Exaggeration

Deborah asks Jessica if she wants to do dinner.

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Jess: Can’t tonight. Have to go to the dentist.

Deb: At night?

Jess: Emergency. I was biting into a chocolate last night and my jaw fell out.

Deb: Rubbish. You’re exaggerating again.

Jess: Only a little. Suddenly there were several teeth lying on the table front of me.

Deb: More like you lost a filling.

Jess: OK. OK. So which has the more dramatic impact? A jaw falling out, or a filling?

Deb: You have a point.

Jess: I have a dentist appointment. Can’t talk now. Gotta go.

___________

Voiceover

To overstate, to use hyperbole: these are alternative expressions meaning to exaggerate. The act of telling a story is enhanced by exaggeration, and for this we are given temporary permission, it is called artistic licence, dramatic licence, or narrative licence. The narrator is given permission to distort. Deb, holding Jess back in her story, is being a little too literal, doesn’t enter into the spirit, and so Jess has to work harder to hold and justify her role as storyteller. Perhaps that’s why she cuts short the fun and says, “Gotta go.”

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