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Question

I was looking this up, but couldn't find an answer to this question. Can you use multiple exclamation points to make the character sound energetic while writing first person, or is there other ways? If there are other ways, please tell me!!!

Answer 1

The problem with using exclamation points to convey excitement is that they merely tell that the character is excited, they don't show it.

The artful choice of the character's actions, described expressions, and words need to actually convey excitement.

Compare

"We may have the information."

"Please tell me!!!!"

to

"We may have the information."

His mouth fell open as he stared at her. Then it closed, abruptly, and he jumped up. "Please tell me!"

Answer 2

‘Multiple exclamation marks,’ he went on, shaking his head, ‘are a sure sign of a diseased mind.’
?????????? — Terry Pratchett,

In informal writing online it is quite common to increase the number of exclamation points to signify increased emotion (anger, excitement) or volume. In conventional prose, the exclamation point is not used in this way and there is no way to "turn up the volume" of the speaker any further with punctuation alone. On the contrary, since the publication of The King's English by Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler in 1906 the prevailing style is one of minimal punctuation and exclamation points are generally avoided. The Fowlers wrote: "The [exclamation point] should be used, with one exception¹, only after real exclamations." Or in other words, only when the volume is already at its maximum. And when the volume is at its maximum, turning it up further is impossible and multiple exlamation points become meaningless.

This is still the convention in punctuation today.

If you want to emulate an online writing style in a first person narrative (e.g. a story that pretends to be told in a WhatsApp chat or a Reddit post), you may find it logical to use the conventions of online writing (such as multiple exclamation points or smileys or image macros). Some authors have experimented with this or similar deviations from narrative convention to varying success. Some books became bestsellers, others flopped. Some readers may find a novel length Reddit post tiresome while others may find it exciting and fresh. It is certainly something you can try if you want, but there is a high risk that your experimental writing will be rejected by either agents or audience.

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1?The exception is to express the author's incredulity about a quotation, where the exlamation point has the function of, as the Fowlers write, "a neat and concise sneer".

Answer 3

Style over substance

Can you use multiple exclamation points to make the character sound energetic...?

This is similar to adding rocket fins to a car. It is a 'style' that communicates speed, aerodynamics, and the space age..., but it's only cosmetic. The actual car still drives on the ground with a combustion motor.

Unintended effects are a car styled with rocket fins today communicates old-fashioned, heavy, pretentious, and naive – it's literally the opposite of what was intended by the designers when the rocket-style was 'fresh'.

Adding a bunch of exclamation points to a character is a 'style' that communicates this person is overly excited. It does not make me feel excited, but I easily understand the intent of the style choice.

Unintended effects are that I may be distracted by this style, and find it immature, comicbook-ish, or too social media to be taken seriously as literature. In real life, someone who posts on socials with lots of exclamation points is generally an immature person who just wants attention for something unimportant – the extra !!!!!! are signaling the opposite effect as intended.

My negative reaction to the style are going to shade my entire experience. I may have a negative reaction to the author as well as the character, especially if the style is used broadly.

Authors make ||bad|| style choices all the time

There are MANY examples where an author decided to make a character speak a certain way, and translated that into annoying text that prevented me from ever suspending disbelief to imagine the scene with a real person, and not just the author's clumsy style choice.

There's a cheesy historical romance author named Barbara Cartland who ended every sentence with an exclamation point!
To make things worse, every paragraph is a single sentence!
Surprisingly, I was several chapters into the book before I even noticed it!
She must have been good at it – she sold plenty of books – but once I saw her 'style' I couldn't un-see it!
At first I thought it must be effective, because the book moved very quickly – a real page-turner!
I eventually concluded her style is empty, but it does pad out the page count by adding more paragraph breaks!

I think the difference between a good use of style and a bad use of style is how the reader accepts/rejects it, and that's not something most of us can control. A 'genius' author could drag us through a slog of style choices but the story is so compelling we stick with it. A 'bad' author will put style before substance, and we eventually reject the whole author (not just the 1 book) when it feels there is more decoration than story.

Answer 4

I'm sure you can do it (you certainly just did) but it is not necessarily a common choice. Typically, a good writer will not be using punctuation to make major implications about a character's behavior, barring describing the tone of their voice, as in the usage of "?" vs. "?!" vs "..." etc.

If the character is energetic once, they are likely to be energetic again, and using "!!" or even "!!!" repeatedly is likely going to just dilute the meaning of the punctuation itself. Moreover if they are energetic in general there should be other ways to express this: express it through their interactions with other characters, their word choice, their inner thoughts if applicable, descriptions of their actions.

The punctuation is meant to indicate that the sentence was spoken with volume and energy, not to indicate that the character themselves are energetic. That is your job.

Answer 5

If you're writing first-person, that's absolutely a style method you can use. It makes the PoV character sound energetic, enthusiastic – and about 5-7 years old. If you're writing a story from the perspective of a slightly hyper kid, it would definitely work.

From the perspective of an adult, definitely not. The only exception might be in something like Flowers for Algernon, where the adult in question is mentally handicapped and the writing style is intended to convey his thought processes.

Answer 6

If your first-person narrator is the type to end a sentence with “!!!”, then so are you.

In a first-person narrative, you (the author) are not writing in your voice, but rather in the voice of your main character. If that main character is an over-excitable teenager who is prone to hyperbole then you should write your text in their breathless style, multiple exclamations and all.

Your character’s diaries and letters are far less formal than the book they “wrote”

This is particularly apt if you are using an epistolary form: telling the story by presenting the reader a set of diary entries, letters or other messages. This form is very common in books aimed at young teenagers.

As an example, here’s an excerpt from Meg Cabot’s book The Princess Diaries, an bestselling epistolary novel aimed at young teenage girls: The Princess Diaries (extract). There’s a triple exclamation in a list on page 4.

Your character’s writing style can undermine other things you say about them; this is not always a mistake.

If your main character is older, educated and conducts their affairs with a measured gravitas, then fripperies like multiple exclamations are unlikely to appear in the text that they “write”. Unless you’re using its presence to hint something about their inner life.

Similarly, you can juxtapose the bubbly excitable letters and messages from your teenager to their friends with the serious, measured prose of their diary to show a character with a very different public and private self.

Answer 7

From the perspective of quality writing, the other answers are certainly correct... but they're also incorrect.

Can you convey excitement using multiple exclamation points? Of course you can. Are there better ways?

Circumstantially, yes.

A good author is aware of both how to write properly (that's @Mary's answer) and their audience. A children's book cannot bear the weight of too many words.

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads. — Dr. Seuss

I was delighted to see the quote from Sir Terry Prachett in @Ben's answer because he's just as famous for sight gags in his novels. Such an example is removingallthewhitespacetoconveyasenseofnervousenergy.

Another such example is the use of grawlixes or symbol swearing. Used to avoid censorship in the early days, it's still used depending on one's audience to express profanity without stepping on anyone's morality.¹ Grawlix would be inappropriate in an espionage novel for the mainstream adult market. It would be appropriate in a comedy manga, comic strip or elsewhere when the audience doesn't want the profanity or the grawlix will convey an emotion that direct language couldn't do.

The simple truth is there's a difference between writing well and writing for your audience. You should always be capable of writing well. My family ran a micropublisher for about a decade and the difference between practiced authors who could write well and inexperienced authors who couldn't was, frankly, obvious. To quote the immortal Mr. Spock...

It was far easier for you, as civilized men, to behave like barbarians than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men. — ST-TOS, "Mirror, Mirror" (1967)

Your first priority is to learn to write well. Your second priority is to learn to understand your audience. The first is, in my opinion, a professional necessity. The second is a business necessity.

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_{¹?Save, perhaps, for those who have not yet matured enough to understand why it's immature to expect everyone to act like mature adults and put up with profanity.}