All Comments on 'A Quick Burble About Dialogue'

by Cruel2BKind

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  • 19 Comments
AnonymousAnonymousabout 12 years ago
A Quicker Diaburbleog

Hey Cruel,

Right to the point and right on. Good info, but not too much of it. Look forward to reading more of your posts.

Newbee

Scotsman69Scotsman69about 12 years ago
I could quibble on a couple of points...

But I won't. Except one.

It is not neccessary to use 'quotes' to indicate dialogue. Many French authors, and other literary giants like Cormac McCarthy and Tim Winton, do very well without them.

I try to avoid them for the most part. They're unneccessary. Read my stories and see.

Otherwise a most helpful piece.

estragonestragonabout 12 years ago
Once Again, A Solid "How To"

from Cruel. Well done. A real "read-and-heed" for all writers.

PostScriptorPostScriptorabout 12 years ago
Disagreeing with the Scotsman!

I understand his position regarding quotation marks, but like most other aspects of punctuation, they exist to clarify the meaning of the text for the reader. I have a very difficult time convincing myself to read a story in which the dialog does not use quotation marks, because it is too much work to try and decipher what parts of the text are actually dialog and which portions are background and narration.

As far as the fact that there are well-known writers who don't use quotation marks — there are some who don't use capital letters either. And for that matter, the ancient Romans didn't put spaces between letters or sentences, and I don't think its a good practice to adopt that either! lol.

BTW — this comment is just stating a disagreement with the Scotsman, not intended as any sort of slam.

Scotsman69Scotsman69about 12 years ago
If PostScriptor

hasn't READ any dialogue without 'quotes', how does he know how it reads?

He only has to look at my stories to learn.

BelliniBelliniabout 12 years ago
I tried your stuff Scotsman.

All that I can say is yes, quotations are necessary. I made it about 10 paragraphs into one of your pieces and gave up. Quotations serve a needed function. Without them your writing feels amateurish and annoying. I can say that somebody may write the best story, but if they don't have grammar and punctuation down, I'm not going to read it.

Cruel2BKindCruel2BKindabout 12 years agoAuthor
To Scotsman69 and PostScriptor

I have read a few stories that didn't have quotations at all, but both of them were very artistic stylized works, not erotica. One was a story about a man going through severe withdrawal from drugs, and the other was a short horror story.

But to acknowledge the major issue, no, most people cannot write without quotes. I had an English teacher in college that told me "Writing rules can be broken, but only if you have the skill". There are plenty of rules that CAN be broken, and can be broken in a very good and intriguing way, but it takes skill. I checked out your story page Scot, and you have several stories with H ratings and none under 4. I don't doubt that you can pull this off.

But PostScriptor is right. If the average writer (myself included) cannot pull off a story without quotations, then it is a good guideline to use quotations. Also, on a story about erotica, people will get annoyed if they cannot tell who is speaking.

That being said, you both had good points, please don't argue! We're all friends here.

Corpse_riderCorpse_riderabout 12 years ago
Good article

nuff said.

AnonymousAnonymousabout 12 years ago
re: Break up into more then one paragraph if you have to.

There was one concept in relation to this I didn't see in the essay.

<P>

A closing quotation mark means the character has stopped speaking. If one character has several paragraphs of monologue unbroken by narrative or other characters talking, only the last paragraph has a closing quotation mark, but every contiguous paragraph has an opening mark. Basically, if one paragraph ends with a quotation mark and the very next one starts with a mark, it's a visual indication a different character is talking.

mel_pomenemel_pomeneabout 12 years ago
Nicely done, Cruel2BKind.

I always find your essays on writing entertaining and informative, so please accept my thanks for this addition to what is fast becoming an excellent reference work.

As with anything (everything) else, you can't - and apparently don't - please everyone, but I will say again that you certainly please me.

I look forward to more of your insight into this writing lark and have given this piece the five stars it deserves.

preternaturalpreternaturalalmost 12 years ago
Martha Stewart fucks herself...

YAY!

preternaturalpreternaturalalmost 12 years ago
threats

they're a turn on. Counter productive. Fighting the urge to go all caps now.... :P

xelliebabexxelliebabexover 11 years ago

I really enjoyed the way you put this together, Thanks!

AnonymousAnonymousabout 11 years ago
The Best Howto Article I have read in Literotica

I can't write a how to article nor a Lit story even if my line is on the line but many howtos fall into the trap of structure and introducing structure.

Structure is Tell not Show and ends up becoming dry and full of false intros that end up full of outlines and mini-headers bogged down in between author gazing and blogger writer wannabe advice.

These tend to start with the writer pseudo-spending some space to apologize for why their howto is not some hard line truth or pseudo-complimenting their own examples. (and if they don't begin it that way, they certainly end their articles that way and prove why their advice is up for free)

Paradoxically this author's other submissions has problems with matching up with the quality of some of the other submissions posted in Literotica, but she nailed it with this one.

As soon as I read the all caps BREAK IT UP, I just knew this author nailed it. She turned a HowTo Article into an interesting dialogue throughout the article's sheer existence.

Regardless whether you review the actual content as good or bad or mediocre or too limited... it no longer matters!

The Howto has in itself become a showcase representative of what it's trying to teach.

As a howto seeker, I came away disagreeing with the title.

There is nothing quick or burbling about this. The writer through a sleight of hand has managed to slip in structure, timing, example and managed to weave all these into a "dialogue" on writing dialogue without sacrificing content for conversation consistency.

THIS. THIS is the epitome of a howto.

...maybe it's one flaw is that it lacks that entertainment ADD of Twilight or Harry Potter,

...or maybe it's one flaw is that it's not quite a story nor a letter nor an article that a seeker would find satisfactory in length and depth.

However: I have not found anything quite like this in Literotica, howto or otherwise.

It's just a classic piece of text. Other howtos may be bookmarked for reference or skimmed for highlights or read only once or twice after you get the lesson but this is a howto text that I can return to over and over again, and I'll learn something new each time.

If this sounds like hyperbole, I dare anyone to reread the text weeks later and pay close attention to when the writer slipped this bombshell of a lesson: THE DANGER OF ATTRIBUTIVES

...pay close attention to when and what mood you were in when that thing hit you and I'll tell you it's close to impossible to find a header that has been slipped in at that moment of time in Literotica.

It works great if you have a tired and lazy writer's mind and are not interested in a howto review of what you think you already know. It works great when you're reviewing the structure of your styles. It works great when you're just too worried that you wrote a clump.

Best of all, it fulfills a plot. The irony is a plot twist. The introduction is a great ice breaker. The lessons allow an example to grow in front of your eyes.

Even the over-use of commas splattered over the text provides a nice contrast to elevating the scene when the examples starts getting introduced and the alternatives start replacing and being described as better replacements.

While it's not perfect (the lack of gathered crowds of masses known as the webosphere flocking around this article being one example of why it's not) to me this is the howto equivalent of Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. A 7.7 movie on IMDB that I think even it's worst critics would have a hard time not giving a 10/10 in the category of one of a kind works for it's genre, and I hope this analogy would help in reducing the people I pushed away by typing this anonymous review. I'm really not writing this review because I want to shill the author or have them be sprinkled with praise. I'm not writing this because I'm some Literotica regular that wants to game the system. I just think this needs to be said.

I think this needs to be said, but I don't think anyone else will ever say it.

Not the people who already wrote the reviews.

Not some future stranger.

This is why I'm typing what I'm typing and I really want to apologize if all this text just ends up pushing you away or all these words just ends up convincing you that, despite my praise, I learned nothing from the author in trying to break it up but I really believe this to be the best howto article I read on Literotica and I don't want anyone to miss out on what makes this particular article so special.

larrysue35larrysue35over 10 years ago

Thanks for the great info...It's definitely going to be helpful!

AnonymousAnonymousalmost 9 years ago
READ SOME WRITERS WHO WROTE EXCELLENT DIALOG

John O'Hara and George V.Higgins are the undisputed masters of dialog. Read some of each and get back to us with a new, correct tutorial. This is Writers Digest swill.

AnonymousAnonymousabout 8 years ago
Thanks

This was some good reminders and pointers. Pay no attention to the comment from anonymous. No good deed goes unpunished.

AnonymousAnonymousabout 6 years ago
OMGMGMG

ILYSM

I read these stories for the romantic aspect and not the copulative activities. So when I stumbled upon your wonderful page, I was elated. The grammar! I could die, its so perfect. I do hope more will see this page.

burningloveburninglovealmost 3 years ago

Very - Very Good Advice! The worst thing an author can do is to confuse the reader to the point they give up!

Burninglove

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