Humans are not birds. Therefore, we should not chirp. But authors need ways to evoke certain emotions and images in a concise way, so they use “chirp” instead of “said” on occasion. I noticed this most recently in Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays, but I think I was on alert because he used “stated” too many times (31) for my taste. I could probably write a post about why I think Tingle used “stated” so much, but I’m not going to.

The definition of “chirp” is “a short, high-pitched sound”. Unless the character is saying a single-syllable word, and just one of them, they’re not chirping. They’re just… not.

Out of curiosity, I ran a search for the word “chirp” in all the Holiday Heat stories I’ve written so far — January through November. I found “chirp” used one time — out of 334 stories — in the story for August 25:

He was right; just as he was draining the water from the pot, Samantha came into the kitchen. Charlie’s daughter was about three inches taller than Jeannette, with light-brown hair that had bright pink ends and and eyes the same color as the natural part of her hair. Her face was mostly round, and she had a nose piercing as well as several in each ear. She was wearing a dark-red dress that came down to her knees, and her feet, like Charlie’s and Jeannette’s, were bare. She also had on a pair of dark-rimmed glasses. “Hi,” she said, her voice a pleasant chirp. “I’m Samantha.”

Just saying “hi” can be a chirp. It’s one syllable, said quickly. (I mean, you can say “hi” slowly, but who does that?)

I also ran a search on Bury Your Gays on my Kindle, and found the word chirp used five times. Only once was it used to describe a bird, and only once was it used to describe a single-syllable sound. But to be honest I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t already been on alert, as I said. The trick of good writing is to make the reader think about what’s happening, not about the writing itself. I mean, sure, I’ll occasionally do some grammatical acrobatics to make a point or because I think it looks cool, but in general you want your reader to be absorbed in the story, not in the style.

To be fair, I really like Chuck Tingle’s books — every one I’ve read has been enjoyable in some way — and I do think Bury Your Gays is good. You should check it out. Just, if the use of “stated” as a dialogue tag bothers you, you’re going to need to get over it.

Oh, and for comparison’s sake, I ran a search for the word “stated” in Devil’s Gun by Cat Rambo, which I recently finished, and not once was it used as a dialogue tag. So it can definitely be done. I did it — I don’t once use “stated” in Holiday Heat, although that’s because it personally bothers me. I actually haven’t used the word “stated” in any fiction — erotica or otherwise — since Lessons, which came out in 2021. I guess I have more of an issue with the word than I thought. Though, to be fair, I tend to avoid dialogue tags where I can, instead having the characters doing something to evoke the emotion.

I guess my issue overall is writing that draws attention to itself through word usage — chirping, stating, popping things in one’s mouth. But if I can write over 500,000 words without using “stated” as a dialogue tag and only using “chirped” once, so can you.