(no subject)

[the_rck]

Tuesday night, Nakki no Miko stopped by to give me a floppy disk. She was a beta reader for the first couple of chapters of "Rheotaxis" (before her work situation got really bad) and writes fan fiction herself. She's never posted anything anywhere but finally got together the courage to ask me to post some of her stuff.

I'd never read any of it, but I've got space to spare, so I agreed. She's given me three stories, one Weiss Kreuz, one Ruroni Kenshin and one Gundam Wing. I've gotten the first two formatted and will work on the third either tonight or tomorrow.

I'm finding Nakki no Miko's stories a little too warm and fuzzy for me. They're not bad really, just not at all my thing. I did have to fight the urge to reparagraph her text because I disagreed strongly with how she broke things up, but I resisted. I just mentioned the impulse to her when I told her about the formatting changes she should make for future documents that she wants me to post (getting rid of smart quotes, for example). Fortunately, she didn't seem to mind the comment.

The paragraphing thing is something that I've run into quite a bit. I've always been under the impression that one should group the words and actions of a single character together and then insert a paragraph break when someone else does or says or thinks something that shifts where the reader is, figuratively speaking, looking (I can't always figure out a good way to do it, myself). I should probably go and look up the grammatical rules for paragraphing because I'm not absolutely sure that this isn't just my idiosyncratic style.

Then again I've noticed that even professionally published materials routinely break some of the grammatical rules that I thought were solid-- Things like using commas before conjunctions that link two sentences, things that there's no stylistic impact to doing or not doing. Sentence fragments have dramatic impact, but commas are more of an organizational tool.

Comments

[scribblemoose]

I find myself getting more and more adventurous (or, some might say, sloppy) about grammar and punctuation. Breaking the rules for effect can be so powerful when done well, but so awful when done badly, and it's sometimes hard to know what side of the fence you're on. Not helped by the English teacher who's still in my head bullying me every time I mix up my colons and semicolons!

[the_rck]

I don't object to breaking the rules for effect-- It's necessary, useful, powerful, all sorts of things. But it can also be a difficult technique to master; at least, I think it must be since I see so many people doing it badly.

Most English teachers I've dealt with don't object to rule breaking when the effect works, so perhaps your inner English teacher will listen to that.

[marith.livejournal.com]

That's how I break up paragraphs too. Thus my paragraphs tend to be very short, which may not be best...but white space is essential. A page of dense single-spaced text doesn't draw the eye in, it repels it. (At least for me, and for technical writing.)

When I was really stuck once, I picked up a book I admire a lot, one of Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan novels, and checked to see how *she* handled grammatical weasels. Shock. Surprise. Her writing broke *all* the rules I take so many pains over. She used "said" all the time instead of more descriptive verbs, she used the same word multiple times in a paragaph, and she muddled up the actions in the way you describe.

But when I read her books I don't notice any of those things. :) The only *real* rule seems to be "get your point across".

[the_rck]

I adore Bujold's books-- So many layers. I've said in the past that I want to be Cordelia when I grow up (which made me hesitate over giving that name to my daughter).

I read books out loud to my husband on long car trips, and I've noticed that many books that I love, that I can race through when reading them myself, break the rules in ways that, if I were editing them, I'd object to. But I only notice when I slow down.

I, too, tend to prefer shorter paragraphs both as a reader and as a writer, especially on a computer screen. Opening a file and discovering a single solid block of text is enough to make me retreat without even a token attempt to read a story.