a discord writing group. I suppose its like any system of government. on *paper*, it looks swell. A group of writers, there's a place where you dont even have to thread and post, everyone just talks. bouncing ideas, talking/sharing about writing tips and tricks. I know, its like I believe in santa claus and shit. and like you said, then there's the reality of the situation. as it gets implemented in real life.
and even more than that, launching. on a big site like RR. When you're new and everything, you look around. It seems as if these writers just "pop" up, and seem to sort of instantly have 50 to 100 5 star reviews, 50 to 100 followers, nice comments. How in the hell do they... 'cos many of them, it doesn't look like they're all that. 18 hours? They're off and "launched".
I mean, it makes sense. in the absence of a publisher picking you up, the writing group you;re a member of, functions on your behalf to give you a chance.
then, you see what it turns into. I mean, here we don't have that. its not messy and competitive. But on RR? There's patreon bucks at stake, and egos and everything. and it gets to rather resemble a sort of cross between the wild west, and all the monkey cages at the zoo were gotten drunk, then left out of their cages to fling turds and raise hell. You kind of look around and go "what manner of..."
but, out of all that hell and chaos, breakout hits happen and go viral. Its rare, but the chances are better than hitting the mega millions lottery. you can't help but look and go... wow. And I mean if you're writing anyways, technically you have the same chance they do, its fair. writers are every man for themselves that way.
cabals though, they do the coordinated launches, and hog up spots. coordinated "one star bombing runs" and some of them do it like world war 2 carpet bombing. Its like street ganmgs, battling for turf in the bad end of the city, for the love of god.
I don't know.
no no no
where the flying *&^% have you been the last couple years, dude.
yes. what I call my "old" style of writing/editing.
I was asking questions? In prose. newbie thing. and yes, I was addicted to... the periods of ellipsis. (both of these are examples, the ? and the ...)
I have been aggressively editing OUT almost all periods of ellipsis and parenthetical questions from PROSE.
I toned it down, toned it down, finally all but eliminated it. in prose. But yes, in dialogue I thought it was okay.
I'm trying to make my dialog, the characters speaking voices. sound natural. alive. people speaking, their voices have that inflection, when they ask a question. Those in that long list. That was all dialogue, correct.
dude, I'm not really young or anything.
when I was young, I was very very quiet as a little kid. I forcibly came out of my shell and forced myself to be an extrovert and outgoing. Its forced. but its better than being clinically shy and it took over and became the new normal. It was better than the alternative.
so yes, I suppose I do speak with something. What. I would use a word like dramatic or demonstrative. I never did have a problem gertting up and delivering a speech or addressing a room full of people at work. Most people are scared to, I was always good at that. No fear of addressing a large group from a podium.
okay.
new rule #1. no more question marks in dialogue. Question then. when is it appropriate to use a question mark in dialogue then.
new rule #2. no more periods of ellipsis, dramatic pauses in dialogue. again, when is it appropriate.
whats the easy rule on question mark and periods of ellipsis.
and I'll ask it. You earmarked almost all my dialogue. my prose was fine for the most part then. (I just suppressed a fucking question mark, lol)
I mean, I read my prose. I like it. It seems to read, my prose, like real paperbacks. so its just the dialog then.
last thing. my posting.
posting is not prose writing. Its informal. I always tried to tailor my posting to, shit. you said it, I'm making my posting sound like I talk.
now you really got me thinking.
how did I come out of my shell. I studied, what. Confident people who could address groups. comedians. teachers. professors. we were taught to give speeches. I addressed groups of people both in the course of two college degrees and at work for years. it works fine for those places.
but i let it take over and i talk like that when i'm speaking normally.
yes. i take pauses. dramatic pauses, if you will. you pause for emphasis when addressing people. I use the periods of ellipsis to make it sound like that. just like I use the question mark to show the inflection.
I eliminate almost all question marks for inflection, and periods of ellipsis no more dramatic pauses. it fixes, what. everything. yes? (hoping that question was all right)
please! finish your lecture off! its not, as you said. too aggressive. this sounds perfect.
yeah. I get called "schizoposter" in the other place where I was at. Its annoying. (I'm annoying. I don't mean to be) its an anonymous place, and people can tag who I am.
they tag me by my periods of ellipsis and question marks. (the bastards, lol)
conclusion. my prose is fine (tell me if not)
dialog, no or almost no question marks (tell me some rule for when its okay)
dialog, no or almost no periods of ellipsis, always phrase out the dramatic pauses. (tell me any rule for when its okay)
please! finish this! I feel like i'm "this goddamn close" to getting this down.
okay. glad you took this well, and im not happy to hear you get called schizo, because i end up reviewing a lot of people who work the way you do and I get it.
But okay, you're still not catching the problem entirely. So, we'll go back after I say one good thing:
I said you would be good at theatre monologue. You mentioned you're good with public speaking. This makes sense. Rhetorical questions in orating are okay because people do not have words they can follow on a page for reminders, so the leading question refocuses. But talking on forums and writing is not the same.
Writing:
new rule #1. no more question marks in dialogue.
No. don't overcorrect. Let me give you numbers.
In ch10, you have 86 question marks. In ch 13 you have 94. Both chapters have roughly the same ratio of question marks to words. So let's say you on average have 90 question marks per 3000 words.
In my 134k word novel, I have 1534 question marks.
So if we scale yours to that level, there are about 44 groups of 3000 words. So 44x90=3960 question marks in that simulation, using your chapters as reference. That is a little bit over twice as much as I have. That is not good. I'll concede that its an unfair simulation, given that you have a primarily prose chapter in chapter 11, but its more to accentuate how aggressive the question marks are in the dialogue chapters.
Anyway, it is a little bit insane that you would take that first rule as the lesson. Read what I wrote again. I didn't hit the question mark. I hit the entire construction.
Look at this paragraph:
[The victim? Entered therapy eventually. And the story the therapist got coming out from the victim? Was just too wild to believe.]
Look at that well. Back to back. In isolation, maybe this is okay. But let's continue.
The victim? Entered therapy eventually. And the story the therapist got coming out from the victim? Was just too wild to believe.
(One single line not having the construction)
"Therapist? Had a boyfriend. The boyfriend? Had once been an MP... yada yada yada
Do you really not see the problem? Your character only communicates in the question to premise, truncated answer format and he does it so often.
Do you know what the author's hand is? Yours is SUPER visible because of how stale you are making this. The problem is the staleness.
whats the easy rule on question mark and periods of ellipsis.
Do not think about the marks in isolation. Think about the way you're repeatedly using them. Other way of thinking about, imagine five lines of dilaogue, but each one starts with [character nodded]. This is a slightly exaggerated example of what you're doing with the premise-truncated elaboration.
Let's look at your above. Ask yourself, why can you not write this instead?
The victim entered therapy eventually. But the story the therapist got coming out from the victim was just too wild to believe.
Now ironically, I agree that the above line actually works better with your construction.
The victim entered therapy eventually. But the story the therapist got coming out from the victim? It was just too wild to believe.
What can be taken from that? Sentence variety. Variety like this is usually good.
That next line:
Therapist? Had a boyfriend. The boyfriend? Had once been an MP.
Why? Why are we still talking like this in response to another person.
The therapist had a boyfriend. And that boyfriend had once been an MP.
Man, your character is just so annoying. I refuse to believe anyone has this pathological addiction to leading question then answer. Which leads me to the next thing.
I'm trying to make my dialog, the characters speaking voices. sound natural. alive. people speaking, their voices have that inflection, when they ask a question.
Okay, so for this, I feel for you. Because this is a worthy point of debate. Some people chase realism. Other chases efficiency and accessibility. Traditionally, I recommend AGAINST modeling after people's natural speech patterns. For example, people use fillers like "like" and "um." It's not bad to use them, but forcing readers to read imperfect dialogue is fundamentally annoying. Similar things happen when people try to transcribe accents into dialogue repeatedly. It's difficult and adds mental load for a reader.
For the purposes of webfiction, IF you were a reasonable writer, I would recommend being a bit more efficient, but you aren't. Again, I refuse to believe anyone outside of you in a casual setting will talk like this. It's not good that you're natural speech pattern is showing up in your writing. At this moment, I sincerely cannot say that you are capable of creating characters with different speech patterns than you.
Now the flip side of that is that other writers have more subtle speech patterns, but they also cant escape their speech pattern. They will get away with it, however, because it's not as aggressively in your face as yours.
Those in that long list. That was all dialogue, correct.
Okay, let me just write out the whole statement.
I'm trying to make my dialog, the characters speaking voices. sound natural. alive. people speaking, their voices have that inflection, when they ask a question. Those in that long list. That was all dialogue, correct.
and then
and I'll ask it. You earmarked almost all my dialogue. my prose was fine for the most part then. (I just suppressed a fucking question mark, lol)
I mean, I read my prose. I like it. It seems to read, my prose, like real paperbacks. so its just the dialog then.
This seems reasonable. Until...
What prose? (for ch 10)
He pointed at Little Lightning.
Elise flashed her case and smiled a little.
Elise flashed a little smile and looked away.
Panic cut back in.
He sighed before continuing.
Elise waved.
Elise took over gently.
JG rubbed his chin.
Elise spoke up and chuckled.
Little Lightning piped up.
JG raised his hand. Panic smiled.
(Okay, this one is actually worthwhile.) JG went off to handle that as quick as he could. He was already showing himself to be a huge benefit. He has a badge case, and can get things quick. He was back within the hour. He gave us a quick report.
Junior was beaming.
Panic laughed.
JG wagged his head.
JG thought out loud.
Lightning giggled.
JG cleared his throat. Then, he did it again.Panic looked at him.
No one was rushing to pick up the dead cat in the room. Panic mentioned it quietly.
Little Lightning caught the drift quick, though. She sighed.
Elise raised her hand.
Lightning wagged her head.
Panic took her by one arm around her shoulders, and sat her down. She asked quietly. what was she even the bait, for.
He rubbed her shoulders.
Not counting the reasonable one, you have 23 lines of "prose" and the majority are action beats for dialogue separation. The prose cant be critiqued because the majority of thing is drowning in dialogue. What can we say about the prose in this one particular instance?
Nothing. There's nothing there to dig into.
Flip side, if you're a dialogue focused story teller, then sure, we have a stylistic difference. I need to research books that use that style more because I dont have enough things I can tell you.
But fundamentally, the comparison ratio is challenging here.
last thing. my posting.
posting is not prose writing. Its informal. I always tried to tailor my posting to, shit. you said it, I'm making my posting sound like I talk.
now you really got me thinking.
how did I come out of my shell. I studied, what. Confident people who could address groups. comedians. teachers. professors. we were taught to give speeches. I addressed groups of people both in the course of two college degrees and at work for years. it works fine for those places.
but i let it take over and i talk like that when i'm speaking normally.
Okay, so fundamentally, can you read my mind?
Do you know how I'm reading "..."
Do you know what you're forcing me to process, length-wise?
That's what you're doing. You're forcing a gap in the reading that you actually have no control over. You have no idea if the pause you imagine is the pause I'm being forced to process.
how did I come out of my shell. I studied, what. Confident people who could address groups.
Man. One of the problems is that in your constructions, people dont know where you're going. Check this out.
How did I come out of my shell? I studied what confident people who could address groups do.
How did I come out of my shell? I studied confident people who could address groups.
How did I come out of my shell? I studied what? Confident people who could address groups.
How did I come out of my shell? I studied—what? Confident people who could address groups.
You might not be able to read it, but each line carries a different vibe.
Look at what that stupid and unnecessary "what" and the lack of it causes, with just small tweaks. Of those, there is one that is clearly efficient.
Putting in a question mark when you're going to tell me the answer already, is just unneccessary slow down for what is supposed to be efficient posting.
Another one. Why say this:
it fixes, what. everything. yes?
Why pause me when you can just say this:
it fixes everything, yes? (the variant with a full stop is fine too.)
I sincerely lament that the way you learned to communicate and get out of your shell is causing people to say rude things to you. It's not even your fault. You did what you had to do. Like I said, I am 100% willing to believe you when you say you're good at public speaking. I hope you felt reassured when I said the thing about theatre.
But, and this is just my opinion, the problem here is too much transcription of your speaking style, and maybe too much writing of your thought process. At least when you're in hostile waters.
For the writing, simply applying the consideration a writer has for saying "said" to much, or using the same dialogue tag or action beat repeatedly would work.
You need to try to hide the presence of your speaking voice in the dialogue.
Seriously four leading questions in one paragraph.
Lightning? I can't come up with a lot of reasons. And none of them? Are any good. Now. That said? We still haven't proven that this isn't just, some weird coincidence. You know, some guy watching his girlfriend he thinks is cheating on him. But depending on what comes out of this, and believe me? We intend to be thorough. But…"
Your addiction to question marks even made you use a grammatically incorrect one. This isn't serving you.
You can write without having your character ask a question to no one before they explain something.
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