Tag: writing style

Quoteless Dialogue

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I’ve noticed a few publications adopting a quoteless or quote-free dialogue convention. I was wrestling with the idea of using it for my current short story, but I’ve opted not to.

On the upside, it can:

  1. create a more immersive reading experience, blending dialogue seamlessly with narration.
  2. give the prose a more streamlined, modern feel.
  3. be effective in representing stream of consciousness or internal monologue.
  4. subtly underscore themes of ambiguity or the blurring of reality and imagination.

On the upside, it might:

  1. lead to confusion about what is spoken aloud versus what is thought or narrated.
  2. be challenging for some readers, particularly those used to more traditional formatting.
  3. not be suitable for all types of stories or narrative styles.

I feel that it’s a valid stylistic choice that can be very effective when used deliberately and consistently. Its appropriateness depends on the specific work, its themes, and its intended audience.

If used, it often requires more careful writing to ensure clarity about who is speaking and what is dialogue versus narration. It works best when the author employs other means to differentiate dialogue, such as syntax, diction, or paragraph breaks.

    For my current writing project, (working title: “The Riga Paradox”), given its themes of reality versus perception and the blurring of identities, omitting quotation marks could be an interesting choice.

    However, it’s also a significant departure from my comfort zone and might require adjustments in other aspects of my writing to maintain clarity.

    Does anyone have thoughts for or against quote-free dialogue? Have you used it yet?

    Franglais

    Posted in Art, Artificial Intelligence, Dall-E, Generative AI, Hemo Sapiens: Origins, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

    In Hemo Sapiens: Origin, I am mixing French and English dialogues and tags. The challenge I am having is switch between the languages.

    For example, see this passage:

    « Où est maman ? » Camille asks Claire just as her parents come into view. « Maman » she exclaims, starting to weep again. « Papa. » She receives his hug.

    French and English dialogue and speech markers work differently. I I were depicting large swathes of each language, I’d simply apply the specific language rules, but I am mixing it up, and that creates challenges. I haven’t seen any good examples how to present this.

    Some obvious differences are the guillemets « » in French versus ‘ ‘ in English. In French, ? and ! are spaced after the sentence, and all content internal to guillemets is offset by leading and terminal spaces. Another big difference is that guillemets offset dialogue blocks whereas English uses speech marks to identify each speaker’s dialogue.

    Referencing the example above—in English for English readers—, if I were to convey the content using French presentation rules, it might look something like this:

    « Where’s mum ? Camille asks Claire just as her parents come into view.

    — Mum, she exclaims, starting to weep again.

    — Dad.  She receives his hug. »

    Notice that the entire block is enquoted. I’ve considered this, but I feel it will not track well for English readers, who are used to the speaker-reference convention.

    Also, I really want to set off the French language content, and the guillemets serve that function.

    Regarding dialogue, French and English punctuation rules are similar enough, but there aren’t many cases of a comma (virgule) following a speech mark given the convention. To my eyes, it looks better inside the marks, but it feels off. The Oxford English style guide suggests not even using commas to separate the dialogue from the tag, but I don’t see that much in the wild.

    Again, referencing the example above, one can see how I am solving this at the moment.

    At first, I indicate the French dialogue by guillemets and employ French punctuation rules followed by a dialogue tag and descriptive content.

    « Où est maman ? » Camille asks Claire just as her parents come into view.

    Next, I use the English format, but I replace quotation marks with guillemets. I’ve omitted the trailing comma—after ‘Maman’—in this example.

    « Maman » she exclaims, starting to weep again.

    Finally, since ‘Papa’ expresses a complete thought, I enclose the full stop within the guillemets. Rather than a dialogue tag, I opt for a stand-alone sentence.

    « Papa. » She receives his hug.

    When I write mixed language copy, I usually identify a foreign language in italics, but I didn’t choose to do this for French dialogue. Firstly, because I am already using italics for other foreign words, e.g. Latin; secondly, because these also depict internal dialogue/monologue, so I don’t want to create too many visual design patterns.

    Has anyone else solved this problem? I’d love to know.

    As for the cover image, Dall-E 3 still can’t quite figure out words and can’t spell in French or English. I share it if only for the absurdity of it. Here was my other choice:

    Neuromancer

    Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Awakening, Book, ChatGPT, Dall-E, Generative AI, hemo sapiens, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, Sci-Fi, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

    William Gibson coined the term ‘cyberspace’ in his book Neuromancer. Just the opening sentence informs the reader to expect something different.

    “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

    William Gibson, Neuromancer

    In this book, Gibson is poetic and florid. I decided to task ChatGPT to rephrase a paragraph I wrote in Hemo Sapiens: Awakening to follow the style of Gibson.

    I shared this paragraph:

    The Deputy Chief Inspector starts her day at her polished wooden desk, perusing emails whilst sipping hot morning tea. The sharp aroma fills her nostrils. The fluorescent office lighting hides nothing. Except for some personal photos, her office looks like an austerity challenge. The absence of personal effects betrays her personality.

    ChatGPT rendered this:

    In the sterile dance of fluorescent light, the Deputy Chief Inspector’s day unfolds. This unforgiving light, a stark mimic of daylight, strips the room of shadows, laying bare the austerity of her workspace. It’s a realm where the polished wooden desk becomes a stage for the mundane ritual of morning emails, and where the walls, devoid of adornment except for a few personal photos, echo the unspoken ethos of restraint.

    Amidst this, her morning tea stands as a solitary rebellion. Its steam, a curling serpent of warmth in the chill of artificial light, carries with it an aroma sharp enough to slice through the monochrome of her surroundings. Each sip is a fleeting escape, a momentary immersion in sensory richness that contrasts starkly with the barren office landscape. The tea’s heat whispers of a world beyond these walls, a reminder of life’s subtle flavors amidst the unyielding glare of fluorescent reality. In this space, where the lighting reveals all but understands nothing, the tea becomes not just a beverage, but a quiet testament to the hidden depths beneath her pragmatic exterior.

    You’ll notice straight away that my writing is more concise. When I write in 51 words, he writes (by AI proxy) in 181. Mine is 28% of his.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love the poetry of the longer form. I just don’t think like that unless I force myself, and then it comes off as stilted or pretentious. My preference is a more direct, terse writing style over the verbose. Perhaps, I’m of a different era. In the end, I compromise.

    When I ask AI to critique my prose, a common response to to provide more sensory inputs. In this case, these are represented by her desk, polished and wooden, no less. And she’s sipping hot morning tea—not just a drink, but tea; not just tea, but hot tea, morning tea; and she’s sipping. And this tea has aroma. It’s sharp. So, I’ve got a visual (tea), a tactile (hot), and an olfactory (aroma). I’ve got no auditory or gustatory cues, but I might have.

    My preference is to describe as little as possible to allow readers to form their own impressions. This is even more important for characters. On balance, I don’t personally care about the sex, gender, or race of my characters, but I share clues anyway. For race, I might be somewhat obvious as in Hemo Sapiens: Awakening by naming a character Ravi Chandrasekar. It’s fairly obvious that this is an male with heritage from the Indian subcontinent, though it says nothing of his preferred gender.

    I might mention height or physique, a moustache or spectacles, a lisp or a stammer, but in the end if a reader wants to image that person as black or white or brown or whatever, I’m not affecting that much. Naming a character Maria instead of Marie sends subtle hints, but it’s not overpowering.

    It the case of the Hemo Sapiens, they have blue eyes. Probability would lead one to believe they are Caucasian whites, but this doesn’t preclude something else. That’s not for me to decide. In my head, they are European whites, but I am not going to beat the reader over the head with this trivia.

    I’m rambling now. Now read the faux-Gibson passage. It is much more immersive and experiential. If that’s your aim, then go for it. No harm, no foul.

    You may prefer one over the other. I say they are simply different, and it depends on the intent of both the reader and the writer.

    BONUS

    Wanting to generate a featured image for this post, I used Dall-E. I’ve never had Dall-E talk back to me. It usually just renders what I’ve asked. This time, note its response. 🤣

    Do you have a writing style preference? Does your writing style veer from your reading style? Let me know in the comments.