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Weird Jim wrote:But you’re quite right, the pulp writers did use a lot of them. Perhaps the smart ones described more. at cents a word, if you could fit more in, to a point, it made for a larger cheque.
Lovecraft. Exactly what he was doing.
Read Harry Potter. Or the Eddings’ books, any of them. McCaffery. Lots of authors use and used saidisms.
Me, I refuse to give up a useful tool in my writer’s toolbox. While many times, people do merely say things, there are more than enough times that muttering, mumbling, murmuring, and whispering happen. A character who hollers is different than one who yells, screams, hoots, or screeches.
Saidisms should be appropriate to character and dialoge, though. Using the appropriate saidism takes practice and sensitivity. But YMMV.
Well, Uncle Ben syndrome is also random killing of loved one to provide motivation. It’s the random part that makes it annoying. If the point/theme of the story is stopping drunk driving, then there’s a reason someone killed by a drunk driver might motivate the story. But if someone is killed by a drunk driver, and the point of the story is to stop an atomic weapon from being siezed, well, there’d better be some justification there that connects to the STORY, not just to the character. That’s the problem with Uncle Ben. He’s killed to give Peter a guilt trip, not because Uncle Ben was important to the events going on. Now, if that random death was caused by someone who went on to be much more, well…
Basically, don’t connect the death to only the emotions of the MC. Connect it also to the events going on. And it sounds like you have.
I’d advise looking to thriller, conspiracy, and mystery tropes for your answer. Often, it’s a death of someone close to the MC that’s killed to give motivation. Consider those things for your inspiration.
Liquid Story Binder, PC only, has a good timeline part. I find it really useful when I have to map three different characters doing three different things in three different places.
