I wish livejournal were more... user-friendly, like Blogger. I still don't know my way around this silly site. >.<

I really want to take a class on traditional animation someday... maybe after I graduate? Would med schools look at that and think, "WTF this has nothing to do with medicine. What's she doing?"?

My thoughts are rather disjointed. Ignore me.

This is just for my own reference - I'm prone to dry ink spells and writer's block that can last as long as eight or nine months, so I'm trying to see if having a playlist will help the writing process at all.

Songs Used for Ink & Gold: Childhood's End

1. Placebo - Running Up That Hill
2. Third Eye Blind - God of Wine
3. Matthew Good - Weapon
4. Thom Yorke - Black Swan

Dialogue is an essential part of any story with speaking characters. Sam blazed through one of Stephen King's novels recently, and I decided to drop a quote here:

"I think what I really like is the way [King] handles dialogue. I've gotten pretty good at avoiding stupid dialogue tags, I think, but I'm way too dependent on eyes and glances... King uses gestures and actions and body language in a way that sounds natural."

Now, I've never read Stephen King (I know, I know, I'm missing out), but I have been dabbling with short stories in the Berkeley Fiction Review. So here are some tips on dialogue that are useful for any writer:


Life Lessons in Dialogue

• Keep it real.
• Be wary of phonetic spellings of English dialects. If you do use phonetic spellings, make sure it's easy to read.
  • But don't overdo it - if you can achieve a sense of the accent with correct spelling (and without saying "with a ____ accent"), that's even better.
• Characters have different attitudes and personalities. Make that apparent in the way you portray their voices.
• Gestures and body language are just as important in real life as speech. Take note of the kinds of gestures people use when they talk - it's really helpful in making things more realistic.
• NEVER-NEVER-NEVER use characters as a cheap way to explain the plot. They shouldn't have to re-explain something that another character already knows, just because the readers don't know what's going on. This is a huge author pitfall that must be avoided at all costs.
• Dialogue should have a good flow - not too convoluted, but not too choppy either.
• Watching TV can actually be a good thing! Since there's no narration, TV characters must act only on dialogue and gestures. You can take a scene out of a TV show or movie and try turning it into prose - it's good practice for testing your senses and finding the right words to describe a character's words and actions
  • On that note, don't rip dialogue off television, books, or plays - people can tell. Rather, paraphrase! :P
• Dropping F-bombs and swearing for "realism" does not compensate for lack of substance. Sprinkle in a couple for effect, but excessive swearing is just tacky.

This week, while I probably should've been writing a paper like a good little college student, I decided to revisit Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's been a while since I've read something for fun (or procrastination. Potayto, potahto), and since I've been trying to find a way around my latest block, I finally decided it might be worth it to see how the latest great authors do what they do best. ...I don't read much at all, so this was a huge step for me.

So here are some things I learned about the craft of writing and narration while skimming through The Order of the Phoenix.

J.K. Rowling's Narrative Voice

• JKR's sentences tend to run a bit long, using commas to separate several clauses at once.
• In dialogue, she loves using this template: "Quote," said Character, verbing-clause/adjective/adverbly. "Quote continues."
• She's also a fan of Character verbed, verbing.
• JKR's writing uses simple vocabulary easy enough for the average reader understand. What makes that cool is that sometimes she'll pull a $10 word out of nowhere (like frisson, for instance), and that will give the sentence it's used in some extra pizzazz. ...Yeah, I said "pizzazz."
• When JKR uses capital letters to represent a character's feelings of anger, she does not mess around. SHE'LL WRITE EVERYTHING IN BLOODY CAPS-LOCK IF SHE WANTS TO, AND THERE'S NOTHIN' YOU OR ANYONE ELSE CAN DO ABOUT IT! ...Rawr.

Life Lessons in Storytelling

• Stagger dialogue-heavy sections with little bits of prose. These prose inserts can describe something that's happening simultaneously, or the mannerisms of the character that's speaking.
• Make sure your characters have their own voice. Nobody uses the exact same slang or speech mannerisms. When done perfectly, you should be able to tell who's saying what in a conversation without dialogue tags (that way, you can avoid confusion in a looooong dialogue like those seen in Hemingway novels.).
• Visualize every angle of the scene you're describing before you write it out. A great way to describe a scene or object is to use your senses, since that's what we use to perceive our surroundings in real life anyway. If you can describe stuff in a way no one's ever thought of before, it could either paint a more vivid picture for the reader... or leave them thoroughly confused. It's a tough rope to walk, so be careful.
• Less is more - avoid using a dozen different flowery, multi-syllabic descriptors for a scene or object. Employing a few choice adjectives is just fine, but throwing too many into the pot can lead to literary diabetes. And nobody likes literary diabetes.

I'll probably do something like this every once in a while, when I get the rare urge to read something. If anyone's got any other neat tips to help strengthen one's fiction writing skills, they're always welcome!

...Well, as happy as it can get when you become a messenger facing a firing squad, have to take an exam, and somehow contract the maybe-swine-flu all in the same week - on your birthday, no less.

...Happy November, indeed.

Y'know what did make this week a little better, though, was the fact that my good friend Glynnis surprised me with a rather badass hypothetical cover design for Ink & Gold. Lookie!


This image was inspired by the events that unfold in Chapter 1. Now, the actual title of the book is not really The Vendetta, but the Vendetta is a very important part of Ink & Gold. And besides, "vendetta" is one of the coolest words of all time. OF ALL TIME. And the downtown skyline and the smoke and the post-apocalyptic afternoon light... it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

...Not that I'm looking forward to an apocalypse or anything, I just really like this cover design.

...I'll shut up now.

Thank you, Glynnis!


In other news, I've kind of hit a snag with I&G. You writers know what I'm talking about. It's where your plot and everything you've written so far is great and makes perfect sense... until you discover that the scene you're about to write completely contradicts EVERYTHING you've written for the past seven chapters - and not because of a clever plot twist; things just aren't adding up the way they're supposed to. In my case, it was about a life-altering decision one of my characters had to make. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing a few chapters ago, but now they're just... being flaky or something. Which isn't their fault, technically; I just made a few poor choices in how I executed those earlier scenes, and now it's coming back to bite me.

If anyone's got tips on how to deal with Writer's Accidental Self-Contradiction, I'd love to hear them.