jhealy55
Pixie-Dust Pusher
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2018
- Posts
- 236
Well said and thank you for adding a bit of perspective.
Please know that I’m not at all upset or angry about the issue, or even the responses in this thread. I do need to do a better job of accounting for the fact that many here are. Doesn’t excuse some of the responses, but it goes a long way to explain them. As they say, “the axe forgets, but the tree remembers.”
But if you’re reading anything I wrote in a dismissive, condescending or angry tone, then what you think I’m saying is being colored by your feelings about the issue. I am genuinely trying to understand what is going on, but maybe that’s not possible by asking questions of those who are in the midst of a conflict.
I’m going to bounce out of this thread without trying to do any more harm to those who are sincerely angry over getting their work rejected, but I would only share these observations with the sincere hope they help find a way through and get back to writing about what you love:
The examples posted here don’t read very well as organic dialogue. As I’ve said, I’ve been there, am still, and will always be, trying to get better at it. In many ways you have to imagine each person in depth, have a clear sense of character identity and be scrupulously willing to live within the constraints of the world that you’ve built around them. None of that is easy, nor are there any shortcuts that I’ve found. I think there may be a few people who have a natural gift for it, but most of us do not. I’ve never seen anyone invest a good amount of effort over a long period of time who didn’t get better at it. Just like any skill.
Portraits are especially hard to paint because we have built in templates for things like feature placement and spatial relationships in the shapes that tell us that what we are looking at is ‘human’. Ask any visual artist who has made the transition from another subject matter and they will tell you that it’s brutal. Especially as we are first starting out.
I think the same is true with dialogue. It has a rhythm to it that is hard to fake. It shifts constantly as the feeling of the participants change. The words we choose have to reflect the vocabulary, life experience and mood of those we have saying them. There are pauses, additional emphasis, non verbal cues that need to be added and it all has to flow in a way that our mind recognizes as ‘human’. It’s really, really hard to fake. The better we do that the more the story becomes immersive. We stop ‘reading the words’ and we start hearing the voices, imagining the expressions and getting caught up in the feelings of those who say them. That’s no small thing.
Again, the good news is that the same things that make us a better writer will likely also make us less likely to get caught up in the AI filter. I don’t think there’s a formula for dialogue. Think of Sheldon trying to write an algorithm for humor on Big Bang Theory. Or the bartender in “Passengers” saying, “These are not robot questions”. Everything I know about predictive analytics, mining large datasets, assessing software application and writing algorithms tells me they are great at distilling and clarifying complex patterns, but they have limited value in solving what are essentially ‘human’ problems.
We’re more predictable than we imagine and far less unique than we believe, but we are also completely irrational about certain subjects and our patterns are constantly disrupted by responses that look inappropriate to those who don’t, and honestly can’t, know our whole history. Add just one or more other humans to that exercise and it sets off a chain reaction of disruptions, inappropriate and irrational behaviors. Factor in fatigue, physical pain, uncomfortable temperatures and a smell with a strong memory association and it’s like shaking up a snow globe and you have a complete reset.
All of which is to say, give yourselves a lot of grace in developing a way to mimic those behaviors. Keep grinding. Slow down to work (and rework) the dialogue of your characters until it flows and the words disappear because you are too caught up in the story to see it any longer. Read. A lot. Go back and look at the blocking and tackling of what that writer did to make the words disappear and suck you into the story. Develop your ear and take the time to listen to your own voice. It’s all there. It just takes time.
Take comfort in the fact that if these tools are as bad as you imagine, large numbers of writers here will quickly join your camp and you are more likely to make headway in changing the submission process. But that really is the key. You need converts. A lot of them. You need to be able to explain and demonstrate your position in a way that solidifies their support. Mocking them for asking questions until they leave the debate will only hurt your cause. Having clarity and unity in what you are asking for is critical to that process. As is policing your own supporters. If one of them gets frustrated and decides they are going to take a whizz off the end of the diving board, you’ll have a harder time convincing the rest of those at the pool party that your goal in convincing the host o stop using the dye isn’t just a ploy to make peeing in the pool less detectible.
Be well and good luck in working through the next steps in the process.
