Attribution — Who’s Talking? Having been boiled in John Gardners’ books The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist, I’m fully in on attribution being subtle and near-invisible to the reader. Consider: He said, “I am outraged.” versus He cried in a strident far-reaching shriek, “I am outraged.” A lot easier to go purple-prose with bad attribution. A lot easier to clutter the page with semaphores to instruct the reader how to interpret the tone and delivery of the dialogue.