"Said-bookisms." I knew what they were before I first heard the term, and I do not like them, and if you use them then I do not like you. But the kind I like least are the ones involving actions which have nothing to fucking do with the vocalization of words. Such as:


quote:
"I've got AIDS," he smiled.

quote:
"Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," Bob shrugged.

quote:
"J.K. Rowling was way too in love with this one," she purred.

God. It's like getting brain freeze every time I read one. The mind attempts to visualize an action which runs contradictory to dialogue and locks up, destroying the pace of the story. But to destroy your enemies, you must think like them. To that end, and for my own amusement, I've assembled this prompt. The subject is:

In which a character has just won, and is in desperate need of consolation.

And the conditions are:

Your story must involve dialogue in some capacity.

All dialogue must include said-bookisms and they must, without exception, be as elaborate as you can make them, while complementing what is actually being said.

For once this bad writing habit is going to be put in the harnesses and pull the story forward rather than rot in the road beside it. The point of this prompt is not to write an "ironically" bad piece where you find-and-replace the word "said" with as many overwrought substitutes as you can; the point is to create a story where the characters communicate with their actions, as the language would suggest, instead of just flexing their faces like abused stop-motion sculptures because you're afraid of repeating a four-letter word too many times. This is your chance to use an abused and rightly-maligned technique with thought and care, because if you don't then you will be yelled at slightly louder than usual.

You can use as much or as little dialogue as you like, but if you only include one or two lines of talk then those lines had better be fucking dynamite and my standards will be at once stringent and perilously unpredictable. And as for the subject - anything goes, but if any one of you comes within the same zip code as Shirley Jackson's The Lottery I'll drop your submission to the bottom of the pile and shovel dirt over it.

I look forward to your disappointments.