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Amazing and Heartbreaking

WHAT LURKS BENEATH Comic

It's the spooky season...! To celebrate, please enjoy this 7-page horror comic featuring Brook that I made for "WHAT LURKS BENEATH", a One Piece horror zine full of incredible talent. After sales are only open until the end of October so please consider checking it out and grabbing a digital copy absolutely PACKED with amazing art & stories, and some of the nicest merch I've seen from a zine!

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Dialogue Tag Options Other Than "Said"

Writing "said" repeatedly in creative writing projects isn't necessarily bad. "Said" can be an excellent tool to support the flow of your prose. It can function like picture frames on a wall. It adds to your manuscript, but your readers may only read the whole dialogue tag occasionally.

Still, there can definitely be times when "said" gets used too many times in a row. Descriptive dialogue tags can add tension, variety, and depth to crucial moments in your manuscript.

Need a creative boost? Here's an extensive list of dialogue tag options besides "said."

Dialogue Tag Alternatives to "Said"

Acknowledged

Added

Agonized

Agreed

Announced

Apologized

Approved

Articulated

Asserted

Babbled

Backtracked

Bawled

Beamed

Began

Blubbered

Blurted

Bubbled

Called

Chattered

Cheered

Chimed in

Chortled

Chuckled

Commented

Communicated

Conferred

Congratulated

Complimented

Considered

Contended

Cried

Crooned

Declared

Denoted

Drawled

Elaborated

Emitted

Ended

Enunciated

Exclaimed

Expounded

Expressed

Giggled

Greeted

Grinned

Groaned

Gushed

Interjected

Jabbered

Joked

Laughed

Mentioned

Moaned

Mumbled

Noted

Observed

Orated

Persisted

Praised

Predicted

Pronounced

Quipped

Recited

Reckoned

Rejoiced

Related

Remarked

Repeated

Replied

Responded

Sang

Screeched

Shared

Slurred

Stated

Smiled

Snarled

Spat

Suggested

Swore

Thanked

Tittered

Told

Trilled

Urged

Uttered

Yammered

Yelled

Vocalized

Voiced

Other Helpful Resources

Need more inspiration? Here are a few other sources you can check out:

350 Other Words Than Said

Different Words to Use Instead of Said

500 Dialogue Tags Examples

Should You Always Use Dialogue Tags?

You don't have to! Conversations often happen in all genres of creative writing without constant dialogue tags. Once you establish who's saying what, you can format a conversation like this:

"You don't know what you're talking about," Joe said.

"Of course I do," Lucy replied, rolling her eyes. "I only got a Ph. D. in Chemistry."

"From one of the worst universities in the country."

"It's still accredited."

"Your thesis advisor was just arrested for academic fraud!"

"And yet I still passed all my finals."

You can keep up with who's saying what and the tone behind their voices without a tag for each line of dialogue. I wouldn't recommend doing that with every conversation (especially extensive ones) but you can take a break from tags if people are talking rapidly back and forth or if you just want to take a break.

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You'll know how to handle dialogue tags and descriptors as you practice. Reading your manuscript out loud can also point out when they're clunky or unnecessary. There's a necessary balance to making tags that you'll find more easily with each draft!

in another universe

This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8

Fic which focuses on Alfred’s reaction to Jason. He looks like he loves him and he feels like he loves him but when the chips are down Alfred does the necessary thing and walks over his dead grandson’s memory in order to keep his living son functioning. He judges and criticizes Bruce in the privacy of his mind but outwardly he comforts Bruce that there was never anything he could’ve done for the boy, he brought it upon himself. The living must move on peace must be upheld the hatchet must be buried. Alfred nobly grieves dishonestly, until he believes it too. (It’s not very hard.)

And then Jason comes back. He tears at the seams of Bruce that Alfred (and Dick and Tim) so nobly stitched back together. He says no the living need to look, this peace isn’t real, the hatchet is all we have.

And what can Alfred do except continue the lie? What can he do except continue to bury bury bury Jason in a distorted past? Jason is his grandson but Bruce was his son first. Bruce was here. Bruce. Takes precedence. He’s already made his choice. There is no way but forward. He can’t look back.

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

semi-related but if your game world's lore differentiates completely between healing magic and necromancy you're a fool a coward and a stupid motherfucker

oh yeah have i ever told yall of the academic war i have been an unwilling soilder in for the past two years

I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself

No Longer Human // Ask Polly: Help, I'm The Loneliest Person In The World! // Franz Kafka // Sue Zhao // Fingertips - Fortesa Latifi // Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky // Juansen Dizon // The Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway // On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong