So brilliant it's stupid, and also the reverse
Last night I did not work on character and setting, I worked on dialogue. Which fed into character, at least, so maybe it was the same destination by a less direct path. Meeeh, whatever, it worked for me.
The First Five Pages says dialogue can be instantly reject-o-matic, and an editor doesn't even have to read the dialogue to determine if they'll reject your piece. The editor looks at the page, and if there's a ton of dialogue and nothing else, rejected. And, if there's very little dialogue, rejected. He recommends taking a dialogue-heavy scene and condensing the dialogue to about a third of the original amount, and doing the reverse for a dialogue-light scene.
I looked at my story, and saw a crap-load of dialogue. I condensed it down and added more description, and voila! It reads better.
It's such a paint by numbers exercise that it seems like it shouldn't work, but it totally does. I also related to the idea of looking at words on a page and deciding whether or not I wanted to read more. This is part of my book selection process. I do read a few sentences as well, most of the time, but I will admit that sometimes I flip to a random page, and if the way the text looks on the page doesn't appeal to me (i.e., large paragraphs with few breaks, wah, too hard! Or, line after line of just dialogue, meh, I'm not getting my money's worth) I put it down and look for something else.
I didn't get a whole lot done last night. I definitely need to find ways to spend more time reading and writing. The evening routine, great as it is, does not give me a lot of time. It takes me a while to decompress when I get home, and I'm finding lately that I want to read more just to see how the good writers are doing it.
One option is to challenge this whole idea of needing to decompress. Probably I'm just a whiny bitch and could get started actually working earlier.
Another option is to schedule more weekend work time. Since beginning this effort, I haven't once worked both days of a weekend. A persistent voice in my head tells me I need the weekday routine, or else it won't work, but of course that's a weak excuse.
The upside is that lately, I haven't felt like throwing the computer across the room when I actually get down to it. Once I'm writing, I'm ok. It's just getting to the writing that's the challenge.
The First Five Pages says dialogue can be instantly reject-o-matic, and an editor doesn't even have to read the dialogue to determine if they'll reject your piece. The editor looks at the page, and if there's a ton of dialogue and nothing else, rejected. And, if there's very little dialogue, rejected. He recommends taking a dialogue-heavy scene and condensing the dialogue to about a third of the original amount, and doing the reverse for a dialogue-light scene.
I looked at my story, and saw a crap-load of dialogue. I condensed it down and added more description, and voila! It reads better.
It's such a paint by numbers exercise that it seems like it shouldn't work, but it totally does. I also related to the idea of looking at words on a page and deciding whether or not I wanted to read more. This is part of my book selection process. I do read a few sentences as well, most of the time, but I will admit that sometimes I flip to a random page, and if the way the text looks on the page doesn't appeal to me (i.e., large paragraphs with few breaks, wah, too hard! Or, line after line of just dialogue, meh, I'm not getting my money's worth) I put it down and look for something else.
I didn't get a whole lot done last night. I definitely need to find ways to spend more time reading and writing. The evening routine, great as it is, does not give me a lot of time. It takes me a while to decompress when I get home, and I'm finding lately that I want to read more just to see how the good writers are doing it.
One option is to challenge this whole idea of needing to decompress. Probably I'm just a whiny bitch and could get started actually working earlier.
Another option is to schedule more weekend work time. Since beginning this effort, I haven't once worked both days of a weekend. A persistent voice in my head tells me I need the weekday routine, or else it won't work, but of course that's a weak excuse.
The upside is that lately, I haven't felt like throwing the computer across the room when I actually get down to it. Once I'm writing, I'm ok. It's just getting to the writing that's the challenge.
posted by walkinhomefromthethriftstore at 1:25 PM
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