Road

Mostly reblogs w/ occasional art (22)

[qelscre]

do you guys think translators additionally serve as hearing aids/auditory processing devices?

[baphalopod]

i got a little too autistic and decided to put him in the tv

[qelscre]

An edit i made back in april

[b1tchcup]

my favorite tweet ever. Every time I go to find it I’m blown away by how few retweets it has

[power-chords]

Can you please explain your dialogue theory of fanfiction?

In short, that dialogue, more than anything, makes or breaks a fanfic. What do posts like "He would not fucking say that" and "They would NOT have communication skills that good" have in common? Talk. Characters expressing themselves to one another. The faithful recreation of identifiable speech patterns is weighted heavily in the evaluation of a fic's quality. By "speech patterns" I do not just mean the semantic content of a given character's expression, but idiosyncrasies of style and slang, vocabulary and idiom, even gesture, musicality, and rhythm.

Of course believable dialogue is far from the only thing that makes a good fanfic Good. And there are forms of fic writing, particularly highly abbreviated ones like drabbles and ficlets, that in practice tend to de-emphasize its significance. But if we are talking about the romantic, erotic shippy stuff that is the meat and potatoes of online fandom, dialogue does the heaviest lifting short of the consummation itself. Arguably more so! It's the real keystone to the catharsis, and often the catalyst for it. Is there a confession occurring? A provocation? An evasion or ultimatum? Zoom out, big picture: What is the most potent and fundamental mechanic for developing complexity, tension, and transformation within a relationship, getting it to go from one thing to another? Making these two idiots talk to each other! Often clumsily and indirectly and maladaptively, at the worst possible time and in the worst possible situation, about anything or everything but what they should be — but talk they usually do.

What makes fanfic specifically so challenging and rewarding in this regard is that the talking is as much a feat of translation as invention, because both reader and writer are working off an existing model. Liberties taken with plot, form, and even narrative voice have wider buffer zones; you can get creative with circumventing the events of canon while still conforming to its emotional and substantive essence.

But the training wheels come off the moment you open your mouth to speak in another character's voice. And man, nothing will break a reader's immersion quite like he would not fucking say that.

[power-chords]

I probably should have clarified at the outset (though maybe it’s obvious) that this post was made with televisual media in mind. I’m seeing a lot of comments/tags to this effect and if you want a very straightforward exercise that will strengthen your ear for writing in-character fic dialogue, start transcribing the source material. Re-watch relevant scenes of interaction with either a notepad out or an open Word/Scrivener/Google Doc and translate it word for word back down to written form. Pause wherever necessary to make sure you get it all down, and annotate with any useful observations that jump out at you. Go back over and re-read what you’ve transcribed when you’re done. You’ll start to pick up on, at the very least, certain modular fundamentals: shorter vs longer sentences, preferences for certain words or phrases over others, regional slang, how and how often they curse (or don’t), etc. Do this often and you will get better at replicating how your blorbos speak to each other. Promise.

[deathlonging]

ID: screenshots of three sets of tags: 1. i read this at a time where i am struggling to get a characters voice and perhaps that was a bad time to read it but youre right 2. its why dialogue being my achilles heel hits so much harder - because it becomes so quickly inescapable 3. ah my arch nemesis - dialogue. but this is an interesting read tho

[zalia]

There is a post I saw ages ago, and cannot find which is maddening, but it had some very useful advice about finding character voices by using various scales. I have tried to recreate some of the scales since they've helped me. All of these are going to change depending on the situation, who the character is speaking to etc. but it can help to get a baseline. Formal ----- Casual Does the character speak as though they're meeting the head of state, or like they're talking to their best friend? When they meet someone new, do they say 'Hi!' or 'Pleased to meet you.'? Verbose ----- Taciturn Do they ramble or are they a person or few words? Rude ----- Polite Do they demand to see a manager, or ask an assistant if it would be possible to get some help? Blunt/To the point ----- Meandering Do they say exactly what they mean, or do they hedge/soften their words? 'This will not work' vs 'I think we could also look at other options' Complex ----- Simple Think of this as a scale from scientists discussing black holes at an academic conference to explaining black holes to a five year old. Clean ----- Vulgar Do they swear a lot? Do they make dirty jokes? This one tends to be a bit hazy i fanfic because there are characters who definitely feel like they should swear a lot, but are restricted by being in a PG-13 rated show/game. So for my current Character, Osiris from Destiny... He tends to be fairly formal, especially with people he doesn't know well. He is verbose - the man goes off on rambling tangents frequently and loves talking about things he's interested in. He can be rude - he often ignores the niceties of social interactions, but it's not (usually) because he intends to be rude. He is very blunt and speaks his mind and appreciates others doing the same with him. He tends to fall on the complex side of the scale - he will casually throw high level scientific and philosophical terms into a conversation and just assume everyone understands him. His language also tends to be clean - he doesn't swear much in casual conversation (though he has been shown to in moments of frustration). If he does dirty talk with Saint in the bedroom is up to the writers' interpretation. One thing I also tend to take notice of is if a character uses a lot of contractions or not. Do they say 'It is' or 'it's'? 'We are' or 'we're'?

[brainy-rot]

Its that time of the year where I draw some bullshit with the most inconvenient colors known to man

[tyy07777]

[deadkraker]

=)

[ghostlykitty-art]

hijinks ensue

[ghostlykitty-art]

My beloved space idiots.......

[rekirzyzwasforced]

"SHE WOULD NOT FUCKING SAY THAT!!!"

yeah this is it.

[6mayhem]

when the fanartist draws ur ship growing old together but you lowkey envisioned them as dying tragically at 27 after a 5 year substance abuse spiral 😭😭😭

[writefortherapy]

Accompanying fic (if that's your thing) here.

[tomm0x]

Hi im back with errnokt!!! Or mooninites sure.... plus a chud

Flipaclip my day one......

[thefaiao]

Sans post(?)

[fallenqueerofdoom]

[cult-rangoons]

double the spy double the pie (?)