As writers, you want the dialogue in your story to have impact. Well, there are many ways to do that, and I’m gonna talk about two of them—exaggeration and understatement. Now, understatement is the opposite of exaggeration, but you can actually use them both to do the same thing—to create emphasis or impact. Let’s compare them and see how they do that.
OK, exaggeration. When you want your characters to emphasize a point, you can have them describe things or their feelings as bigger or more extreme than they really are. For example, your main character comes back from a very long walk and she’s very tired. Well, you can have her say “Boy, I’m tired.” Or you can have her say, “I can’t take another step.” Well, of course she can take another step, but you see, if she exaggerates, she’ll make her point in a more forceful and interesting way.
But you can also create emphasis with understatement, and like I said it’s the opposite of exaggeration, but it does the same thing. With understatement you emphasize by saying, by saying less, by saying less than you mean. That sounds paradoxical, so I’ll give you an example. From real life.
My friend Ed is a very talented cook. So last week he cooked me a delicious meal. Now, I could’ve said to him, “This food is really great, Ed,” but that’s kinda boring. Plus, Ed knew I thought the food was delicious. I’d eaten three servings. So instead I said, “This food’s not bad, Ed.” Now clearly the food was a lot better than not bad. But by understating, by describing the food as—as less good than it really was, I actually made a stronger statement. The characters in your stories can do this too.
Narrator Using the examples mentioned by the professor, describe two ways that writers create emphasis when writing dialogue.
| Post dates | Users | rates | Contents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-10-24 | kap | 61.00 | Check this speaking |
| 2019-10-24 | kap | 60.00 | Check this speaking |
- Good morning, Paul.Male instructor Morning. Hey, I just heard something about a problem with registration for one of the biology classes? Do you know anything about that?Female instructor Yeah. It looks like the Developmental Biology class is already full 50
- Talk about a photograph or painting you have seen that was memorable. Explain what you liked or disliked about it. 83
- Narrator Now listen to a conversation between two students on campus.Male student Hi . . . good morning. Could you help me with something?Female student Um. Maybe. What’s up?Male student Well, I’m a first-year student.Female student Everything going O 55
- Male student Carrie, how come I always see you eating in the cafeteria lately? Didn’t you tell me you had a kitchen in your dorm and you were gonna start to . . .Female student Uh-huh . . . and I was gonna start cooking my own meals there.Male student S 50
- What kind of reading materail such as novels, poetry or magazine, do you most like to read in your free time? Explain why you find this kind of reading material interesting. 90
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 524.0 578.828451883 91% => OK
No of words: 147.0 151.265690377 97% => More words wanted. You may: choose simpler words or speak faster or remove hesitations or remove long pauses, and fully use the time, do NOT save one or two seconds.
Chars per words: 3.56462585034 3.82278263415 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.48200454523 3.50058242952 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 1.72247262238 1.80425224433 95% => OK
Unique words: 81.0 92.4686192469 88% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.551020408163 0.61298525976 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Syllable count: 163.8 182.283891213 90% => OK
Avg_syllables_per_word: 1.1 1.20543933054 91% => OK
Performance on coherence:
Topic speech coherence ratio: 0.0754822476936 0.0839705835288 90% => OK
Acoustic performance on paragraphs:
How many acoustic paragraphs: 4.0 4.47071129707 89% => OK
Average paragraph length: 36.75 65.8948926009 56% => OK
STD paragraph length: 9.62743475698 19.7758100068 49% => OK
Average paragraph duration: 13.5675 25.5208953607 53% => OK
STD paragraph duration: 4.39395820986 7.49434385956 59% => OK
Acoustic performance on sentences:
How many acoustic sentences: 52.0 42.9832635983 121% => OK
Average acoustic sentence length: 2.82692307692 3.78147595546 75% => OK
STD acoustic sentence length: 2.35927917484 2.94285465224 80% => OK
Average acoustic sentences duration: 0.985576923077 1.39386743896 71% => OK
STD acoustic sentences duration: 0.77293499941 0.967747756167 80% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic silence:(An acoustic silence means a little pause between two or more words)
How many acoustic silence: 52.0 40.4456066946 129% => It means the content is not pronounced smoothly or it is pronounced slowly. It is word by word.
Total acoustic silence duration: 8.31 7.59280334728 109% => OK
Average acoustic silence duration: 0.159807692308 0.19053887516 84% => OK
STD acoustic silence duration: 0.138014636691 0.157467062838 88% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic words:
Total word duration: 40.59 46.3453556485 88% => Need to talk more.
Average word duration: 0.27612244898 0.308780311121 89% => OK
STD word duration: 0.148353544352 0.201157623399 74% => OK
Disfluencies: like hesitations, or 'ehn' or taking a long time to pronounce a word:
How many disfluencies: 5.0 8.09623430962 62% => OK
Total_disfluencies_duration: 3.61 6.56692468619 55% => OK
Total acoustic noise duration: 3.3 3.53066945607 93% => OK
Acoustic rates:
Total speech duration: 54.27 59.5455230126 91% => Talk more. Do not save time. People can talk 4-5 words in one second.
Compare to expected duration: 0.9045 0.992425383543 91% => Some seconds left. Need to talk more.
Rate of silence: 0.958172102451 0.681803438845 141% => Less acoustic silences wanted.
Rate of speech: 2.70867882808 2.53813033465 107% => OK
Rate of speech by unique words: 1.49253731343 1.55221717717 96% => OK
Rate of word duration by unique words: 1.9955654102 1.99939622689 100% => OK
Average articulation rates: 0.272362755102 0.309613076454 88% => OK
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Rates: 60.0 out of 100
Scores by speech e-grader: 18.0 Out of 30
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Note: the speech e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas.