----- Original Message -----
From: Dennis Horte <winddance@direct.ca>
To: TimeRunner <keiichi@i-manila.com.ph>
Cc: FFML <ffml@fanfic.com>
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2000 3:48 PM
Subject: [FFML] Re: What Wish? 4/10
The final scene with Skuld and Keiichi seemed to be good example of
how
you convey description without actually saying anything. While you
didn't drag the flow down with adjectives, the flow of dialogue itself
was well able to give me a nice mental picture and idea as to how they
were sounding when they had their quarrel.
There's my persistent quandary, right there: I'm so much more comfortable
with dialogue than with rich description. A few of my friends have
pointed
out that description seems to be my weak point -- in fact, oftentimes
it's
virtually nonexistent. In comparison to their works, my fics tend to seem
sparse and brief in comparison.
I'm afraid my comments on this chapter are going to be fairly breif, my
life
seems too busy to be believed, and every time I think I'm coming to a
lull,
something new comes up.
Kind of like mine, in reverse.
Having said that, my C&C isn't really about this fic in particular, but
about
the writing in your fics in general. The comments I pulled out of another
posting really touch on the heart of the matter.
At the heart of the matter, why should your excellent command of dialogue
be a quandry at all? Isaac Asimov was well known for his use of dialogue
in
a very similar sense. His stories were almost entirely composed of
dialogue,
and yet he is considered one of the greatest science fiction writers of
all
time.
Ah. That raises an interesting point, which I will get to later.
Why? Because stories, or at least good stories, are about people. The
color of someone's socks does not affect the way that person is veiwed
unless that color deviates wildly from some accepted norm. What a person
says to someone else in a given situation, however, can affect how that
person is veiwed for life.
Yup. Which is why I tend to avoid physical caricatures in my characters.
I'm going to try to break away from the philosophy and offer some more
concrete ideas.
As is mentioned by Miashara, the story flows very nicely. This is because
of, not despite the use of dialog as the main story telling tool. The
story is
expressed almost entirely in ideas, typically simple statements that one
would hear in everyday conversation. This makes the story easy to digest,
but at the same time, allows the author to express concepts in a language
that is easily understood by any reader with a frame of reference to
follow
the story from.
One of the greatest advantages of a story that is not heavy on description
is its re-read value. A story with a lot of description tends to drag on
if you
know what's going on. Dialogue on the other hand, doesn't get old nearly
as quickly. Rereading a story based on character interaction through
dialogue will usually reveal something new every time you read it.
In short, the way you write is the primary draw to what you write, and as
long as you keep this focus, I'll keep coming back for more.
Thanks. I suppose this is why I enjoy reading my own stories, too. Besides
picking out errors most people don't see as errors, I like rereading my
dialogue scenes.
I know why I write the way I do now. Isaac Asimov was one of my favorite
authors, and one of my favorite series was the Foundation series, in which
most of the conflict tended to be resolved through dialogue. People
criticized the Foundation series for not having enough hi-tech, but not
me -- the most exciting scenes for me tended to be the 'I know where the
Second Foundation is' dialogue bits.
On a side note, this is what prompted me and a group of friends to start the
"Fanfic As Written By X' project. It's a rather insanely ambitious project
to rewrite each other's fics in our own distinct styles. If I could only get
in contact with Switch and Scriviner (and, come to think of it, any writers
interested in watching other people mangle their work), we might see stuff
like 'Herbs and Spices Implied Through Dialogue by TimeRunner' or 'Two
Hearts of One Really Confused Mind by Switch', or maybe even the
seventy-five pages long version of 'So Many, Many, Many Memories by
Scriviner'.
On a side note, this story was particualarly lacking in spelling and
grammar errors. Are you sure you aren't hiding a prereader in your
closet?
Yes, it's true! I'm a closet editor! I admit it, and I'm not ashamed!
No, but seriously, the reason the recent parts were a bit sparse on the typo
side is because of the rewrites. We're talking massive rewrites here,
rewrites of the magnitude that change the course of entire chapters (did you
know that Urd was supposed to show up in part 3?). I think I managed to sift
out most of the errors during the revisions. Which is good.
Thanks for writing in! I really appreciate it when I get comments from you,
in particular, since you tend to address the details I'm most concerned
about: style, grammar, subtexts... This really helps me, not only with the
story, but in gaining confidence about my particular writing style.
Thanks again!
=====
w.o.m.
TimeRunner's Web Page:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/7482
=====
"The story grew in the most convoluted way, as many people will be
surprised to learn. Writing episodically meant that when I finished one
episode I had no idea about what the next one would contain. When, in the
twists and turns of the plot, some event suddenly seemed to illuminate
things that had gone before, I was as surprised as anyone else."
--- Douglas Adams, "A Guide to the Guide"