Sydnie
Dreamer
I had an idea and wanted to get some input about it, and this seemed like the best place to post.
Short version: The book I'm writing takes place primarily in an online VR game. Would it be viable to present the dialogue as though it's an ingame chat log?
Long version, complete with backstory: One of the issues I'm trying to overcome right now as a writer is my overuse of "said" and "asked" in my dialogue. But doing the equivalent of running all my dialogue tags through a thesaurus isn't really better. In the latest draft, I decided to start from square one. I figured I'd clear out all the non-dialogue and put the name of the character speaking in brackets at the start of each line. My thinking was that I could then look at it line by line and figure out the best way to frame each one.
The thing is, once I started doing that, I was struck by the feeling that it looked an awful lot like a chat log in an online game. Considering the story is set in an online game, I then, naturally, had the thought that maybe that could actually work. I feel like it'd be a thematically appropriate way to present dialogue. But I'm not sure if it would be too...hm, let's be polite and say "creative". Or if it would end up reading too much like a script. I was thinking it could be an added layer to help immerse the reader in the story, but I'm worried about it having the opposite effect, since most books don't seem to be written that way.
Thoughts? I can post an example of what I mean if anyone wants~
Short version: The book I'm writing takes place primarily in an online VR game. Would it be viable to present the dialogue as though it's an ingame chat log?
Long version, complete with backstory: One of the issues I'm trying to overcome right now as a writer is my overuse of "said" and "asked" in my dialogue. But doing the equivalent of running all my dialogue tags through a thesaurus isn't really better. In the latest draft, I decided to start from square one. I figured I'd clear out all the non-dialogue and put the name of the character speaking in brackets at the start of each line. My thinking was that I could then look at it line by line and figure out the best way to frame each one.
The thing is, once I started doing that, I was struck by the feeling that it looked an awful lot like a chat log in an online game. Considering the story is set in an online game, I then, naturally, had the thought that maybe that could actually work. I feel like it'd be a thematically appropriate way to present dialogue. But I'm not sure if it would be too...hm, let's be polite and say "creative". Or if it would end up reading too much like a script. I was thinking it could be an added layer to help immerse the reader in the story, but I'm worried about it having the opposite effect, since most books don't seem to be written that way.
Thoughts? I can post an example of what I mean if anyone wants~