I've a pet peeve rant.
About SCREAMING.
While SCREAMING.
And why all the SCREAMING, you ask?
Because of SCREAMING.
In writing.
Guys, !!! are meant for when your characters are LITERALLY YELLING, okay? Raising your voice is not considered screaming, and the number of !!! is not going to change how loud I hear your character's voice in my head. If you use !!! anywhere other than where it's practical, youuu...get this:
(Enjoy your daily laugh and a short respite from the raging monotony of this post.)
Now, I understand, sometimes, you have strange situations where suddenness is required and yelling seems to be in place. For example, let's pretend that Eriana has a fatal peanut allergy and her best friend Julia invited her out to Five Guys (which, for those of you who don't know, is the Southern In-and-Out wanna-be with complimentary peanuts, peanut, peanuts ebereeware). The scene might look like this:
Walking the street with her best friend, Julia folded her hands behind her neck in the afternoon heat and asked, "So, you want to grab a burger at Five Guys with me?"
Eriana replied, "NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
…
(⊙.☉)
...
(╬ Ò ‸ Ó)
...
(/-o-)/ ⌒ ┤
…
…aaand, I quit my job as an editor.
DO THIS, AND I'LL FLAY YOU ALIVE…or…I mean…if you give me writing with that many !!! in that context…I'll…er…flay your writing…alive?
You get my point.
Just don't do it.
"But I don't know how else to say this, CloooOOOooove," you argue.
Well, I'm SOOO GLAD YOU ASKED. *mumbles inaudibly*
Edit 1.) For Pete's sake, get rid of all those bloody exclamation marks, okay? One is good enough, and anymore than one is immature and unprofessional.
Edit 2.) Lengthen, lengthen, LENGTHEN. Contrary to common instinct, you DON'T want to be sudden suddenly. You want to be DETAILED and LENGTHY instead. For example:
Walking the street with her best friend, Julia folded her hands behind her neck in the afternoon heat and asked, "So, you want to grab a burger at Five Guys with me?"
Eriana, who had been smiling and pacing side by side with Julia, suddenly stopped and felt her jaunty grin fade away. As terrible as an earthquake and as consuming as a tsunami, one memory came upon her of the time when Julia had fed her peanut butter cookies without realizing that she was deathly allergic to the small legume. Standing under the baking sun, Eriana could remember feeling her throat swell, her tongue balloon, and her only source of air squeeze away, further, distant…until...no matter what she did, she couldn't get oxygen.
She had been seconds from death…mere seconds…
Instinctively, Eriana recoiled, her back tingling with sweat, and snapped, "NO!"
LENGTHEEEN, get it? Julia's question is setting the reader to expect a relaxing evening over delicious, greasy food. Suddenly throwing in a "NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" directly after her suggestion would be to nab your reader's expectations and leave him/her standing in the dust of Confusion Land, hopelessly scrambling to figure out where he/she went wrong.
Instead, by lengthening your suddenness and adding more detail (that occurs over a second of time, at most), you're leading your reader along by the hand and gently saying, "No, no, what you thought was going to happen isn't going to happen. Do you want to know what will happen? Let me show you what will happen. Ooo, yes, things look bad, don't they? Aren't you excited to see what will happen next?"
Edit 3.) As a less-desirable option, (though I'm still calling it an option because sometimes it's too awkward to do anything else), LENGTHEN AFTERWARDS.
Walking the street with her best friend, Julia folded her hands behind her neck in the afternoon heat and asked, "So, you want to grab a burger at Five Guys with me?"
Instinctively recoiling, Eriana scowled and snapped, "No! Oh my gosh, what the heck, Julia? I'm allergic to peanuts. You almost killed me the last time you tried to feed me peanut butter cookies, remember?"
Okay? Okay.
All right? All right.
We're good? We're good.
Write on! (<--- NOTE: the single exclamation mark.)
Clove
No comments:
Post a Comment