Reddit reviews I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

Uh, dude...I read a lot. I like to write. I've taken a class in creative writing. It was rude and unnecessary of you to imply that I'm uneducated. You'll note that I steered clear of personal insults in my original critique.

If you'd like to have a look at some books on the craft of writing, you'll find that using shit-tons of purple prose synonyms for "said" is constantly described as an amateur's mistake. Same with using tons of adverbs. Vivid writing derives most of its punch from strong, well-placed verbs.

A well-written book full of "he said, she said" would not be boring because we don't actually register the "saids" on a conscious level. And we shouldn't. The dialogue is what matters, or the actions that people perform while speaking the dialogue. Again, don't draw attention away from the content, to the text.

Recommended reading: http://www.amazon.com/On-Writing-Anniversary-Edition-Memoir/dp/1439156816

The TV Tropes entry for Said Bookism: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaidBookism

This one includes a great Twilight spoof that also demonstrates why Said Bookism is terrible: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0425238989

This is more to do with plot/characterization than sentence structure, but is also useful for writing in general: http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/538