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.
Curiously enough my non-B7 fan (and non-writer) other half made precisely the same criticism this evening on perusal of some of the TTBA proofs. We came to the conclusion that some of the problem might be that many fanfic writers spend a lot of time on the internet and so develop text-based ways of conveying emotion, including italics, ellipsis and emoticons, which they then find tricky to disgard when writing fiction.
Tavia
In message 01C0931E.3F958780.tavia@btinternet.com, Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com writes
Curiously enough my non-B7 fan (and non-writer) other half made precisely the same criticism this evening on perusal of some of the TTBA proofs. We came to the conclusion that some of the problem might be that many fanfic writers spend a lot of time on the internet and so develop text-based ways of conveying emotion, including italics, ellipsis and emoticons, which they then find tricky to disgard when writing fiction.
This is certainly true for me, although it spills over more into non-net equivalents of mailing lists (letters, notes, etc) than fiction writing.
At 04:59 AM 2/10/01 +0000, Tavia Chalcraft wrote:
...We came to the conclusion that some of the problem might be that many fanfic writers spend a lot of time on the internet and so develop text-based ways of conveying emotion, including italics, ellipsis and emoticons, which they then find tricky to disgard when writing fiction.
I'm thinking maybe italics and ellipses might be particularly prevalent in the case of B7 fan-fictional dialogue because people unconsciously try and convey the rather theatrical way that the characters (and Avon particularly I think) tend to talk (whereas, for instance, in X-Files fan-fiction you'd probably get relatively few italics, but frequent overuse of the phrase "muttered flatly").
I find it hard to imagine how one would use emoticons in dialogue, though. "Vila, you're an idiot, colon hyphen right round bracket," Avon said.
(And, by the by, were any of said proofs connected to any paranoid types whose pseudonyms mean "trashy Victorian literature"?)
--Penny "Dave" Dreadful -- "It's still me, Mulder."
From: Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com
Curiously enough my non-B7 fan (and non-writer) other half made precisely the same criticism this evening on perusal of some of the TTBA proofs. We came to the conclusion that some of the problem might be that many fanfic writers spend a lot of time on the internet and so develop text-based ways of conveying emotion, including italics, ellipsis and emoticons, which
they
then find tricky to disgard when writing fiction.
It might be a contributory factor, but this style of writing seems to stretch way back into the dawn of fanfic history (well, early Horizon zines anyway), certainly way before internet use was commonplace (which has only happened over the past five years or so). I think Betty's explanation is closer to the truth - an attempt to recreate the tone of the series, and especially the characters, as exactly as possible. What someone recently described as 'reprographic mode'.
I've got some ideas as to why people might handle characterisation in that way but my bike's got a puncture.
Neil
Tavia said:
We came to the conclusion that some of the problem [of ellipsis-
filled fanfic dialogue] might be that many fanfic
writers spend a lot of time on the internet and so develop text-based ways of conveying emotion, including italics, ellipsis and emoticons, which
they
then find tricky to disgard when writing fiction.
I think it also stems from fanfic's origin in a television show--if I could, I really would post B7 movies, but fanfic is all I can manage. If you can't have a film clip or sound file, the least you can do is indicate line readings.
-(Y)
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Dana Shilling -
Julia Jones -
Neil Faulkner -
Penny Dreadful -
Tavia Chalcraft