Dialogue Only Stories

Well Redrecon I have a story entitled "The Void" that may describe the type of style your speaking of, I don't know how to provide a link for it but it is on my page under Short Stories/Flash Fiction. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the Kudo's mate & best of luck with your new story, looking forward to reading it!

.

I got The Priest, The Prius, and The Pinky. Which is a comedy. got a cherry for it. I think it works.

I'd be interested to know what are the pros and cons, comparing this type of story and a playscript. The story, I think is pobably harder, because in a play you can "cheat" by adding stage directions. A story in this style relies solely on the dialogue. Any thoughts?

And, by extension I suppose, it probably helps you define a strong voice for your characters. Nice one, Redrecon.

The only real problem with this style is when you have to provide background. It always ends up being laboured with the use of such devices as: "Remember whne you were a kid, Chuck, and your Ma used to sweat and slave at three jobs at the same time just to put a roof over your head and those of your sister, Arabella (aged 9) and brother, little Chuck (aged 7) who is sadly now no longer with us? Remember that?" The form only works when the story allows it.

So here's Redrecon's bash at these: http://www.abctales.com/set/redrecon/jimys-bar They have something but so far they're not really getting to me. Your thoughts?

I wrote this --> http://www.abctales.com/story/jacobea/beakys-ode But it is not really a story.

Tony, the reason that you're not really getting the Jimmy's Bar stories is because they're not written in the way that people speak. Or at least not the way people speak in scripts and stories. In scripts and stories, even very naturalistic ones, people speak in a particular way that is, in fact, highly stylised. Writers do this because, to write down entirely verbatim dialogue, you end up saying very little in a very large amount of words. They also do this because they are telling a story. Redrecon's also failed to pick up on the most important part of real speech which everyone should use: people don't usually answer directly to what a person who is speaking to them says. They avoid, they change the subject, they make statements instead of answering questions. To do this sort of stuff successfully, you need to know what your characters are, how they think and how they see the people they're talking to. People want to get SOMETHING out of any conversation. That something may, however, never even be mentioned in the conversation. You got to train your ear to the most exciting bits of speech and then use them to your own ends. With speech, the relationship and character is always there, but you're never allowed to say it explicitly, your characters have to BE it, not SAY it. Cheers, Mark

http://abctales.com/story/mikepyro/priest-prius-and-pinky here's mine. got a cherry for it, it's got some stage direction (just for characters actions, like setting arm on trunk and once for showing they're in a confession booth) but mostly it's all dialogue.

I think that Mike's story works because it takes into account a fair number of Mark's points. The dialogue is not strictly sequential and it does leave a lot to the imagination. It is silly and funny and I think that that helps it - maybe these pieces have to be allowed to breathe a lot more.

Here's my efforts at such... http://www.abctales.com/pepsoid/elephant_aliens_to_brighton http://www.abctales.com/story/pepsoid/the-duck-of-freedom-wears-a-purple... Also I believe there was a Dean Koontz novel that was entirely in this format. Ooh, now which one was it? Servants of Twilight... Door to December... something like that... pe ps oid Blogs! "the art of tea" "that's an odd courgette"

I'd still be interested to know what influences your decision to choose this format over a straightforward playscript (especially, as MikePyro has mentioned, you end up using stage directions anyway).

For me, I suppose it's like a stripped down playscript. It's... um... "easier"... which in some ways allows for greater freedom. And it's an interesting challenge to only allow oneself to write what the characters are saying. pe ps oid Blogs! "the art of tea" "that's an odd courgette"