Neil wrote:
What grates me most in fanfic dialogue is the way many writers try to capture the exact phrasing of lines with lots of superfluous italics and '...'s (forgotten the technical term for them), together with a liberal peppering of adverbs.
This may have something to do with the fact that writers of fanfic are 'translating' the stories about Our Heroes from one genre to another, from teleplay to prose. A play (in its written form) consists of nothing but dialogue and stage directions. The actors' performance may help us feel there's more to read between the lines.
I've done a lot of translating from English to my language and I know that the constructions of the original language often sneak into translation and make it sound 'unnatural'. Sometimes when I read fanfic I also feel the effects of 'translating'. The emphasis is on dialougue, there are, as you've noticed, 'stage directions' of how to phrase the lines, lots of details on what facial expression each of the characters should show while speaking, how and where he or she moves, etc. IOW, I think many writers imagine they're creating a 'TV episode', not writing a story.
Many writers are skillful in imitating the 'spoken voice' of the main characters, both in terms of the patterns of speech and in terms of what sort of statements we expect them to make. Much greater problem, however, is to present their 'inner voice'. There we move from the realm of imitating the series into the realm of interpretation. For instance, Blake's inner voice might display more uncertainty, Avon's more warmth, Vila's more intelligence, than their 'outer voices' - depending on the author's interpretation of their characters.
I think this is where a number of authors fail. They hope that, if their characters speak the given lines in a certain way, accompanied with certain bodily movements, this will produce the same effect as in a screened episode, with all the implicit depth. It is difficult to adapt to a different genre. A short story has its own advantages over a play, which ought to be used, but are often neglected. Stream-of-consciousness, the moments when a character is alone and does nothing much in the outer world, but very much happens within. Not to mention the other elements - I was just concerned with the characters here.
N.