reader to think about/consider it, so you can see how that might potentially cause some choppiness. Unless this is how you "want" the reader to experience the dialogue, then I personally would not recommend it.

I'm curious to see what others think about this or if they have different perspectives on the matter.

Here is the article:
www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/keep-it-simple-keys-to-realistic-dialogue-part-ii

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