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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24519
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Generally speaking, "said" will be the most effective choice. As a writer, "said" might sound repetitive or too boring, but it's one of those few invisible words that the reader will just glide over. Anything else draws attention to itself.

If you're relying on _one_ specific word to convey the emotion from your dialogue, you might want to take another look at your scene. Your dialogue should stand for itself. You must be able to craft the scene in such a way where the reader should be able to effectively imagine how your characters say what they say.

In other words, this...

> "Leave me alone," he said angrily.
> 
> OR
> 
> "Leave me alone," he growled.

can be rewritten as this...

> "Leave me alone," he said, slamming the door. He stormed to the middle of the room, fists clenched, then kicked the chair beside his desk.

Exaggerated, but you get the point. Depending on how you construct the scene, your reader should be able to have a sense of the emotion that each character is feeling. What happens in the scene and what happened to lead up to the scene are more important things to consider than a single dialogue tag.

In your case, instead of "I yelled," go for "I said," or you could even remove the dialogue tag completely. Your character's action of dropping to his knees and grabbing Raaisel's face makes the reader understand his intentions. Even before you told me that the main character was growling, I heard his words in my head that way already. Considering how this scene is in the middle of your story, you should have established the main character and Raaisel's personalities by now, and the reader will also know their background. The reader will know the main character's relationship to Raaisel and how he feels toward his younger companion. So, when Raaisel sounds like he's blaming himself for the earthquake, the reader will understand that the main character will be very alarmed. _What_ he says ("Have you lost your mind?") is also a hint toward what he's feeling, so it works well enough for me.

As for the "I dropped to my knees and grabbed his face" part, I think you're gonna have to wait for another answer that addresses that. It sounds fine to me, but then again I don't know too much about your characters!

Original score: 2