Agree or disagree? Editor says to stick with "said" and "asked"

Posted on January 6, 2020 at 10:23 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

During the creative-writing portion of eighth-grade English class, the teacher gave us a handout of one hundred ways to say “said” without actually using the word “said.”

If editor Christopher Hoffmann had been in that classroom, he would’ve likely taken it out of our hands and torn it up — or at least offered a number of caveats.

Check out Hoffmann’s opinion on when to use alternatives to “said” and “asked” and what your dialogue-tag choice says about your fiction in a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog.

And by all means, share your opinion, whether it's a concurring or dissenting one.