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I'm trying to create a transition effect in a situation when a character suddenly finds himself falling, and his last word, which ends in '-y', is transitioning into an unintelligible scream.

However, English is not my native language, and when I've tried to write it as 'Maryeeee!!' it was criticized as awkward and weird. At the same time, the counter-suggestion of simply extending the '-y' at the end and writing 'Maryyyyy!' doesn't feel right to me. It may be grammatically correct, but my goal was to create an impression of a word seamlessly transitioning into a scream, preferably making it clear that it is an unintelligible scream and not just the character's speech trailing off, and if the resulting word would be a horrible mess, it was fine for as long as I achieved the desired effect.

So the question is, how should I go about it?

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  • 5
    I don't see anything wrong with "Maryeee!". Surely it's meant to sound weird?
    – Kate Bunting
    Aug 24 at 17:39
  • 3
    There will not be a standard way of doing this.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Aug 24 at 18:01
  • 1
    Can you give more details? Do you actually need to do this with repeated vowels or can you use the dialog tags ("... he screamed.")? I think this may be covered by one of the following: When writing, should I describe a scream instead of having the character yell out "Ahhhh!" and How do I write a shriek? (and if not, explain the difference, since I'm thinking of migrating your question).
    – Laurel ♦
    Aug 24 at 18:02
  • There's lots of different types of screams, representable as aaargghhh! aiiiiii! owwwwww! eeeuuugghhhh! ooooooohhhh! etc.
    – Stuart F
    Aug 24 at 18:12
  • 4
    This should be on Writing. It's about spelling, not English.
    – John Lawler
    Aug 24 at 19:42

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