This is very interesting. And NJC's comment is even more.
Agents, publishers, the "Big Five", and the mafia around them have laid a set of "rules" they truly believe on. "It's the modern way of writing". "It's what the public prefers". "Its--" Wait? What the public prefers? A bunch of these gurus rejected JKR, the largest YA bestseller ever, thinking they "knew" what the public wanted, and it turned to be the other way around. Do agents really have the "nose"? Or do they only suppose they have it and buy, publish, and push a book they liked using all possible marketing tricks that, in the end, sell or partially sell the book only because, crafty as marketing people are, they ended up convincing the public to buy something the public doesn't need/want?
I think it's the latter. Through marketing means, publishing houses push books that aren't really bad, but that aren't literary jewels either, in the same way Tide pushes their detergent's sales via marketing campaigns and adds. When the finally hit the ROI and start making business, they think they're totally smart, that they've picked another book that sold ("as always" many would said while holding a cigar and drinking Scotch), and that it was because the book stuck to the so called "rules" they laid because they understand what readers prefer.
Don't use adverbs.
Don't use any other dialogue tag except said (a good example over these lines).
Stick to one POV, don't head-hop.
Etc.
Below, you may find some of the reason why JKR was rejected, taken from the letters she received (she published several of those letters time ago erasing the signatures):
Harry Potter is slow to start.
The first page of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is all telling and no showing.
The book doesn’t start where it should: with Harry, or “inside Harry’s head”.
The characters we meet at the start of the book are ones with which few readers could identify.
Having fat people (especially a fat boy) depicted as unbelievably nasty (fat boys are usually the bullied one, not the bully--this parenthesis is mine).
Not a new idea. By the time JKR submitted Harry Potter, Disney was airing "The Worst Witch", a sitcom about a teenage witch at a magical school.
But the readers didn't mind. Not one of them. They didn't care about a slow start. They didn't complain about not being in the right POV from the very beginning. Everybody disliked the Dursleys, but that didn't prevent any of us from reading the story. We all disliked the fat boy but, then again, we all kept reading. And yes, it was not a new idea at all. Not because of Disney, but because of a gazillion other similar stories, but children and grown-ups alike enjoyed reading yet another story about witches and wizards, up to the point of turning it into a best seller.
So... what are these rules useful for? Wanna learn the truth? For teaching, and that't it.
It's true that new writers, and specially those learning the craft in college or taking courses, tend to make the same mistakes. E.g,: When new writers head-hop, they tend to be confusing. Too many adverbs and the readers are paying more attention to the next adverb than to the plot. If every dialogue tab is an ejaculation, you end up washed in verbal semen after two pages. New writers (and I may well be one of them) tend to overuse certain tools. Hence, it's reasonable that teachesr--please underscore "teachers"--lay certain rules in behalf of their students. Only later, they will teach their students how to head-hop, use adverbs, etc., without making a mess of it.
But that agents and publishers try to set the rules on how to write in the XXI century, up to the point of providing a full list of words to be avoided in dialogue tags, is not only petulant but fascist. Goodness gracious! Where back to days of the League of Decency and their list of topics that must never be touched in fiction, only this time it's about how to write. The problem is that, despite the rules, the readers enjoy what they prefer and they don't care if there are too many adverbs, or if characters bark orders, sob prayers, or hiss threats. It seems all that readers want is good stories written in understandable English complying with the rules generally accepted for written English, but not necessarily with those laid by zealous, style policemen.
I would like to add a word about "show don't tell". I believe in it because, currently, a writer's main competition is the cinema. When you watch a movie, everything is shown, and only little, very little, is told, mainly through a narrators voice in off--if there is ever a narrator. So, while in prose everything is told and it's impossible to show anything, unless there are pictures, there's a way to help the reader to better imagine what the author is telling the reader. This technique is the famous "show don't tell", looking forward to create cinematographic effects in the readers' minds.
So, if a tagline indicates a character "barked" some words, it's easier for the reader to image that very character talking loudly in, or even shouting, short words resembling a dog's bark. It's certain people can't actually bark, but the image is helpful. Of course, if every character, in every opportunity, "barks" their words, the effect is completely lost. Used with moderation, two-purpose dialogue tags achieve both of them, despite what all the publishers in the world think about them.
Thanks God, nowadays we can self publish and don't give a shit about the so-called "rules".
Kiss,
Gacela
