Oooooooohhh!!!!! Yes!!!!!!

[Alex Bragi]

I read a story on this site the other day which was, in my opinion, good and I enjoyed it. A piece of the dialog, however, read, “Aaarrrrgh!!!” I would never rate a story down because of this, and I certainly wouldn’t stop reading it either, but I just can’t help be feeling that extra letters and multiple exclamation marks don’t add extra impact. I've actually seen some where I felt as if my eyes were travelling halfway across the screen before getting to the end of the dialog.

“Ooooooooooohh!!!! Aaaaaaaaarrrrhhhhhhh!!! Mmmmmmmmm!!!”

What do you think?

Alex

[Wontworry]

I think that ... “Ooooooooooohh!!!! Aaaaaaaaarrrrhhhhhhh!!! Mmmmmmmmm!!!” .. gives a far greater indication of what is happening than "Oh! Ah! and Mm!"

[Lord Douche]

My rule is that if Word flags it as a spelling mistake, I've put in too many letters/exclamation marks. Since Word says that to anything longer than two letters, I turn to other ways of expressing just what sound he/she is making.
LD

[slavelucy]

It's all about context; it would be completely inappropriate to detail a scene wherein someone was having a screaming orgasm and type "Mm, Ah"...but, equally, the extended versions could start to become somewhat slapstick and a bit like a panto. *looks at LD* - Your editor - she's BEHIND YOU!! ( Ohhh no she isn't!! - LOL)

sl

[Mobius]

Simply to a find and replace for any 3 letters like

ooo change to oh

That is what I do with scat storys or F/m storys
The old find and replace works every time

Shit to cum, brown to white poo to cum etc

no more scat and that is a fact

[LaJan]

I agree that there's a need to express deeper feelings with something more than simple "ooohs!" and "aaahs!" but, if I used Microsoft Word as my sole editing tool, I'd have long since given up writing entirely. Word is about as stodgy as a 200-year old Republican - even after I appended its dictionary with all the words needed to write for BDSM. (Interesting that “fuck” wasn’t rejected as an error but “pantymonster” was. And I won’t even try to get into the “wet” words…) Worse, I’ve gotten into endless loops where Word tells me to do something, I do it and Word tells me to do the original thing again to correct “my” error.

What I gotten into doing is [Note: Word just told me to replace ‘is’ with ‘am’ in this sentence. I should trust Word? Shit!] writing a larger amount of descriptive text rather than subject the speaker to questionable dialog. The upshot is that my stories are getting longer and will soon become too long for the title of “short stories” but my characters are starting to ‘sound’ more in the reader’s mind than on the written page.

That said, is it stupid to use “LOL!” in a story or is it commonly accepted as an acronym for generally or even universally understood vernacular? Just asking…

It's all about context; it would be completely inappropriate to detail a scene wherein someone was having a screaming orgasm and type "Mm, Ah"...but, equally, the extended versions could start to become somewhat slapstick and a bit like a panto. *looks at LD* - Your editor - she's BEHIND YOU!! ( Ohhh no she isn't!! - LOL)

sl

[slavelucy]

I agree that there's a need to express deeper feelings with something more than simple "ooohs!" and "aaahs!" but, if I used Microsoft Word as my sole editing tool, I'd have long since given up writing entirely.

*smiles* Agreed. i think 'Ooohs and aaaahs' have their place, despite not being accepted by word (although i think they have to be handled with care). Having said that, Word isn't LD's only editing tool, myself and redEva are.

Oh...and if i ever saw 'LOL' used in a story, in any context other than the description of an email (or similar) received or sent by a charcter, i'd stop reading it.

sl