4/18/09 Word/Page Count

Words: 828
Pages: 2.1

One of those writing days where I'm like, yay I have this scene in my head that's really fun I'm gonna write it and then it doesn't end up that way at all and you're like, hmmm that sucks I'm gonna quit now. Yeah.

I am not a fan of italics in books and stories. To me they just look really annoying. And for the most part, I find them unnecessary. If you want something to be emphasized it should be apparent in the context of the sentence or whatever. Usually, this comes within dialogue. I just feel like the author is forcing something on me when they use italics. It's an intrusion that reminds me yes, I'm reading a book right now, it's not real. I don't appreciate that!

I read this book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers which I thought was really fun and it had some good tips. One of the tips was try not to us -ly words after your dialogue tags. Basically the book said that if a character is saying something "nastily" or "hesitantly" it should come off in the actual sentence or words or description and if it doesn't then you should go back and try again. I decided to try this but it's really hard! Because I like writing "This isn't the best idea," Sarah said morosely. I think you can do that for the first draft but you should probably try to improve that kind of stuff on the revision. That's why it's called self-editing.

People also say not to use any other dialogue tags but "said" because that's like background noise and something else such as "yelled" is the author inserting themself into the story. I pretty much agree with that. I especially don't like reading "Oh well," Adam shrugged. You can't shrug words, put a period there! haha.

Dialogue is my favorite part of writing a story. I love the interaction and back and forth between characters. One of the challenges I need to focus on with my writing is how do I make characters who are similar ages and have similar backgronds speak differently? I don't want everyone sounding exactly the way. I think the difference comes from what's important to them and how they see the world. I'm still struggling with this dilemma. I guess I need to read more!