Script-style conversations in a book

I think the crux of it is that anything you do that breaks convention will make your writing more difficult to read. That isn't to say you shouldn't do it, by the way (several of my favourite books take serious liberties with style and formatting), but it must be worth the effort. If a reader would be able to get everything they could possibly get from your writing, for less effort, if you used conventional formatting, they'll be (understandably) frustrated if you don't.

If not - if your choice adds something, and the effort is worth the reader's while - your only difficulty is convincing them to put the effort in in the first place. Once they do, they'll be glad they did.

As with all such things, though, it's ultimately a matter of taste. There are people who think anything "conventional" is bland and unadventurous, and wouldn't be seen dead reading mainstream fiction (or using the phrase "wouldn't be seen dead"). There are also people who think anything "unconventional" is a pointless attempt to seem clever, and that mainstream fiction is mainstream because it's just better.

For what it's worth, I think both of these positions are ridiculous, but that's beside the point.

posted almost 8 years ago

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TheTermiteSociety‭

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It's not unheard of to do this, but I wouldn't recommend doing it at the beginning of your book. Give the readers time to get to know the characters, then you can cut to a kind of short-hand between the characters. The reader should always be able to follow what is going on in the dialogue; if it's confusing, you failed them in the writing of the story.

Everything else in a novel should be like a novel. Screenplays are written for directors and actors to bring to life. A typical book reader wants you to paint an experience in their mind, which they can't get from watching TV or reading a screenplay. If you wanted to short-hand your first draft via a screen play method, that would be fine, as long as you go back and fill in the details to give book lovers what they expect from a book.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Cadence‭

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Either you're writing a prose piece or you're writing a screenplay. Don't do both.

If you're doing some advanced stuff with formatting trying to represent different kinds of media (radio transcripts, chat logs), you might be able to have speaker tags the way you do above, but not ploppped down in the middle of a regular paragraph.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1

You certainly can. You can do anything that works. Melville does something very like this at one point in Moby Dick, so there is good precedent for it.

The thing is, why are you doing it? Why break convention? Any time you break convention, you call attention to what you are doing. When you follow convention, you text tends to become transparent and the reader simply sees that scene you are creating. When you break convention, you call attention back to the text itself.

There are certainly writers who break convention. Cormac McCarthy does not use quotation marks. I have no idea why, but I notice that fact that he does this, which makes me more conscious of the text. This might be why he does it, since his text is very deliberately poetic. (Again, it may simply be because he is Cormac McCarthy and he can do what he likes.)

Using a script format like this seems to add a kind of staccato tone to the dialog, as if it is spit back and forth rapidly. But that's how it strikes me. It may strike others differently. Being unconventional, it does not come with any guarantee of how different readers will interpret it.

In the end, though, as an author you are entitled to literary innovation. It may be worth it if it produces some worthwhile effect for your intended audience. But be aware that it will almost certainly rub some people the wrong way.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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