Are there stylistic overlaps between novels and comic books? [closed]
Closed by System on Jul 3, 2019 at 07:26
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I am going to quote from a novel that in my opinion shows many stylistic overlaps of novels and comic books: The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey. I am holding that novel in my hand now.
- The use of a lot of dashes
- The use of a lot of italics to show internal character monologues.
- Single words being all in capitals in a sentence
- Using words like "who" and "how" as nouns as in "the who" or "the how."
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The most important one: the use of colons in conversation. For instance:
[page 320]
The Rowan and Isthia: do NOT permit them to engage.
The Rowan: We'll need their minds!
After I finished reading The Rowan I called all of this a "comic book" style of novel writing. I don't mean that as anything derogatory; it's a great novel. I haven't seen any current novels that use a comic book style as in my 5 points above. The Rowan was published in 1990. Was it a short lived trend to write novels this way?
What's interesting is if I go to an earlier novel by Anne McCaffrey called The White Dragon and open it, published in 1979, she isn't over 450 pages using that Comic book style there; there are rare examples but nowhere near enough to be doing anything different to other authors.
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1 answer
Was it a short lived trend to write novels this way?
I don't believe so. I've been reading novels for over fifty years, I have several hundred of them on my home bookshelves. I would have noticed a trend like that if it appeared since about 1965.
As for your title question: Yes, but not so much the items you quote. Those kinds of stylistic things are a product of a lack of space for dialogue in a visual medium, so it is a kind of shorthand for what, in a novel, would be written out in prose.
Dashes indicate interruptions or pauses. All Caps indicate emphasis that can be explained in prose (which the comic has no real room for). Colons take the place of "said" or "asked" or other such words.
Using "who" or "what" as nouns may occur, in normal speech they may be: "The who now?"
And obviously there is the Band "The Who", which I imagine was a joke on this very phenomenon. Or the old skit about "Who's on First". But I see no trend toward that (and I don't read comic books, so I don't know how often it is done there).
As for your second item, using Italics to indicate thought, that has always been a common convention. The thoughts of the POV character are frequently presented in their own paragraph in italics; this is similar to dialogue but without the quotes.
"I really don't think you have anything to worry about, Mary," Angela said.
Richard better be more careful, that idiot is going to ruin everything.
Mary winced, then shook her head. "You're probably right, I'm just paranoid."
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