The authors of the book suggest using the word "said" almost exclusively to attribute speech. They put forth the idea that the dialogue itself, along with description of what the characters are doing while they talk, should allow the reader to figure out that the character was angry, or whispering, or whatever most of the time.
Okay, I have a really big problem with this suggestion. Having run across books where "said" is actually used like that, I know for a fact that after a while it begins to grate as I'm reading it. Proper or not, it reads as stilted dialogue if overused.
Now there's a writing problem that I'd love some suggestions on but to be honest I'm not sure if this concerns introspection or some form of narrative that I don't know the term for. Are narratives of memories the same thing as introspection? Where does one begin and where do they stop?
A while back when I was attempting to sort out the scenes from SANCTUARY into the NEBS outline (this was before I started calling it HAVEN), there were several narrative passages of memory where Lois was thinking about things that had already happened, sort of flashbacks but not, that I marked as possibly needing to be expanded into actual scenes. Only I'm not sure if they really need to be to tell the truth. I mean realistically there is only so much one can put into each story. So how does one decide?
