"Said Bookism?" Alice interrogated. "What's that?"
"Well," Bob exposited, "it's a variety of Purple Prose in which the writer goes out of their way to avoid the word said."
"Why would they do this?" ejaculated Alice.
"Because," explicated Bob, "it was the fashion at one point. There were even 'said books' you could get mail order with lists of the words that can be used instead of said as saying said was discredited during that time. That's where the name of the trope comes from," he further proclaimed.
"But Said Bookism itself is a Discredited Trope these days?" Alice queried.
"Absolutely," confirmed Bob, "it's considered redundant," he proceeded, "because dialogue should speak for itself without needing fancy tags to convey its meaning and intention."
"That makes sense," Alice concurred.
"In many bad cases, the dialogue tags end up repeating what the dialogue itself is telling us," Bob stated in addition, revealing that in the worst cases the dialogue tags end up repeating what the dialogue itself is telling us. "In the very worst cases, they use a substitute for 'said' that you can't actually use to say something. People sigh, and say things, but they don't sigh things that they say."
"Oh, dear," Alice murmured. "How do more experienced writers get around lots of dialogue, then? If repeating 'said' over and over is annoying, and using dozens of synonyms for 'said' is also annoying, then how do you write so that it's not annoying?"
"Well." Bob's eyes darted upward as he thought. "You could use body language instead."
Alice gave Bob a confused look. "How does that work?"
"It's simple." Bob gestured. "The word 'said' isn't really the important part of the sentence. What you're trying to do is draw attention to who is speaking, not the fact that they are speaking."
"And that's so the reader doesn't accidentally mistake one person's dialogue for someone else's, like if we left off the names entirely."
"Exactly!" Bob smiled seductively. "So having a person perform some action just before speaking is as good as explicitly telling the reader that they're speaking. It also gives the author another tool for delivering sub text that you couldn't get across with just text — as long as you don't use the action as another said bookism. 'She smiled. "I'll be glad to go." works, but '"I'll be glad to go," she smiled' is an impossible said-bookism."
"That could get old too, though." Alice frowned. "Just like in video games where the characters just perform actions randomly as they're talking."
"I guess so." Bob shrugged. "In that case you always have 'said' or its synonyms as a fallback, at least, so long as you don't overuse it."
"Are there any similar tropes?" Alice requested.
"There are!" enthused Bob. "It's not just like Purple Prose, but also sort of like Delusions of Eloquence and Author Vocabulary Calendar," he noted augustly.
"So where can I see what it looks like?" Alice inquired.
"Well," said Bob, "right here..."
