# Is it a western genre convention? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 31, 2018, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789 "2018-10-31T17:03:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/21 "2018-11-01T18:55:12Z")
> [@rainy](#): > > Oh its noticeable. [It’s much less noticeable than said-bookisms](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/said-bookism), which have been [thundered against before](http://www.fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue%205/tags.htm). [Of course, leave it to TVTropes to start the page on the subject with one of the amusing examples](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaidBookism): > [@](#): > > “Are you lost, Daddy?” I asked tenderly. > “Shut up,” he explained. > — Ring Lardner, _The Young Immigrants_ ---
**Author:** ![Satchmo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/satchmo/32/4223_2.png) [@Satchmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satchmo)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/22 "2018-11-01T19:42:45Z")
Could it be a factor that many of the western and such books were written at a time when authors were paid strictly ‘per word’? I’ve read that many a western hero never hit the bad guy with the first bullet so there were lots of “Bang! but whitehat missed.” “Bang! Black Bart shot, but also missed?” until 5 or all 6 bullets had been used. I even remember a story of an editor complaining “Is Whitehat ever going to become a better shot?” being answered by “Not at 1/4 cent a word, he’s not.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/23 "2018-11-02T13:21:51Z")
Where the “Said Red, said Ted, said Red, said Ted” convention gets infuriatingly annoying is in audiobooks. Especially when Red has a western drawl, and Ted a clipped brogue… and the “saids” are inserted in the author’s neutral speaking voice. I skip all those when I’m reading out loud (to kids, or at a short story party), especially when the speaker is obvious. WHY can’t audiobook narrators do that? I stopped reading one book due to that (plus the reader had the worst _Amurr’can_ accent… the one character from Boston sounded a lot like John Wayne). ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/24 "2018-11-02T14:09:13Z")
I always avoid using “said” when writing dialogue. Not that I replace it with painful thesaurus-fuls of alternatives like “uttered” or “exclaimed” or anything like that (unless they’re appropriate, like a shout or whisper might need). I just frame it with a sentence in a way that makes it obvious who is speaking. Easier to do in a back-and-forth between just two characters. ETA: I see **MrAtoz** basically just said the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/25 "2018-11-02T14:20:56Z")
As I said (no pun intended), though, I’ve sometimes gotten lost in a back-to-forth dialogue without any speech tags and have had to start all over again to figure out who said what to whom. So I appreciate an occasional use of them. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2018, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/26 "2018-11-03T10:28:19Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > If you are reading westerns from authors who wrote them in the late 1800s or early 1900s (Zane Grey, for example, wrote most of his famous stuff from about 1910 to the late 1930s), then the writing style of the times was much different. Similarly, watching a movie from the 1930s can be a painful experience for someone raised on the movies of the 1990s. Zane Grey is strange to read now, but it’s not because of his dialog. His words are actually quite OK. And his descriptions of the desert wouldn’t appear in modern pulp fiction, but they aren’t painful. Plotting is slow by modern standards, but what’s jarring is his virtue signalling / political correctness, which is – different --. It’s close enough so that you can see what he’s getting at, but also discordant. His strong female characters are… the wrong kind of strong female characters. Dickens doesn’t have that problem: his good characters are good, and his bad characters are bad. Zane Grey has moral ambiguity, and it falls in a strangely dated kind of place. ---
**Author:** ![MacCat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maccat/32/216_2.png) [@MacCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacCat)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2018, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/27 "2018-11-07T02:55:54Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > Everyone likes to seize on the ejaculate–Ewww, that’s not exactly what I meant to say! > > Everyone likes to mention Doyle’s use of “ejaculate” to mean “say something forcefully,” but it wasn’t really a commonplace usage. From the original (1929) version of _The Hardy Boys_ **The Secret Of The Caves** … “What a queer duck he is!” exclaimed Biff. “I’ll say he is!” ejaculated Chet Morton. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2018, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789/28 "2018-11-07T10:44:02Z")
> [@MacCat](#): > > From the original (1929) version of _The Hardy Boys_ **The Secret Of The Caves** … > > “What a queer duck he is!” exclaimed Biff. > > “I’ll say he is!” ejaculated Chet Morton. This is a good recipe for food to read such books by. [Bukkake Udon](https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/08/bukkake-udon-japanese-noodle-broth-recipe.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-western-genre-convention/823789.md?page=1)