Friday, December 26, 2014

dialogue - Writing "hahaha" versus describing the laugh


When posting an excerpt of my book on a critiquing site, someone commented on my use of "hahaha" inside the dialogue instead of just having a laughing verb after or before it. They said it took them out of the reading. Obviously, this is subjective, so rather I will ask this:


Which alternative is the most popular and professional? Which do you see the most in writing?


The answers to this question said to use speech tags. But I thought this was bad, and within the phenomenon called filtering. In another question, a user taught me about this, and I've tried to take it to heart.


I thought the alternative was a separate line under, like this.



-That's so funny!


A thundering laugh rolled out of him.



Instead of:




-That's so funny, Mick laughed.



The latter having filtering, in the way there's a "Mick laughed" in between the dialogue and the rest of the text.


So, I thought the alternatives were "hahaha" and having this separate line under. The problem is, which someone once told me, having specification for the dialogue at a later time isn't good, because it often makes the reader have to go back. The person said this in relation to not including name tags after the dialogue, but I believe it applies to the way dialogue is uttered, as in if it is laughed or said normally.




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