Hi there! My sentence so far is as follows: "Anticipation washes over him in waves, _____ with peaks of excitement." What I want to say is that he is experiencing anticipation in oscillations: ups and downs. And that during the times where the anticipation is troughing, his excitement peaks. So kind of like two constant waves, where when one is up, the other is down. I have no idea what to put in those blanks to describe this! I'm sure there's an expression out there, but it's just not coming to me. I was thinking perhaps a phrase structurally similar to "in conjunction," but obviously not with that meaning. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm getting desperate. T.T Thanks in advance.
My first thought was "interspersed", but the suggests that anticipation and excitement are different things, and they don't seem quite different enough. But maybe it works.
Interspersed seems good to me. But I think you're right, it's fiddly. Maybe spliced? Mixed? Intertwined? Matched? Paralleled?
I'm having trouble understanding the distinction between anticipation and excitement... anticipation seems like a subcategory of excitement, to me. But if the emotions were different, maybe: But maybe: Excitement washes over him in waves, peaks of anticipation battling with surges of fear.
Yeah, this was going to be my suggestion too, assuming we want to keep the form of the sentence exactly as it is in the OP. Fits with the "wave" imagery, although it is actually redundant since the crest of the wave would be the peak, if I'm not mistaken.
"capped" -- stays with the metaphor of waves as does "crested," but slightly different meaning and different flow to sentence: Anticipation washes over him in waves, capped with peaks of excitement." Or a variant: crested with caps of excitement." Aren't words fun? Now if you put this much thought into every sentence your novel will remain unfinished (like most).
Yeah, I like that. "Capped with peaks" of excited or even "capped with crests of excitement" would work for me.
BTW, excitement is experienced "in the moment." Think sexual excitement. Anticipation is looking forward to or expecting to be excited (or amused , reprimanded, entertained, etc--not always a prelude to excitement) as in anticipating the exciting sexual encounter following the expensive dinner. Someone might anticipate something with many other emotions than excitement.
Sure, you can, like, anticipate stable revenue in the third quarter. But in this context, with the anticipation washing over him in waves... does that meaning make sense? If excitement is only experienced in the moment, does that mean that something exciting is currently happening to this character? In which case I'm not sure why he'd be finding himself distracted by anticipation of something non-exciting happening later...
We may feel an excitement of the anticipation we are feeling. "The children excitedly anticipated going to the amusement park." I am not wanting to Bree argumentative on the point, only reacting to your suggesting that anticipation is a "subcategory" of excitement. we may anticipate things that excite us, but also that bore us, disgust us, etc. To your larger point about mixing the two emotions in this sentence in this manner--I wouldn't, but then it's not my work--so I do understand your confusion about the OP's original query. Hope no offense taken.
