posted
Can I get the groups advice on typing into a manuscript?
I currently create small scenes on paper that are mostly dialogue between characters. The intent is then to add them to the word file and then fill in the scene with setting description.
Is it better to rewrite by hand once, and then enter or no.
I have multiple notebooks worth of material and I am nearing the second plot point.
posted
I always assumed that different things work for different people, so you have to figure out what works best for you. Handwriting anything would drive me crazy, but I'm fast at typing.
So it's whatever works best for you for turning thoughts into words.
I occasionally have small files I want to add to my book later, but then I forget. So I try to be simple so that my future self isn't editing an old draft.
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posted
Occasionally I write something by hand, but almost always I write it out on the keyboard. I compose in my head, but use these new-fangled word processing programs to rearrange as I go.
(I used to hand-write a diary, then gave it up a few years ago and switched to word processor because when I had to look something up, I couldn't read my own handwriting.)
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posted
There is no right answer. There is only what works for you--and, really, only what works for you at this time for this book, because it's likely to evolve as you go along.
I wrote the first draft of my first two books by hand. There was a reason for it. I'd developed a bad habit of revising the first couple of chapters or so and not getting any further. Writing it out by hand helped cure me of that. Then I'd do the first revisions as I typed it into the computer. Now I just compose on the computer in the first place and only write by hand if an idea comes on when I'm not where I can easily get to the computer.
Do what works. At the beginning, just try things and see what works.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
Handwritten dialogue sketches? Oh my! Decades ago, I couldn't read my own writing once it was cold, and now bilateral carpal tunnel injuries make handwriting painful and illegible from the get-go, more and more less handwriting per moi, an occasional signature scrawl at that. And anymore, technology has marginalized handwritten anything to the point ye old calligraphic beauty of handwritten missives is a lost art. More power to you for it!
A draft method similar to this starts with the dialogue of a scene -- mental composition, handwritten, typewritten, or melds -- then inputs context and texture wrap apt to the dialogue for a second phase. I've used that method, typewritten, though, for composition modes other than dialogue's Conversation, too: Description, Introspection, Action, Narration, Emotion, Sensation, Summarization, Exposition, Conversation, Recollection, Explanation, Transition.
In fact, the method in practice is a writing program exercise assignment. One mode assigned, often Conversation only, the rubric is compose a few pages of dialogue sans all attribution tags and all else. Paragraph format and its line breaks only to distinguish change of speaker and the ritual turns taken by turn of Conversation. An advanced exercise is a page of each of DIANE'S SECRET modes for the same dramatic unit: sequential, contemporaneous, or simultaneous per each mode, mindful to capture only the dramatic essence of the mode and its dramatic details. That exercise is productively informative.
Writing program exercises' overall intent is to afford surveys for writers' broad exposure to creative composition and expression methods. This Conversation exercise emulates script methods, with "beats" that describe stage directions and setup preludes that describe a scene's setting and "staging." Enter Juliet, exeunt Romeo. The rest of the drama evocation is then left to directors and actors' skills, and the panoply of stage crafters behind the scenes, to imagine and create. What's my motivation? an actor asks of a director -- the basis for the method acting technique of late most popular on stage and screen.
Dramatic dialogue types include Conversation facets of echo, non sequitur, colloquy, question and answer, squabble, monologue, and soliloquy, some of one type each, and several, or all. Mindful that "As you know, Bob," and "Maid and Butler" Conversation and solely social pleasantries without dramatic subtext are droll and widely deprecated.
If interested, I could define, explain, and illustrate the above dialogue types, though much greater benefits accrue from self-discovery based upon those labels as guidance.
posted
My take is a bit different. I’m reacting to some things you said that reflect on what appears to be your view of creating a scene.
quote: I currently create small scenes on paper that are mostly dialogue between characters. The intent is then to add them to the word file and then fill in the scene with setting description.
If your scenes are mostly dialog between characters you have a condition often called “talking heads.” It’s a guarantee of rejection, because story happens, it’s not talked about. Your reader comes to you to live the story in parallel with the protagonist, not to peer through a window and overhear people talking about each other and events we don’t get to experience.
And, a scene on the page is not at all like one on film or stage. Presented via a visual medium a scene comes from the word scenery, so the term scene usually refers to the action in a given setting, or along a unified time-line. But on the page it’s a unit of tension. That requires a different approach to creating and presenting a scene.
Next, because ours is not a visual medium, the only scene descriptions you need are primarily what the protagonist is focused on in the moment that character calls now. There is no purpose in spending hundreds of words describing things that the protagonist is ignoring, because as our avatar, what matters to them matters to us. What that character is ignoring is irrelevant to us at-that-time. The idea is that whatever the protagonist is taking into account in order to react to whatever motivates them to take action is something we need to know about in order to understand the protagonist’s reasons for a given action. After all, if we don't know how the protagonist views the scene, and why, we can't form an emotional bond with them, and share in their decision-making.
Obviously, not having seen an example of the finished product I can’t comment on it. But based on what you said, it sounds like you’re not aware of the difference in approach to writing between the professional skills of the fiction writer and the nonfiction techniques we’re taught in our public education years. If the terms I list below aren’t things you take into account as you write, without having to think about it, you might want to dig into the craft of the pro to fix that. - - - - - A few terms: Inciting incident; short-term scene-goal; scene and sequel; motivation/response units; the three issues to address quickly on entering any scene; why we end the scene with disaster for the protagonist. - - - - - Obviously I’m making assumptions, and for all I know your finished product is brilliantly written. But I work on the principal of “better safe than sorry,” and if I have guessed right I’m guessing you would want to know.
And if I’m wrong, and you are utilizing professional skills in scene construction, my reaction to the method you use is: if it works for you it works for you. Why argue with success, or change what works?
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posted
Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality cycle "Author's Afterwords" contain his composition process and progress. Anthony began drafts on yellow legal pads, double spaced, handwritten. He used the empty lines for revisions, used the margins for notes, and used typesetters' marks for instructions to his typists.
About midway through the cycle, he started final self-typed word processor use from his handwritten drafts; Dvorak keyboard instead of qwerty. By the seventh installment, he'd converted to solely typewritten.
Anthony's handwritten process is informative for any writer who would draft on paper by hand; that is, leave ample space for further adjustments and second and third or more passes, before final typescript preparation and further adjustments for submission.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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posted
One thing about handwriting: personal experience.
Before I retired, I sometimes used to write out grievance statements at work. Being of an orderly turn of mind and also because of all my training and practice in writing, I could just write out two or sometime three pages of my thoughts, composing in my head, writing out what happened, where violations of contract or agreement occurred, and what remedy I expected.
I was eventually told that sometimes the stewards used my turns of phrase and language in their filings. Worth it to have an appreciative audience for your work.
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