FanFic Ask Game: F, H
F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
“I’m not her anymore I can’t be Claire anymore!”
“Okay. You’re not Claire anymore.” Jim took a step towards her. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. So Claire would, were she not Claire called, retain that dear perfection which she owes without that title.”
She either smiled or grimaced as her breathing evened out by a fraction. “You’re messing up my lines.”
“Give me a break, it’s been nearly a year since the play.” He took another step towards her. “So, doff thy name, and, for thy name, which is no part of thee, take all myself.”
“You wouldn’t call me but love if you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“What she did to me. I’m not me anymore, I can’t be.”
“Claire, I should have told you this before you made the giant portal, but I love you. I just, you know how I’m bad with words and speaking my feelings. I should have told you sooner, and I regretted not telling you because I thought you had died before I could tell you.” Claire flinched, but Jim kept speaking. “Nothing that Morgana has done to you could change the fact that I love you.”
Claire took a step back, squeezing her eyes shut and tucking her chin between her collarbones. She shook her head as she made fists in her hair. “Well, you’re too late to tell me before I died. She killed me, and she brought me back over and over again. I’m not me anymore, I’m just inhabiting the corpse. You can’t love me. You can’t love the person I’ve become! No one can!”
From a liar by your side
I like this because it’s a blend of vastly different styles of speaking. Jim is, for the most part, eloquent, (mis)quoting Shakespeare and soothing Claire. His sentences often combine two clauses in a grammatically correct way as to show this eloquence.
Meanwhile, Claire is having a mental breakdown. In canon, Claire is a perfectionist and the most academically inclined of the three main humans of Trollhunters, but between the weight of her mental and physical trauma and the aforementioned mental breakdown she’s having she can’t be the so-called “perfect” girl she used to be. Her speech patterns are meant to reflect this. Her first line here isn’t grammatically correct; it requires a semicolon to not be a run-on. This was done deliberately to emphasize her mental state as well as how quickly she says the line. There is no pause for a semicolon, comma, or period. Instead, her words are italicized to imply they’re said more forcefully and perhaps even more quickly. Likewise, there are multiple sentences that should have semicolons as opposed to commas; I interpret the pauses for semicolons as longer than the pauses for commas. Unlike Jim, most of her sentences are simple sentences with only one clause. Those that aren’t are often the combination of a three word sentence and a slightly longer sentence. In the end of this snippet, she is shouting once more because her emotions are running high.
H: How would you describe your style?
Bittersweet-to-100% dark prose, though I’d say that more applies to the fact that even my fluff alludes to darker themes than my actual writing style. Otherwise, my style often changes to suit the scene of the fic, as can be seen in the above dialogue snippet changing style between the two speakers.
FanFic Ask Game