Dialog Question
 

So I have a character that says..


And that just sounds wrong, esply for spoken word.


Does not seem right either. Would

be right? It still seems awkward. Not sure what to do with it.

Egor looked up at the round, black glass like fixture protruding from the ceiling. His brow wrinkled and he lost his grin. "The cameras catch everything, even the little whispers from the bloody cockroaches."

Okay, I've only seen one cockroach in my life (worldly, eh?) and don't know if they make any noise... and I've yet to meet an Egor.

Audibly.

:chinscratch:

Interesting... but the scene is one guy says something like "I think we are being watched" and the other is like "Everything here is constantly recorded, both visually and audio."

So not sure your Egor idea would work. :D

Why would you say "visually" (an adverb), but "audio" (a noun)? That's just wrong. Either make them both adverbs ("visually and audibly") or both nouns ("video and audio", or "vision and sound").

Why not just:

Everything here is constantly recorded, both audio and video.

Or if it should sound more dramatic:

Everything here is constantly recorded, every word (wisper) and every motion (twitch).



Disclaimer: English is not my first language, take everything with a grain of salt.

"Cameras and microphones record everything that happens in this room".

I would go with "audio and video"...but I really like the cockroaches angle. It just gives so much atmosphere and tone to the line instead of "exposition, exposition."

"Everything that happens here is recorded. Nothing goes unseen or unheard."

It's getting a little tautological. If "everything" is recorded, you don't need to say "constant," as you've already said "everything." "Audibly," which I assume is what you meant in the typo (audioly), is an adverb. The adverb is derived from audible, the noun, and audible the adjective (ha! Tricky buggers). If you say "video," say "audio," but both sound kind of formal to me. I think if someone is saying this, presumably whispering (?), he'd say something more akin to Lazer's suggestion. Or something like,"

"They tape everything." Or, "[t]hey record everything." The whole "audio and video" seems stilted to me; "they can see and hear everything, and they keep it forever," sounds more like a person. Hard to know without a little more context, but heavens know, you've had lots of us kibbitzing. ;-)

Just my $.02.

Hitch

I like your last construction but I'd write "...video and audio." Using sense words like visual or audible are not common ways to describe recordings.

I'd change "Everything here is constantly recorded, both visually and audio" to "Everything here is constantly recorded, audio and video."

But there are other alternatives, depending on what you're going for.

1. "The bastards record everything here. Everything. There are microphones and cameras everywhere."

2. "Don't worry, we're safe. This area is under constant surveillance. There are microphones and cameras everywhere."

So this is a futuristic society, the one saying "everything here is..." would not see it as unusual or odd, because that is life to him. He has never know a life with out it. The one saying "I think we are being watched" is from a far off different culture that would not at all understand the concept of everything you do being recorded.

So the guy saying "Everything..." is more like "Yay? So what, its called life" type attitude, but is trying to explain that to the new guy. So all the suggestions about hushed tones/etc really would not fit. The concept that it might be a bad or wrong thing is not something someone in that culture would consider.

So maybe when the new dude says "We are being watched" the response should be more of "Of course we are, the entire station always is." ?

Everything here is constantly recorded in glorious high definition colour and surround sound. Don't even fart, they'll catch that too.

(Okay, so maybe you don't want that last bit. :))

Okay, you can dump Egor. My feelings will survive, but the cockroaches stick. Maybe not in this scene, but they didn't become extinct in your futuristic story! Somewhere in your book ya gotta have some cockroaches crawling around.