The fastest way to get me to put a book or story down is to over use exclamation points! I hate it! Don't do it! If every sentence you write ends with a bang, then there is no impact there!
@thelinuxcast A pet peeve of mine: virtualy all fiction writers nowadays are careful never to use exclamation marks in the narrator's voice, only in the dialogs. It s like there is a general belief that the narrator should be dispationate and emotionally distant from the events, even with first person narrators and specialy in "serious" and "prestigious" literature.
Obviously it needs to be used very cautiously to preserve the effect, but when I read Hugo, Proust, Celine or Balzac again, it s always surprising to see how much their narrators were pationately invested in the action, even the third person ones.
@ja_herre Honestly, I can count the number of times I've used exclamation points in my writing over the last decade on one hand. They should be used sparingly, so their impact isn't lessened.
But I think you're right, that it is hard to give a narrator a peronality. I don't think adding in some bangs is going to solve that problem, though.
@thelinuxcast
Obviously it's not the bangs that give the narrator a personality, but when the narrator has a passionate personality, there are going to be some bangs when it matters.
Also, sorry for the overall frenchiness of my references.
The best narrator experience I've ever had was in Dean Koontz' Odd Thomas series. At least in the first one he does such a good unreliable narrator, that it just gets you all the way to the end. The rest of the series is just okay, but that first one is really good.
Also, no one winks that much. Stop having your characters wink at each other every 5 seconds. It's not sexy or seductive, it just makes me think they have something in their eye.
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