Can Furthermore Improve Pacing In Serialized Webnovels?

Whenever I read a script aloud, 'furthermore' makes me pause — not because it's wrong, but because it wears a suit to a backyard barbecue. It’s one of those Latinate, multi-syllable words that carries a certain weight and ceremony. In everyday speech people usually lean on shorter, punchier connectors: 'also,' 'plus,' 'and,' or even a casual 'what's more.' So when a character drops 'furthermore' in dialogue it tends to signal something deliberate: a formal tone, a pompous personality, or a period piece where people actually spoke that way. Beyond its formal baggage, the cadence of 'furthermore' matters. It’s three syllables with stress on the first—FUR-ther-more—which slows the line slightly and draws attention. In scripts and on screen, that attention can be useful if you want the audience to notice a character's pretension or intellectual distance. Directors and actors are always listening for those beats — a line that disrupts natural rhythm will be delivered differently, sometimes humorously or sometimes with cold authority. That’s why you’ll spot 'furthermore' more often in stage directions, academic monologues, legal speeches, or villainous asides rather than in kitchen-table chatter. If I’m writing or polishing a script I’ll choose it very intentionally. Use it as a costume piece for a character — let a nervous professor or a showy politician use it, and the audience gets immediate shorthand for their world. But swap it out for a shorter connector if you want naturalism. I still enjoy it when a writer sneaks it in at the right moment; it’s like a tiny, theatrical flourish that either makes me laugh or sit up straighter, depending on the scene.

It's wild how a single connective like 'furthermore' can shift a whole character's vibe on the page. I love digging into dialogue the way some people collect figurines — tiny word choices reveal personality. If a character repeatedly drops 'furthermore' into speech, readers immediately pick up on formality, pedantry, or theatricality. It reads like a raise of the eyebrow in text: stiff, polished, maybe a little performative. In a bubble next to exaggerated facial art it turns into comedic pomp; in quiet narration it becomes authoritative, almost lecturing. From my viewpoint, placement matters more than frequency. 'Furthermore' in spoken lines makes characters sound like they're constructing an argument mid-conversation, so it fits professors, lawyers, or pompous villains — think of someone narrating their superiority. But in casual manga settings, like school friends in 'Komi Can't Communicate' or a laid-back crew in 'One Piece', it feels off and breaks immersion. Translators often replace it with contractions or colloquialisms to preserve natural flow. For example, swapping 'furthermore' with 'also' or 'plus' can soften the tone without losing meaning. Visually, speech bubble size and panel pacing amplify its effect. A long bubble with 'furthermore' slows the reader, demanding attention the way a drawn-out camera shot does in film. Conversely, popping it into a rapid-fire exchange makes that character sound pedantic and out of sync, which can be used intentionally for humor or to underline social distance. Overall, I find the word a tiny lever for big voice choices — it can humanize or alienate a character depending on how you pull it, and that little decision always fascinates me.

Sometimes you'll see 'furthermore' sitting in subtitles because the translator is trying to preserve a specific register or rhetorical flourish from the original Japanese. For example, when a character speaks in very formal, written-sounding Japanese — think the lofty speeches in 'Legend of the Galactic Heroes' or a pompous noble in 'Fate/stay night' — a translator might keep 'furthermore' instead of switching to a casual 'also' to keep that air of ceremony. It reads stiff, yes, but it signals to the viewer that the speaker isn't chatting; they're delivering something formal or authoritative. Another reason is logical structure. Words like 'furthermore' and 'moreover' mark a clear argumentative step, and when the source uses connectors like さらに or 加えて repeatedly, dropping them can flatten the flow. Subtitlers sometimes want to preserve those connective moments so the audience feels the piling-on of facts or threats. There are also practical constraints: timing, line breaks, and matching the number of on-screen text chunks. Sometimes 'furthermore' fits the rhythm better than a longer paraphrase. Finally, style guides and audience expectations matter. Official releases often err toward neutral but slightly formal language to avoid slang that ages badly, while fan subs might choose natural-sounding dialogue. I've seen both approaches and enjoy when translators make deliberate choices that serve tone — it's like hearing the same song played on different instruments.

Most often I notice 'furthermore' showing up in the kind of fantasy prose that wants to sound stately, learned, or slightly old-fashioned. In my readings I associate it with narrators who adopt a scholarly, omniscient tone—those voices that pause the action to explain lineage, law, or lore. It’s the connective you hear when an author wants to add weight to a sentence without breaking the formal rhythm, so wizards, chroniclers, heralds, and epistolary framings tend to use it in dialogue or narration. I’ll admit I lean toward writers who deliberately mimic medieval or Renaissance diction—think of the folks who dress their sentences in lace and Latin-derived vocabulary. Those writers sprinkle 'furthermore' alongside 'moreover' and 'whereupon' to create a kind of ritual cadence. It’s also common in translations or scholarly editions of old myths, where modern editors insert it to preserve a sense of solemn continuity. By contrast, pulp or gritty sword-and-sorcery tends to avoid it, preferring punchier connectors. From a stylistic point of view, 'furthermore' does a neat job of signaling authority: it tells the reader that what follows is part of the established truth of the world. That makes it great for worldbuilding asides, genealogies, or any moment when the story steps back and clarifies stakes. Personally, I love spotting it because it often signals a patch of lore that’s about to get interesting; it’s like a little literary drumroll before the next detail drops.