ok so. so we’re just. not reading now. wow ok. ok!!! booktok says we should remove half of the fun from reading!!! wow!!! (i found this in a video and apparently it’s not just this person doing it. it’s. quite a few of them. just to make that clear.)
This hit me with a killing blow from three different directions.
"Skipping everything but the dialogue when reading" seems like it would make everything except, like, the scripts for radio plays (or podcasts or what have you (or, as some people have correctly pointed out, comics!)) incredibly confusing to read. I've only read one book (that I recall) in an almost-entirely-dialogue format (MCA Hogarth's Defence of the Fiddler), and that's because it was basically the script of a play rather than a traditional prose novel. I am reeling.
"I only add descriptions to my writing because I feel I'm obligated to, not because I think it adds anything" feels like this person would much rather be writing radio plays as well as reading them, but they are reading and writing novels instead. (I guess this is analogous to all the people who wrote TTRPG sourcebooks because what they really wanted to do was write 500 pages of worldbuilding with no associated plot, but you couldn't get a publisher to look at that unless there was a d20 system hack stapled to the front.) This one I'm actually somewhat prepared for after the first one, because it's just the same thing from the opposite direction.
And then from out of fucking nowhere it hits me with the enormous crab claw of "reading 30+ books in a year is impossible and anyone who says they do must be skipping most of the book" and sends my mangled corpse flying out the window.
Should I do like you instead?
Read the first 10 pages of every book,
pass myself off as cultured?
I work in theater and read a LOT of plays and playwrights don't even write like that. There's stage directions for a reason! Tennessee Williams famously wrote fucking beautiful stage directions! There are plays with whole scenes with no dialogue, just action!
There are some scripts deliberately written with no stage directions because they're WRITTEN FOR ACTING CLASSES. They're an ACTING EXERCISE, not a story, not a play.
What the fuck is reading a book and skipping everything but the dialogue *like*??? How the fuck do you know what anyone is doing? Or where anything is happening? What time of day it is? What the weather is doing? Or what any character is feeling? Because writing with any amount of subtlety will NOT include characters generously verbally describing every emotional beat they're experiencing with complete honesty.Because that would be insane. And very bad writing.
Also, not for nothing, I read 100+ books a year. I work a full-time job and multiple contractor gigs and somehow manage to find the time to real whole books, including all those stage directions and descriptions.
It is actually quite doable to read a whole damn book. Some people just don't want to. And quite frankly, it is far more impressive to me for someone to read 5 whole, complete books a year than it is for someone to skim 30+ books. Because it isn't actually about how many books you interact with, it's about actually interacting with the written word. And that means reading it.
