Exclamation marks

[mikoli5763]

My recent story had a comment that I over used the exclamation mark to end sentences. I did it to emphasis that the speaker was using a louder than conversational tone. I thought that I'd used it correctly. Short of capitalizing the entire speaker's side of the conversation, how else would that concept be gotten across?
Thanks ahead of time for your time and input. (Constructive, I hope!)

 

[sr71plt]

Mainline publishing considers any use of exclamation marks as overuse and also as weak writing. You can certainly use them in Literotica stories. If they're noticeable, though, there are some readers who will say it's overuse, yes.

 

[PennLady]

Exclamation points should be used sparingly; if you use them too much, they lose their effect. Plus, they don't always indicate someone is speaking louder than normal -- they can indicate surprise, horror, all kinds of things.

As far as getting the concept across, and I'm guessing you mean the louder than normal tone, you do it with the rest of the story and the characters. If a character is angry, that's an indicator unless the author specifies that the character is speaking softly. You can use dialogue tags like "he shouted" or "she yelled," if necessary.

Trust the reader to get the tone from the context.

 

[mikoli5763]

Penn lady's comment brings up another question

In some of my earlier stories, I did use "he shouted" or other indicators as to who was speaking and their tone, but was criticizes for doing that too much. Is there a happy medium? Mixing the two techniques, maybe?
A curious and less experienced mind wants to know!

 

[sr71plt]

Given the choices, the "he shouted" is preferred in publishing. Even more preferable is to show in the writing what the emotions are, rather than telling. But it's your choice, of course. And most commenters on your story don't know anything more about writing than you do--maybe less. Such comments, at best, should be checked out, which you are doing here. Then it's still your choice. This is a place to experiment and have fun.

 

[GorgeousGeekGirl]

Use phrases like bellowed, shouted, called, commanded, screamed, barked, snapped, boomed, roared, spoke over the bell, etc. take the assorted words and look them up in a thesaurus.

 

[Weird Harold]

My recent story had a comment that I over used the exclamation mark to end sentences. I did it to emphasis that the speaker was using a louder than conversational tone.

For those interested in specifics: http://www.literotica.com/s/we-need-to-separate-01 (Note: it is in Loving Wives)

Loving wives is noted for a lot of rabid comments, but a quick scan of the first page of the story leads me to agree with the comment; exclamation points are definitely overused -- and dialogue tags are underused.

It isn't necessary to "Tom Swifty" a story with extravagant dialogue tags, but it is necessary to keep track of who is talking and when a character is speaking in other than a normal conversational style. None of the conversation on the first page gave any indication, other than the exclamation points, that the conversation was other than "normal conversational style." IOW, the exclamation points did not agree with the content of the dialogue and there were no dialogue tags to support any other reading.

I didn't read closely enough to suggest specific remedies, but a general suggestion would be to provide more support for an exclamatory temper/mood.

 

[SamScribble]

One of my IRL editors reckons that one exclamation mark every four or five thousand words is more than enough. Mind you, I sometimes exceed this. And she generally doesn't complain too much.

 

[colddiesel]

!!!

And don't you dare to use more than one at a time. Never ever !!!

 

[slyc_willie]

For those interested in specifics: http://www.literotica.com/s/we-need-to-separate-01 (Note: it is in Loving Wives)

Loving wives is noted for a lot of rabid comments, but a quick scan of the first page of the story leads me to agree with the comment; exclamation points are definitely overused -- and dialogue tags are underused.

It isn't necessary to "Tom Swifty" a story with extravagant dialogue tags, but it is necessary to keep track of who is talking and when a character is speaking in other than a normal conversational style. None of the conversation on the first page gave any indication, other than the exclamation points, that the conversation was other than "normal conversational style." IOW, the exclamation points did not agree with the content of the dialogue and there were no dialogue tags to support any other reading.

I didn't read closely enough to suggest specific remedies, but a general suggestion would be to provide more support for an exclamatory temper/mood.

I read through the story. There are numerous fundamental errors, other than the overuse of exclamation points. I got the impression that the writer was trying too hard to depict "actual" dialogue through the use of such things as exclamation points, and like you, I found it hard to tell which character was speaking.

Many of the paragraphs are too long, consisting of more than ten lines of text. There is also a jarring bit of narrative interposed in parentheses that skips from one paragraph to the next, making it hard to follow and discern from the rest of the body.

A good edit could have fixed many of the errors in this story. I personally found it hard to follow because of the block text and other problems. It's not a terrible story; the premise has merit and the characters are reasonably developed. But the almost overbearing use of exclamations cheapens the dialogue, making me think the author was adding more emphasis than necessary to get a point across.

If you're going to use exclamation points, do so sparingly. Too many of them, and the story comes across as a badly directed script for an anime film, in which everything anyone says is ridiculously elevated to emphatic status.

 

[oggbashan]

Eek!

I've just checked my latest submission Lavender. I have used 22 exclamation marks in 15,000 words.

Before I used 'Find' I would have guessed that I had used 4 or 5.

My excuse? Most of it is dialogue.

[Edited. Lavender has just posted]

 

[hylas_]

I think using too many exclamation marks makes a text look immature. I remember when I was a teenager, I used to use exclamtion marks and other indicators to express JUST! HOW! INTENSE! MY! FEELINGS! WEREEEE!!!!!!!!! Adults are ideally a little more in control of themselves.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I'm a fan of them!!! When used in ellipsis form...

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I think using too many exclamation marks makes a text look immature. I remember when I was a teenager, I used to use exclamtion marks and other indicators to express JUST! HOW! INTENSE! MY! FEELINGS! WEREEEE!!!!!!!!! Adults are ideally a little more in control of themselves.

Okay, now we know who did the writing for William Shatner all those year.

Actually, I go for the she exclaimed or he shouted tags instead of the !.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm more fond of a "showing" slug: He cowered back, covering his ears, under the intensity of her glare as she stood over him, bug-eyed and fists clinched and bits of plaster dropping down from the ceiling overhead. The dog, Chester, peering out from underneath the sofa, his paws over his ear flaps, let out a painful howl. An ice cream truck in the street beyond the broken glass of the window ran into the back of a school bus that had careened to a stop. A passenger jet that had been passing above the now-roofless house went into a steep incline into the stratosphere, carried by the blast of the up draft.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'll add my two cents that its better to do it with words like shouted, but I still use one or two occasionally. If used sparingly they can have a good effect.

Otherwise I'll leave the details to the two pretentious windbags who think lit is the New Yorker and they've won Pulitzer prizes.

 

[mynameisben]

I think exclamation marks are kinda cool the way they can look like footprints.

..!
!..
..!
!..
..!
!..​

 

[lovecraft68]

I think exclamation marks are kinda cool the way they can look like footprints.

..!
!..
..!
!..
..!
!..​

That's fucking awesome!!!!!

 

[Tx Tall Tales]

A large part of my How-To, Love Your Readers, covers this subject.

First, let the story dictate the emphasis, must as sr71plt has said in his example.

After that, well chosen and sparse dialog tags help, as mentioned by Gorgeous Geek Girl. After putting these in, you'd do well to edit your story afterward and see how many you can remove without effecting the content.

I believe italicizing emphasized words and phrases is one of the better ways to indicate excitement, anger, horror, etc.

All caps work for shouting, but only if kept infrequent, and short. It's a pain to read an entire paragraph of all caps, and it looks amateurish.

Exclamation marks, as mentioned about your story are very noticeable. You're not the only author to do it. I was reading another author recently who had a habit of writing a couple of long paragraphs, then hitting a one-liner with an exclamation mark. They did it numerous times and it was distracting. Eg:

'bla - bla long paragraph which could be broken up or tightened - bla-bla-bla'

I was going to stop that!

'bla-bla more junk about how he's stop it etc. etc.'

It was time for action!

I try to limit the use of exclamation marks to dialog as much as possible. See Oggbashan's comment. It's true. Exclamation marks within dialog are much more permissible.

It's easy to stick in too much emphasis with dialog tags, italics, and exclamation marks while writing. Use your editing time to strip out all the excess ones.

 

[RejectReality]

From what I see, most of these comments appear when you use exclamation points in narrative. They do lose their impact when used overmuch in any form, but almost every time I see one of these comments, I open the story and find an abundance of them in narrative.

The ones used in dialogue ( especially during sex scenes ) don't seem to bother readers half as much.

I use that one-liner trick all the time, but putting the exclamation point on it is absolutely overkill My whole reason for dropping a line into its own paragraph is to emphasize it without the exclamation point.

 

[Tx Tall Tales]

I use that one-liner trick all the time, but putting the exclamation point on it is absolutely overkill My whole reason for dropping a line into its own paragraph is to emphasize it without the exclamation point.

Ditto. I do it a lot as well. I think it's very effective. My Charity Begins Next Door, uses this as an ongoing 'schtick' at the end of three phases of the story. "That's what neighbors are for.", "That's what friends are for.", "That's what family is for."

The exclamation mark is definite overkill in these situations.

 

[sr71plt]

I certainly use more of them in erotica than in mainstream writing--and always, as others have posted, in dialogue, never in the narrative.