On Sun, 15 Dec 1996 20:43:00 -0500 (EST), WebDragon wrote:

J.K.Hayashi  wrote:

but you could also impart the same information by the line 
"Ranma kicked Genma into the block of ice that was the Tendo carp pond.  
Genma's lips froze against the ice and he was forced to carry the carp pond to 
breakfast."

       Depends.  If you're looking for humor, yeah, that paragraph above
will do fine.  (BTW, if the carp pond is frozen how will the carp survive? ^_^)

Only the top is frozen, dude. But how will they survive come summer
when Genma and Ranma use the pond to dump Akane's cooking? :-)

be done in that way as well.  That isn't necessarily the case.  What matters, 
really, is developing and using a style (whether its one or a combination) 
that the writer is comfortable with.

       What you say is true, but it is a pain in the ass to read script,
IMO of course. 

I for one wouldn't go that far. I enjoy reading a well-written script
fic. Let's face it, scripts are a highly limited medium. But if that's
what works for a particular writer, then for him/her that's fine.

Writing well in script format is much harder than writing in prose.  The 

This has been the opposite of my own experience, and I've done both.

Details that are described carry more implication than they would in prose 
format, since they wouldn't have been mentioned unless they were necessary.

       Again, I subscribe to descriptive detail where necessary.

"Where necessary" is the key, I think. Prose fiction offers a writer a
lot of flexibility. One doesn't *have* to put in descriptions, or
explain motivations, etc. A good writer will do these things only
where he/she feels that they would enhance a story. But in prose you
have the choice.

       Snappy dialogue in script and in prose is not so much different than
you might think.  Script merely puts an identifying header before the
sentence being spoken.  Prose merely takes it out and presupposes that the
reader knows who is speaking at the moment.  For example....

Right, prose is flexible enough that part or all of it *can* be
basically a reformatted script if desired. But it can also be much
more. I would bet that any scriptfic from the r.a.a.c archives could
be novelized without it losing its flavor. The reverse certainly isn't
true; can you imagine Sunrise Chronicles as a script?

Gary

Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics