All Comments on 'A Picture = K Words In College Ch. 01'

Your stories are entertaining, but your conversations are so fragmented, it's like you had someone edit your story, and they simply deleted half (or more) of the dialog. And what's left is confusing to someone who doesn't speak "that language". I mean, I know it's English, but it's like the version of English spoken on a really low-budget British television show, circa 1974. You know the kind of television I'm talking about: where instead of showing a car explode, you see someone peeking out there window and exclaiming, "Oh, look, that car just exploded!" Or someone points up and screams, "Look! A spaceship!" ...But the camera never actually pans up to see the spaceship they're supposedly pointing at. ...And instead of getting someone to actually write comprehensible dialog, they'd communicate in short, abbreviated sentences where they'd casually refer to information that you should supposedly already intuitively know.

Do your prospective readers a favor: Instead of peppering your story so liberally with "Um-hmm's", flesh out the actual spoken dialog.

I appreciate you considered comment and respect you opinion. H. W. Fowler and my school teachers would have agreed with you, but I am not writing for them.

Perhaps you have seen my reply to similar comments on other stories. In a one-on-one conversation, people often do not speak in complete sentences (subject, verb, object). They hang their reply on what has just been said, completing, complementing, contradicting what the other person has just said with only the necessary words. The non-verbal “um-hmm” etc. are part of this shorthand in conversation, instead of saying: “I agree with you,” “You are right.” That is “the actual spoken dialog.”

Many readers of my stories apparently have no problem with this. I expect that they read the lines quickly, following the context and not being upset by half sentences. As you put it nicely, they accept that the characters “communicate in short, abbreviated sentences where they'd casually refer to information that you should supposedly already intuitively know.”

Similarly, characters' unvoiced thoughts are seldom a series of grammatically correct full sentences, just the necessary bits to express them to themselves. On paper, that may look funny, but it is the way we actually think. Full sentences would take the immediacy out of what might go through a character's mind in a brief moment before a reply or what happens next. The reader would see several lines of text and take a breath or two reading them, then returning to the action or dialog, rather than having it remain present, while he or she quickly takes in the abbreviated thoughts.

It may not 'read' well, but it is how people talk, like it or not and I like that style. To me it kind of flows and makes more sense to write it as it would be said instead of making it 'proper'. But to each his/her own I guess and it is up to each writer to write how they choose and up to us if we want to read and or enjoy it or not. Comment on the story, mistakes or things in general about the story that don't ring true but not the way the writer wants to have the characters speak, as I don't think it matter's a great deal, but that's just me.

There's very little point in attempting to correct or adversely comment on anything leBonhomme writes, as he/she/it is convinced they are in fact the epitome of writing excellence; note the smug retorts and detailed explanations of what is going through her/his/its head while writing these long, boring trawls through his/her/its hangups. I don't bother to comment anymore because he/she/it won't change, the attitude and bloody-minded stubbornness are almost autistic in their sheer impenetrability. Pass along, there's nothing new here, just more smug implacability and resounding dullness as more of the same gets dredged-up for every story he/she/it writes. No stars.

Why don't you two who have complained find your idea of the perfect story by another author and post another comment with a link to it? I would find them interesting to read, I am sure. I won't change my style, but then I can ask why you trouble yourselves to read my stories.