I am having real problems with my current book, in which there is a lot of joking, joshing, teasing between the characters - i always seem to come back to the word 'laugh'.
Occasionally i can get away with chuckle, giggle or snigger, but when one character laughs and sets off another or a group i find i'm poring over the thesaurus, trying to find a different way of expressing their mirth.

'smile' is another one - any suggestions for another way of expressing that?

and for amazement, my characters' eyes always seem to widen!

Does anyone else have this problem with particular words?

Sammy

"shrugged" and "looked".

I always seem to need to explain where my characters are looking - she looked at him; he looked back at the car; it looked like rain (arf arf!) - and they do seem to shrug a lot.

And I use the word "seem" or "seemed" too much.

and "just"

Colin M

Yes, looked is another killer... glanced, eyed, i find all sorts of replacements but sometimes they don't sound natural.

If only green smile faces were acceptable in prose, this would save a lot of probs for me,

said Sammy and she ed

Oh yes, I do all those. A copy-editor pointed out that I had five variations of 'look' in about eight lines. My defence that my narrator had a limited vocabulary sounded lame even to me, though it was true and to some extend I'd meant those repetitions. Sometimes you have to re-cast the sentence or paragraph completely, rather than just trying to swap in a different word which may well be fancier or unnatural. Personally, I'm allergic to 'penned' instead of 'written'.

Emma

That's a good point, Emma. I really overuse my thesaurus, looking for an alternative word whereas i should be re-jigging the whole paragraph.

You can always try action instead, such as 'his shoulders shook uncontrollaby'.

JB

That's a good one, thanks.

Sammy

Another option is to do it through the eyes of the narrator, which means it becomes a show rather than a tell, as well.

He poured out the coffee. 'How ridiculous! Did you manage to keep a straight face?' I wondered why he found it so funny. I hadn't felt like laughing at the time, and I didn't now.

Emma

That's also very useful. Thanks, Emma.

Sammy

Some verbs are of course simply very common in the English language and as has already been pointed out, in many cases an attempt to find a new word for every usage ends up sounding very contrived.

'Said' for example, must be used many thousands of times in novel (as in 'he said, she said, Dan said' yet any attempt to write something different throughout a chapter reads - to me at least - as merely an overt attempt to jazz up the style.

Perhaps there are a set group of verbs and phrases that are 'OK' to include with regularity and I'd think that 'to look' is one of them. What is more interesting is the frequency of 'personal' phrases in writing, little sayings and favourite words that crop up only in your particular prose.

WW has a phrase checker for submissions (and a word frequency checker) and it's quite terrifying.

On the particular case of 'laughing' I wonder if it's actually necessary to include this at all. If the joke or line is funny to the reader, it may not be necessary to show that the other characters also found it funny. It might even be more appropriate to point out when the don't laugh. I'm currently re-reading Spike Milligan's war memoirs, which I find hilarious and the situations and lines he comes out with must have had his colleagues rolling around at times yet (and this is from memory) I don't recall Spike ever actually saying 'Harry laughed' or 'Devine laughed'. What he does do is point out when one of his wise cracks gets no reaction (or an adverse one), usually from a senior officer.

If the lines aren't funny to the reader then it may be necessary to show that it is to the character - and explain why - but I would have thought this'd be a rare situation.

Jon


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Please re-arrange the last sentence to make sense in your own time. (sigh)

J

Thanks Jon,

I think you're right, trying to find alternatives for common words can sometimes have unsatisfactory results - i find doing that can make my work sound a bit 'twee' (probably doesn't help that my thesaurus is 20 yrs old, but i'm loathe to part with it).

That's interesting what you say about Spike Milligan and i've now got a sneaking suspicion that maybe i am making my characters laugh when, actually, it's not necessary and is stating the obvious...off for a re-read

Sammy

If the joke or line is funny to the reader, it may not be necessary to show that the other characters also found it funny.

Fundamentally, this is what it's all about, isn't it? In my tougher moments, I feel like saying that anything except 'said', with the possible addition of 'shouted' and 'whispered', is telling and should have its throat cut, and the dialogue written properly instead. Only the surprises - '"I hate you," he whispered' - really need to be there.

More broadly, I think you can easily get rid of 'he looked at her' 'he seemed' if you have an omniscient 3rd person narrator, but it's much harder to get rid of them if you have a narrator who's present in the scene, 1st or 3rd person. I know I'm too prone to including my stage directions, on the other hand sometimes you need to, when it's important that the narrator's focus of attention is moving, say, or to alert the reader that how another character seemed to the narrator may not be how s/he is.

Emma

So are we all spoiled by the English language? It has a lot broader vocabulary than many other languages and yet here we are discussing when to avoid using the full depth of the vocab and when there aren't enough other words to use!! You can't help but love it!

S

Someone once told me that the phrase 'began to' is the death of literature. Now I can't help but see it everywhere, and yes, it is overused and a little weak. James Herbert is a main offender, with a 'began to' on almost every page.

JB

I apologise if I am repeating something already stated, but if your character looks at something, one option is to assume you are already looking from you character's eyes and describe what s/he sees....


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your

Why do I always type 'you' when I am trying to type 'your'?