Editing speech
- J A Myers
- Dec 4, 2017
- 2 min read
There are many ways to edit and many things to look out for. For the next few posts, I’ll be focusing on the technical stuff, like punctuation, grammar and the rest I will introduce as I go on.
So first on my list is punctuation. Especially speech punctuation. It’s a tricky thing to get your head around, but I hope this helps.
Below are two paragraphs of speech, they are both different, but neither of them particularly wrong, just what I would class as lacking in flow.
“What are you doing?” Malcolm cried, throwing his arms up in the air, “You are ruining my plans.”
“Well, what more can you ask for. I am the devil on your shoulder, of course, I am going to ruin your plans,” the Devil laughed, a hearty sound echoed through the small room.
The use of commas as the speech end caused a small break in the speech. But it indicated that the sentence is still flowing, so the second part is still attached.
“What are you doing?” Malcolm throws his arms up in the air. “You are ruining my plans.”
“Well, what more can you ask for? I am the devil on your shoulder, of course, I am going to mess up your plans.” The devil laughed. A hearty sound echoed through the room.
Personally, I think the full stops are too abrupt and end the sentences even though it’s the same character being narrated.
These are just two examples of speech. There are a million different way on which speech can be defined and punctuated. As long as it is the same all the way through and you know it flows, there is a problem with it.
I always read my speech out loud, it gives me chance to hear the words and see where I would put the commas and full stops in as I go along. Sometimes I am leaning more towards the comma and other things its full stops.
Just remember, they both lend themselves to the pace, commas elongate sentences and slow things down because they are longer. Fullstops shorted everything and allow the reader to move on faster. So just keep in mind you pace and the action going on around the speech.
Comentários