I am trying to find alternatives to the phrase "I hoped" in the following
"I hoped that I hadn’t dropped him in it. I hoped he didn’t think I had betrayed him. I hope he didn’t hate me for letting our secret out".
I can't seem to find any alternatives online.
Thanks folks. I have tried to use the online thesaurus but it seems to give lots of alternatives for 'hoped for' and nothing for 'hoped that''
Having added all your suggestions and my thoughts together the paragraph becomes:
You may be wondering where Stephen was in all this? I’d been banned from seeing him at school and was watched like a hawk, I don’t know, maybe he was going through the same hell as I was. I didn’t see him for a while. Maybe he was avoiding me. I feared that I had dropped him in it. I didn’t want him to think I had betrayed him. I hoped with all my heart that he didn’t hate me for letting our secret out.
Got a Thesaurus? I tend to use the Collins online version if I don't have my paper one handy.
You could always just change the sentence structure a bit and increase contractions since it's a character thought rather than standard narrative eg.
'I hoped I hadn't dropped him in it. I hoped he didn't think I'd betrayed him; that he didn't (wouldn't) hate me for letting out our secret'.
Or similar-ish :)
Jeremy, I wonder if you really need to find an alternative? Without context it's impossible to say. While we usually try to avoid repetition, sometimes it is a useful device for building emphasis. "I hoped that I hadn't dropped him in it. I hoped that he didn't think I had betrayed him. I hoped with all my heart that he didn't hate me for letting our secret out."
All the best
Penny