Using “said” without adverbs

Well, first you gotta understand that the point of these "rules" is because most novice writers overuse these tools.

There is nothing wrong with using adverbs or replacement nows. They are great when it's more important as to what the words in the conversation are, not necessarily what the character's reactions are.

Here is an example:

"You didn't call! You didn't text! Your mother and I were worried!" Michael shouted.

"What do you care?" Annie replied hotly. "You're not my real dad!"

"Go. Go to your room," Michael said.

"Fine!"

In this example, we can see that these two are having an argument. These dialogue tags work, but they are missing something. The point of action/narrative tags is to slow down the scene. If we are having an emotional conversation between a daughter and her father, we miss that emotion. But if I do this:

"You didn't call! You didn't text! Your mother and I were worried!" Michael shouted.

"What do you care? You're not my real father!" Annie's words hit Miichael like a punch to the stomach.

"Go. Go to your room," Michael replied flatly, turning away from Annie.

"Fine!" Annie stormed off. When he heard her door slam shut, tears began to roll down Michael's cheeks.

In the above example, I used a mix of all 4 tags. It's a rushed example, but you get more emotion out of the scene by getting the pain that Annie's words cause to Michael.

If the scene were more mundane, such as two characters shooting the shit, then "said" would be all you would need, even going so far as to drop tags, because what they are doing doesn't matter as much as the words.

/r/writing Thread