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Help Yourself wordcount - No Quotes!
Nov. 30th, 2008 10:35 pmDefinitely a slow writing week, but I finally found some time tonight to get some words on the page.
As an exercise I decided when I started to write this one that I'd attempt everything in a much more fluid style. I'd let the words flow and not worry so much about comma placement and punctuation - the sort of things that, for me, disrupt the words from reaching the page. One of the parts of this exercise was to totally dispense with quotation marks for dialogue. Normally, I find this affectation pretentious - when reading Cormac McCarthy it distracts me greatly. But, Tim Winton has always done it and I've never noticed until I was 'examining' his latest novel "Breath". I enjoyed the novel thoroughly, just as I've enjoyed 'Cloud Street' and 'Dirt Music', so I wanted to go back and see some of the things that made it tick.
One of the things I've found amazing about Winton's storytelling is the way everything flows and builds up rhythms within the narrative. In fact, everything flows so well that he doesn't need quotation marks for the dialogue! You just know, from reading the words and feeling the cadence of the sentences, exactly who is speaking what. So, I thought I'd see how I went.
And, losing the quotation marks is so strangely liberating! It is amazing what shackles little things like this become to your mind when you're writing. Always thinking about starting a new paragraph, making sure the comma is inside the quotation marks (or outside as the occasional exception requires), avoiding pointless dialogue attribution and clichéd verb modifying adverbs. We might not think that we think about these things, but we do. And NOT thinking about them, not worrying about them, has led me into what I feel is a much more natural writing style.
It helps a lot that I'm writing in first person. I also don't think it would work for every book or story and maybe I'll have to go back when I'm finished and add them all back in. But for now, it is helping me write this story in a voice that I think really works for it, and a style that really works for me.
I probably also won't be so sceptical about these sort of 'non-quotation mark' books as being pretentious literary twaddle any more. I can definitely see a point, for some story to be written this way for both the benefit of the author and the reader.
As an exercise I decided when I started to write this one that I'd attempt everything in a much more fluid style. I'd let the words flow and not worry so much about comma placement and punctuation - the sort of things that, for me, disrupt the words from reaching the page. One of the parts of this exercise was to totally dispense with quotation marks for dialogue. Normally, I find this affectation pretentious - when reading Cormac McCarthy it distracts me greatly. But, Tim Winton has always done it and I've never noticed until I was 'examining' his latest novel "Breath". I enjoyed the novel thoroughly, just as I've enjoyed 'Cloud Street' and 'Dirt Music', so I wanted to go back and see some of the things that made it tick.
One of the things I've found amazing about Winton's storytelling is the way everything flows and builds up rhythms within the narrative. In fact, everything flows so well that he doesn't need quotation marks for the dialogue! You just know, from reading the words and feeling the cadence of the sentences, exactly who is speaking what. So, I thought I'd see how I went.
And, losing the quotation marks is so strangely liberating! It is amazing what shackles little things like this become to your mind when you're writing. Always thinking about starting a new paragraph, making sure the comma is inside the quotation marks (or outside as the occasional exception requires), avoiding pointless dialogue attribution and clichéd verb modifying adverbs. We might not think that we think about these things, but we do. And NOT thinking about them, not worrying about them, has led me into what I feel is a much more natural writing style.
It helps a lot that I'm writing in first person. I also don't think it would work for every book or story and maybe I'll have to go back when I'm finished and add them all back in. But for now, it is helping me write this story in a voice that I think really works for it, and a style that really works for me.
I probably also won't be so sceptical about these sort of 'non-quotation mark' books as being pretentious literary twaddle any more. I can definitely see a point, for some story to be written this way for both the benefit of the author and the reader.
Help Yourself - Wordcount
     |
2,428 / 100,000
(2.4%)
(2.4%)
