Confession time
Feb. 28th, 2006 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorzeoI am a dialogue whore. I love well-written dialogue. It's one of the reasons I'm addicted to Gilmore Girls, to CSI, to NCIS...witty banter, fast-paced lines, just get me going.
It's also one of my big pet peeves in the fanfiction world. There are some beautiful writers out there that can set the scene wonderfully, but they just can't capture the flow of speech. Or, even worse, they'll set the scene in paragraph format, but when it comes time for the characters to speak, they switch to script format.
I was lucky enough to have decent teachers early on in my writing life, teachers who taught me that I didn't need a tag after every line of dialogue, teachers who taught me the rules of arguments ("No one in an argument will be able to get out more than three lines of text before being interrupted" ;) ), the flow of speech, and how NOT to write in accents or dialects. I had to laugh when one of my reviews for So High School praised, of all things, my grammar. Now that's a sad commentary on the state of fanfiction.
But hey, it's almost five, when I can perch on the couch and immerse myself in the quick wit of Lorelai and Rory. I think I just got a chill.
It's also one of my big pet peeves in the fanfiction world. There are some beautiful writers out there that can set the scene wonderfully, but they just can't capture the flow of speech. Or, even worse, they'll set the scene in paragraph format, but when it comes time for the characters to speak, they switch to script format.
I was lucky enough to have decent teachers early on in my writing life, teachers who taught me that I didn't need a tag after every line of dialogue, teachers who taught me the rules of arguments ("No one in an argument will be able to get out more than three lines of text before being interrupted" ;) ), the flow of speech, and how NOT to write in accents or dialects. I had to laugh when one of my reviews for So High School praised, of all things, my grammar. Now that's a sad commentary on the state of fanfiction.
But hey, it's almost five, when I can perch on the couch and immerse myself in the quick wit of Lorelai and Rory. I think I just got a chill.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2006 12:16 pm (UTC)The ultimate test of your dialog love and skills is to write a story entirely in dialog -- not a script, but just naked dialog to transmit everything about the characters, setting and conflict. I've written several stories with just a few lines of non-dialog setting, and they're a great challenge to differentiate the characters' voices strongly. Have you done that? It's fun!
--MW
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2006 12:17 pm (UTC)--MW