Exclamation point!

My second beta reader has started to send me her thoughts.  Every aspiring author should have a successful author as a beta reader.  Why, you ask? Because she picks up on some crazy details you’d never think of.

Like exclamation points.  Or, in my case, the overuse of said exclamation points.

She suggested I get rid of about 60%.  That the excitement of the situation in the book will come through without the exclamation points, that people will interpret as if my characters are all yelling at each other.  Huh.  Never thought of that.

So I did a find/replace.  Apparently, I had 603 exclamation points.  Yikes!  Like, YIKES!!!!!!  That’s a real lot!   (yes, they were intentional in this sentence)

Then the next thing was, I had a tendency to use ” ” both for dialogue and for emphasis (as opposed to ” ” for dialogue and and ‘ ‘ for emphasis).

What does this mean to you, prospective reader?  It means that May 1 will not be the release date.  BUT the good news is, next week is probably very doable!

Oh, you want to know what 603 exclamation points looks like?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!