I want to say there is a certain quality in a voice, for instance greed. What words can I used to fill in the blank? "Yes! Give me the money," she said her voice .... with deceit and greed. Are these okay? 1. "Yes! Give me the money," she said, her voice laced with deceit and greed. 2. "Yes! Give me the money," she said, her voice brimming with deceit and greed. 3. "Yes! Give me the money," she said, her voice oozing deceit and greed. 4. "Yes! Give me the money," she said, her voice exuding deceit and greed. Do I have other options?
There is always the option of killing all dialogue tags, since they tell the reader how to interpret 5. "Yes! Give me the money!"
I wanted to learn words that I can use to say there is a quality in a voice. There is no specific context.
Kathy Steinemann has a great website where she posts lists and lists of words, as well as other tips and articles on writing more effectively. There are a number of good online resources for developing vocabulary I also have WordHippo in my saved bookmarks as well.
You could branch away from the usual order of she - verb - and then explaining the verb and more shape it with what you want to convey. As in "Yes! Give me the money!" A premature drool before her ill-gotten gains. "Yes! Give me the money!" Avarice in alto. or "Yes! Give me the money!" she whispered reverent in greed which was soon to be fed. "Yes!" she purred, a glint of greed in her eye. "Give me the money!" I usually toy around with wording and word choices deciding on what tone better suits the characters and the overall style.
I think it depends - it can be acceptable to use descriptions if you are writing from the perspective of the narrator, and how they view the sentence being spoken. "Nice place you've got here. Shame if something were to happen to it." The palpable menace in his voice told me he wasn't kidding.
I think a facial expression would work better. ..."Yes! Give me the money," she said with a Cheshire cat grin.
Are the underlined parts technically correct? Natalie stared at her best friend's husband. He stared back, his gaze brimmed with desire. "Let's go to the kitchen. I've bought lemon tart," he said, his voice dripping with want. The kitchen air was filled with sexual tension as they ate the lemon tart. Patrick inched closer to Natalie, his gaze laden with lust. "I wonder what the tart would taste like off your lips," he said, his voice laced with sexual desire. I know it's too much to use all of them like that. I wrote that for practice.
@alpacinoutd yes they are and as a set they demonstrate the fluidity of attributive participle-adjective constructions in English brimmed with - past tense verb dripping with - present participle laden with - adjective or past participle (the main verb "lade" is hardly used. cf. ladened with + laded with) laced with - adjective (but also past participle of "lace") The first one is heard as a verb, the last one as an adjective, with the other two somewhere inbetween. I think most of the common -en participles are irregular, and I wasn't sure if the -en ending was being presented as part-way between -ing (verbal force) and -ed (adjectival force). I'd be inclined to doubt that and to look first at whether the -en endings are just an artefact of Anglo-Saxon (or some other) etymology. Some words ending in -ed can use intonation to distinguish verbal force from adjectival force, which can be marked with a grave accent - e.g. lacèd would be a past participle not an adjective. For more info:- https://archive.org/details/englishgrammar00curmrich/page/264/mode/2up
Yes - I couldn't say if Shakespeare used the accent though or if it was added by later editors, but it is mentioned here and apparently also on wikipedia:- https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/35347/what-does-the-grave-accent-mark-on-words-mean This seems to say it is only a way to make words fit to metre, but I feel it also distinguishes the participle from the verb I'm now trying to think if I have ever seen this done on a past tense verb rather than a participle Edit:- But now, Baptista, to your younger daughter. Now is the day we long have lookèd for. (The Taming of the Shrew) So it doesn't distinguish participle from verb - but for some words it might distinguish verb from adjective.
It comes over as very clumsy telling rather than showing the reader the lust and desire "Natalie stared at Patrick's as he cut the lemon tart, felt her mouth go dry as she watched his strong blunt fingers manipulating the knife. wondered how they'd feel on her skin? If he wasn't Julie's husband, but he was, she couldn't do that. Patrick saw her pupils dilate with pleasure as she ate the sweet sticky pudding, did they do that in bed too? He watched her pink tongue flicker over her lips and felt himself growing hard.. "here" he said "wiping a finger across her chin, "you missed a bit" Natalie sucked the cream from his finger and all the blood in his body rushed south..."
This sounds off (unless you're going for the Shakespearian thing, which nobody actually does today). It should either be "He stared back, his gaze brimming with desire", or "He stared back as his gaze brimmed with desire." Or make it 2 sentences: "He stared back. His gaze brimmed with desire." But honestly 'brimmed' just sounds odd in this sentence. Filled sounds a lot more natural. Bursting would also work, or alive.
