Frustration

[Britva415]

The Anne Tyler novel I just finished reading (French Braid, published by Vintage) has several paragraphs with short, multiple-speaker bits of dialogue in them. I did this recently in a story, where I had two characters ganging up on a third with brief exclamations and wanted to give a sense of near-simultaneous speech.

Rules are made to be broken. One has to not be ignorant of the conventions in the first place, though, to have any claim at all to "artistic license" in doing so.

I'm not saying anyone here did try to claim artistic license to defend their bad writing. I'm just making the point that style is part of the craft, which I think is all anyone's trying to say, here.

I'm not at this point advocating one style manual over any other. But I would never advocate for a writer to remain completely ignorant of the entire concept of style or of any particular manual's style.

 

[SimonDoom]

The Anne Tyler novel I just finished reading (French Braid, published by Vintage) has several paragraphs with short, multiple-speaker bits of dialogue in them. I did this recently in a story, where I had two characters ganging up on a third with brief exclamations and wanted to give a sense of near-simultaneous speech.

Earlier this year I read Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays. In it she routinely violates, tramples upon, and disdains the rule against combining independent clauses with commas and no conjunctions. She does it over and over again. I don't imagine her editor told her, "Joan, you can't do this!" She knew what she was doing. But I don't think "Be like Joan Didion" is useful advice for 95+% of Literotica authors. From what I've read, including especially the samples of writing from authors who start threads in this forum with questions like the OP, they'd be better off sticking to standard conventions. For most people, I think you have to master the conventions before you can flout them with artistic success.

 

[Britva415]

The Anne Tyler novel I just finished reading (French Braid, published by Vintage) has several paragraphs with short, multiple-speaker bits of dialogue in them. I did this recently in a story, where I had two characters ganging up on a third with brief exclamations and wanted to give a sense of near-simultaneous speech.

I haven't read the story and I'm not saying you did it wrong, but what was the reason for not simply having the narrator say, or show, that it was near-simultaneous?

 

[KeithD]

I haven't read the story and I'm not saying you did it wrong, but what was the reason for not simply having the narrator say, or show, that it was near-simultaneous?

Chosen impact. Avoiding being stilted. Sounded the best. Decades of writing experience. Literary license. Fiction is marvelously flexible. And it turns out Anne Tyler, who has a Pulitzer, would have agreed with me, because she did it in at least French Braid and her mainstream publisher published it. Would I need any other reason?

 

[Britva415]

Chosen impact. Avoiding being stilted. Sounded the best. Decades of writing experience. Literary license. Fiction is marvelously flexible. And it turns out Anne Tyler, who has a Pulitzer, would have agreed with me, because she did it and her publisher published it. Would I need any other reason?

Those are fine answers, you don't have to defend them.

 

[KeithD]

Earlier this year I read Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays. In it she routinely violates, tramples upon, and disdains the rule against combining independent clauses with commas and no conjunctions. She does it over and over again. I don't imagine her editor told her, "Joan, you can't do this!" She knew what she was doing. But I don't think "Be like Joan Didion" is useful advice for 95+% of Literotica authors. From what I've read, including especially the samples of writing from authors who start threads in this forum with questions like the OP, they'd be better off sticking to standard conventions. For most people, I think you have to master the conventions before you can flout them with artistic success.

Of course if the author was a Joan Didion who accounted for a fifth of the publishing house's revenue, they'd very likely live with a lot of personal quirks. (I've had it happened. I tried to edit for Tom Clancy, a real hair-pulling experience).

 

[KeithD]

Those are fine answers, you don't have to defend them.

Thanks. I rather hoped they would do. When I found myself doing it in the recent story, it surprised the hell out of me to realize I thought that was the best way--enough so that I remembered to note it here.

 

[JSX2020]

Thanks for the various replies and comments, took one more shot at editing things and got published!!

I think I was just feeling a little down tbh, but hanks for all your replies!

 

[MyBareTorso]

I didn't know anything about it, either, since I'd never written fiction and would have had no reason to consult it. There are other guides for academic and professional writing. KeithD was the one who pointed it out. It's a great guide for an American author, but I wouldn't bother if I was from somewhere else unless I was determined to write like an American (I assume very few Australians want to do that).

No way, mate!