Forum: Author Hangout

My guess is the only thing you'd even consider doing to my sample is to put 'helpful' in italics to show the speaker putting stress on it while speaking.

I usually use bold for emphasis. And if Fred was being sarcastic I'd include something to show that as well. Like

Fred turned to Bob, and said, "I find Jim so helpful when he starts 'quoting scripture and verse' at me." Bob slowly shook his head at the heavy sarcasm in Fred's voice.

It's one thing to not explain a joke, and an entirely other to not make the fact of the joke obvious to the reader. Several month back someone on this forum was bitching about getting complaints and low scores for a story where they had a lot of jokes many readers didn't see as jokes because there was nothing to show he was joking. The author has the right to present the story how they want, but they have no right to later bitch if people complain they did the job badly when they don't indicate something is supposed to be a certain way.

I should trust I will find enough readers smart enough to enjoy my stories without being spoon-fed ... and the rest will stop reading them. And damn whatever scores the stories end up with!

If you're truly going for subtle dry British humor, then you've got to learn to 'stick it'. The humor should be subtle enough that it strikes the right people, without insulting anyone (i.e. if the reader 'doesn't get it', they shouldn't feel cheater, or else you're building resentment in your own fans—which is a losing proposition either way.

Subtle is nice, but obnoxious helps no one! Subtle is also much harder to pull off successfully, and shouldn't be tempted by rank amateurs, and the pay off is slight while the cost of doing it badly is high.

That morning I received a somewhat illiterate letter from my client."

It sounded to me he thought letters were illiterate.

They are. Letter's can't read the writing on them, they need readers to READ the messages they convey. 'D

I have the same right to complain as my readers. If they are allowed to complain they don't understand my jokes, then I'm allowed to complain they are a humorless bunch of pampered illiterates.

Put it this way: if two different comedians tell the exact same joke on two different nights, one one gets booed, and the other gets cheered, what is your immediate assumption? That the listeners didn't 'get' the joke, or that the one comedians didn't tell it correctly?

The same is true in literature. If readers don't get your punchline, it's because you only inserted the joke into the story to amuse yourself at the expense of your readers ("They'll never get this, because my readers are all too stupid to understand something so clever!"). In that case, it's no wonder an author will get low scores. It isn't that they don't understand, it's that they resent the implication behind your setting your own readers up to fail!

I totally disagree low scores show they "did the job badly".

I didn't mean the low scores equals a bad job, just that people who think it's a bad job will give a low score and bitch about it. That's all.

I won't be bitching about low scores. I would suggest the other adopts a similar attitude.

I don't bitch about the scores at all, although I will join in discussions on them when others are bitching. I've been around here long enough to have a good feel of the whole scoring system, and what it's been through a few changes. My oldest story posted here was in 2007, and I'd been a reader for several years before that, but with a different sign on which I lost to a dead computer because I couldn't remember it then, so I just got another free account.

I usually use bold for emphasis. And if Fred was being sarcastic I'd include something to show that as well.

The one thing that's been drilled into me over and over by editors (pro and amateur) is that you don't mix bold and italics, as then you end up with a hodgepodge of formats and readers never know what to expect.

You generally want your formatting to be subtle, so readers notice the difference but don't focus on it. Thus while you may use both bolding and italics, you keep them separate. In my case, I'll use bolding for section heads to when someone reads a sign where something is bolded (i.e. they're reading something that's bolded, so the text they're reading is centered, oversized and bolded, whereas if they make a snide comment, you simply italicize it. But I NEVER use bolding to denote how someone speaks. That's overkill, and is akin to using a half-dozen exclamation marks when a single one serves the same purpose just fine!

Yes, and I wouldn't use italics either. If you worry your readers don't get it, rewrite or drop the lines.

That's probably the best bet. If it's a toss-up about whether readers will 'get' the joke or not, that's a clear sign the joke isn't essential to understanding the story, and thus doesn't really belong in the story. Instead, it makes the story stronger leaving the 'joke' on the cutting room floor.

Forcing the reader to bend over backwards to 'get' your inside joke is more likely to alienate and insult readers than it is to win converts to your side.

Fred turned to Bob, and said, "I find Jim "so helpful" when he starts 'quoting scripture and verse' at me."

I would never put a double quote within a double quote. The beginning of the second one would look like the end of the first one. That's why you alternate between double and single quotes.

The only time I use single quotes is when there's a quote within a quote.

In your example, I would probably use italics for "so helpful." I wouldn't do anything for "quoting scripture and verse."

How would you handle something that a formal writer might put like this:

Fred turned to Bob, and said, "I find Jim "so helpful" when he starts 'quoting scripture and verse' at me."

I gather you're saying you wouldn't use quote marks for either expressions within dialogue. Now that you've pointed it out, it does seem sensible to me. My quote marks are effectively explaining my jokes: and treating readers like idiots too.

In this case, the "so helpful" is an emphasis point, so you can either alternate the quote marks (i.e. single quotes to offset the double quotes OR you can emphasize it with emphasis marks (i.e. italics). The choice is yours, as I use both in my stories. However my go-to response is to put the alternate quotes, so it's clear that you aren't closing off the initial quote, but you only use it in the middle of a sentence, so there's no question that you didn't mean to end the sentence (or didn't forget to properly close the quote). The key is, you can't leave any doubt.

The single quotes within double quotes are literal air-quotes by the speaker, meaning it's meant to be biting, whereas a simple sharp retort in typically highlighted with italics, so the punch line stands out, but it doesn't indicate malicious intent on the part of the speaker.

Examples of the two styles follow:

"I find Jim to be so helpful when he quotes scripture and verse at me," Jim said, adjusting his liturgical collar.

vs.

"Jim is 'so helpful' when he quotes scripture and verse at me," Jim said, putting his Pro-Choice placard down to warm his hands.

This first example is meant to be humorous without being judgmental, while the second is ALL about judging the actions of others.

I intend to dial down my special formats as much as possible and focus on which words speakers stress while they are speaking.

That's a safer tack, using formatting to emphasize how a sentence is read, rather than what it supposedly means. It's easy to denote how a particular characters expresses something, but then it's up to the author to define THE CHARACTER so that readers understand what his underlying criticism is. Knowing that a particular character is caustic, judgmental, subtle or antagonistic is a much better way of emphasizing a joke than is how you format the joke itself.

In short, only italicize words or phrases to emphasize where the speaker emphasizes words, just an an ellipsis only emphasizes where the speaker pauses, mid sentence, rather than to denote what he left out of the sentence. What he intended is defined by the character, not the formatting.

For posts here I'll keep on using my comic-book-style special effects. I have fun with those.

On the forum, we aren't concerned with point of view (narrator vs. character), so we're unconcerned with the rules of literary formatting (other than as points to argue over), so everything goes.

Generally, we just type what we need to before we forget what we wanted to say. 'D

Reading the title of the thread, I was really pleased it wasn't accompanied by a dick pic ;)

AJ

Ross created the thread and he's a homophobe.

Does that mean the title of my WIP is sufficient to deter him, and all my info dumplings are superfluous? ;)

AJ

Trying to deter Ross is superfluous. He's as undeterrable as a natural disaster.

I AM a natural disaster!

Editors, in general, are as insistent as natural disasters. Rather than merely sweeping in with one large pronouncement: Don't use double adjectives, they instead continually lap the shore, gradually wearing away the ediface, repeating the same advice in slightly different language until they break down the author's defenses and make them see the destruction on their story when the sun finally shines on it.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. No harm intended, I was merely reflecting the mixed role of editors in improving story flow and undercutting an authors' original intent.

Ideally, the two work together and understand each other well enough to work around those issues. If not, they often continue to argue over the same issues time and again, causing each to compromise and undercut their own consistency.

I tried to draw a picture of AJ, but with no backslash I cannot get the clown's hat right. :(

How about a dunce's hat? Any easier?

AJ

I thought British humour was an oxymoron.

I thought British humour was an oxymoron.

Only if they win the election for the office they're running for. ;-)

You've opened up an entire new universe of ways I can waste time here instead of getting on with the writing.

There's no limit to the number of things you can do to keep from writing, and if options exist, we continue to find the most pointless of things to occupy us.

Test - It works for me. Exactly as claimed.

:

Semi-colon, not colon at the end \

Semi-colon, not colon at the end

By the way, the command is "\".

Semi-colon, not colon

Basic html coding practice. Perhaps foreign to most who only post plain text chapters, though useful to learn if you want to implement more advanced formatting.

..__..
(......)
.|....|.
.|....|.
.|....|.

Sorry, but is that supposed to be a dick wearing a yamaka?

Along with your jokes, you may need to explain your dick-pics too!

To relativize my earlier statement. The irony and humor you display in your story needs to be congruent with the characters you developed. Some people have dry humor, some people are blunt, some are obvious. If you have a character like AJ, for example, let him wear a clown's hat and silly grin after everything he says.

I hate to suggest it, but you (and Ross) may want to try a thought experiment, and write a short story about a dinner party, where two different dinner guests each make cutting remarks about the other. One uses biting, fairly obvious humor, and the other uses dry 'British' humor, and see which style works, how they conflict, and how they interplay. And THEN give it to a few readers you know, and WATCH how they respond to it. Do they laugh (or chuckle) where you expect them too, or do they miss the punch lines or laugh at the wrong ones.

Using friends you know is more insightful than guessing how complete strangers will respond. If friends familiar with your style of storytelling don't get the joke, then you're clearly telling it wrong. However, if your friends honestly think the other style of joke telling is funnier, then you're barking up the wrong tree, telling unfunny jokes.

City were the away team but had two-thirds of the possession. Parking the bus is Mourinho's only strategy against decent teams.

AJ

I knew there was a good reason to not use quotation marks.

Emphasis (italics) = pronunciation of dialogue.
Alternating quotes = biting personal critique of individual.