How to write a prolonged yell or scream.

"Run!" she screamed, dragging it out until her lungs ached for air.

 

I have committed to writing it without the extra letters. However, (everyone keep in mind I'm still a novice here) when I read what I write I like to be lead into how to read it. In other words, if I want the yell to be a prolonged yell... stealing from Cogito's example (thank you btw)... I would be inclined to write it like this...

Dragging it out until her lungs ached for air she screamed "Run!"

Does this work?

Keep in mind this already seems unusual to me because I'm inclined to use the extra characters. But I want to elevate my writing as well and to do that I need to follow the conventions of better writers than I.

 

Well, that certainly says what you mean. Whether it conveys the feeling of the character's action or not, that's another matter. Read it out loud and see what you think.

 

Just write "Run!" You should be able to convey to the reader with the rest if your writing that it was an elongated scream.

ps. just read the example above, yeah it works. Use the sentences around the scream itself to convey mood and atmosphere, although the example does that quite well anyway.

 

I can't recommend writing in elongated vowels. It seems somehow, uncouth, if that's a word I can use to describe it. Of course, it's possible that my reaction is merely an example of my elitism- I'd recommend trying a couple different styles and sticking with the one that seems 'write' to you.

My solution? Don't even include the dialogue. Oftentimes a scream is a pure expression of emotion. The thing about emotion is that it's difficult to understand, or even translate; in the case of a scream the subject of the yell is typically self evident. If there's a rhino bearing down on the hero then you hardly need another person to explain what to do, his first instinct should be to run, or fight, however your hero might swing. Additional dialogue removes the audience from the scene and creates a dissonance between the action and the thought. You want them to be seamless, the hero is now moving on instinct, governed by a more primal aspect of the mind.

The "RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!" style reminds me of a burly space marine (not the cool kind) fighting against unnamed threats while clutching a buxom waitress. The line that typically follows this is "...Or die trying". If you're going to be writing this parody I recommend at least 1 'walking away from an explosion' scene.

 

Stick with "Run!" I'm being serious. When I read your second version with "Ruuuunnn!" I laughed out loud. Which is insulting to you and completely destroys your scene and the tension.

Why did I laugh out loud? Because it's ridiculous - no one shouts "Run" like that. You just wouldn't. You're in the middle of something presumable unimaginably horrible and dangerous and you have to run for your life - first off, the person doing the screaming would be running herself. Now, please try actually running down the street with all your strength as fast as you can go, and simultaneously scream "Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!"

Imagine the scene. It's not realistic. You've been watching too many movies where the camera slows down to lengthen people's screams. Even in movies it's a cheap device that people ridicule nowadays, or else it's used in comedies and satires. In a novel it sounds even more ridiculous.

Even if you're not running yourself and you really are only shouting "Ruuuuuuuuuuuun!" - you just wouldn't do it. It's urgent, you're breathless, you're not doing this for dramatic purposes! This is not acting! This character is in grave danger and she's terrified for her life and she's screaming for her friend to bloody frigging run! It's gonna be short, abrupt, and breathless. You cannot do short, abrupt and breathless with "Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuun!"

The abruptness of "Run" also carries with it urgency, which actually heightens the tension and improves your scene. "Ruuuuuuuuuun" does not - "Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuun" is a dramatic device that's become a bit of a comedic device, and there's no urgency in it at all. Again, if you're rushing, if it's urgent, your heart's pounding - you have no time - that's the very definition of urgent. "Run" takes much less time than "Ruuuuuuuuuuuun" to say.

And how stupid would your character need to be to choose - actually CHOOSE - to stand still, in one spot, just so she can have enough breath to scream "Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuun" rather than "Run"? If she dies from the oncoming threat, no one would sympathise because she was being stupid.

This is as best as I can explain it. Good luck.

It would be like this video - and I laugh out loud every time I watch this scene still:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

 

Mckk makes a valid point. The elongated 'run' is just a movie trope. I've watched endless videos of real conflict as a research for my book and people are in such a rush to do whatever it is they need to do that they often forget words altogether, let alone belt them out like a town crier.

 

Using all caps or elongated words in writing is generally a bad idea, and you will only tend to see it done in bad fiction writing. Think about all the books you have read and how often you have seen it done yourself – and you should come up with a short list.

There are two answers to your problem. The first is that you leave the way your character is yelling up to the imagination of your readers. Reading is all about imagination and so this is not a bad option for many occasions in writing, rather than getting overly descriptive all the time. Your second option is to paint your picture more clearly using your words to give the reader more detail on how you see your character doing a set action. In this case you may put something like, "her drawn out scream of warning echoing off the surrounding buildings." This would go after your yell of "Run!"

Hope this helps you decide, but this is generally a better idea than using caps or elongated words that can look very messy if you ever had a section of a book that had a lot of yelling. If you really feel you do want to do it the way you did, then follow the advice to only repeat vowels generally and not constanants as they rarely sound right if you speak them aloud, and I'd avoid doing it in too many places as a general rule myself.

 

Lol,how do you actually know that?

 

For what it's worth, I agree with this suggestion.. Why not write it the same way you would show the Reader someone's dialect or accent, without writing out the words phonetically? It can be brief and simple and attached to the tag, or in this case, maybe showing up before the tag so the Reader understands that the shout goes on for a few seconds. You don't have to resort to writing in caps or stretching out the words or whatever... Create an action beat or tag that shows the reader the word was said over an extended period of time, while engaging their imagination instead of 'telling' them what to do or how they should feel or how they should read your words.

 

Absolutely.. I wasn't trying to say there is something wrong with writing phonetically.. I was just saying it doesn't have to be written that way, suggesting an alternative.

 

I vote for the first one. I think that the word will sound different when shouted at maximum volume, but I think that it's likely to sound so different that trying to reproduce the change with phonetic spelling would be counterproductive.

I just finished watching the entire Horatio Hornblower series (the relatively modern one), with lots of sailors bellowing at the top of their lungs, giving orders to manipulate sails and ropes and such. I noticed that with the bellowing, the words change a lot - the vowels are changed, some syllables are snapped almost to nothing, others are extended. I suspect that if I shouted "run" as loud as I possibly could, it would come out more like "ron!" or "rahn!". If my faint trace of a Southern accent were stronger, it might be more like "rahyan!"

So I think that you're better off leaving the sound of the word to the reader's imagination.

 

Simplicity in everythink for me..

 

It didn't disrupt the 'flow of the sentence' for us when WE read it... hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

 

One of my writing teachers harped on me about this. He says it is an error called, "natural order of events," and that it is awkward to explain something before it happens.

His voice was a whisper. "Run."

^We don't know his voice is a whisper until after he says run, so the explanation of his voice ahead of time, like a stage direction, always feels out of place.

"Run!" She screamed until her lungs gave out.

^Natural order.

idk if that helps the feeling to you, but it helps me a little.

 

Extended words seem comic book or cartoonish, and I think there may be a way to show the extended scream without the extended vowels.

I like the picture of the air in her lungs spent, or, to her last breath. I'm sure you have had a lot of direction from the post here, but don't extend. IMHO

 

I actually don't have any problem with: She screamed, "Run!" Yes, you could also say, "Run!" she screamed as well. I think it all depends on the flow of the particular scene.

It depends also on whether the fact that she screamed is more important than the word she's screaming. Putting the 'she screamed' first makes us alert to the fact that she is screaming. Putting the tag afterwards could give us a momentary wrong impression. "Run!" could be an order or simply a directive statement. It conveys urgency, but it could even be said in a whisper. It's not till we get to the tag that we realise it was a scream.

I think it's good to be aware of the 'natural order of events' as you write. But sometimes that's a rule which can be broken. Especially when you are describing sound, which can't be reproduced on a page. Words are the only tools we have when we are writing, and they often need a bit of manipulation to achieve the vision of a scene that we're trying to create.

And after all, the screaming and the word aren't happening one after the other. They are happening similtaneously. So it's impossible to convey this in correct order. Instead, I think it's the context that ought to be conveyed first.

 

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any instance in literature of a writer writing "Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuun!" or the like. "Run!" she screamed seems to be the accepted method of doing this.

Of course you could always compromise like this: "Run!" she said in a tone that suggested that she was mentally spelling the verb with thirteen u's.

 

This makes me think of perhaps the most famous scream. Not in writing, but in art.



(The Scream, by Edvard Munch)

Can we tell how long the person is screaming, just from looking at the painting? Not really. But it's the context and the imagery that makes that scene so vivid. We don't have to see the time dimension at all. All we get is a single snapshot of time, but that's all we need.

Which is more impactful?

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" she screamed.

Or

She screamed. It was her father's corpse.

Context is what makes these things impactful.

 

Take a deep breath. As you type, scream at the keyboard for as long as you can.
Or
Write them both out, then speak them both out. Take it to a college, find some litur students and ask em to read it out loud. You'll be able to tell just by their reaction while reading it, we're thinking about this too much.

 

I like this way of doing it (with description). She screamed until she was blue in the face, or the scream was as long as a Rumplestilskin nap. Your creativity will show with what you come up with.

 

You laugh, but depending on the character POV I can easily see myself doing something like this