: Re: Using exclamation points in fiction I've heard some advice that you're only supposed to use an exclamation point every 100,000 words or so. I'm finding this advice very hard to follow; I've
I think that the exclamation points thing is probably to do with writing it outside of dialogue. As you said yourself, all of your occurrences of the punctuation appear in dialogue, and from what I can tell they are mostly necessary to convey the tone of the conversation.
However, putting exclamation marks outside of the dialogue is an entirely different matter. Extending one of your own examples to portray this:
She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice.
"Alice!" It was Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her. "Hey! Alice! Can you hear me?"
She could tell that he was worried. She realized that he was carrying the document that she'd asked him for!
Personally I feel like the last sentence doesn't look right, it feels quite immature, possibly because the sentence could be very easily restructured to not require the exclamation point. This could likely be what the advice that you heard was referring to.
If you still feel like you wish to reduce the number of exclamation marks within the dialogue, I would say perhaps to use only one per paragraph. Once you have established that someone is exclaiming something through excitement or volume, the reader will likely assume that the rest of the speech within the paragraph will follow the same emphasis, unless explicitly stated otherwise:
She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice.
"Alice!" It was Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her. "Hey, Alice, can you hear me?"
Whilst no other exclamation marks are used at within that speech, the reader will likely realize that he continued to shout for her.
Of course, a further way would be to attempt to negate the need for excessive use of them at all. You are, after all, the writer. You can simply change the situation to ensure people are exclaiming less. Changing the example given:
She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice behind her.
"Alice!" She turned to see Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her, concern etched onto his face.
Alice stopped walking and allowed him to catch up to her. By the time he reached her he was panting heavily. Breathlessly, he managed to say, "Hey, I have that document that you asked for".
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