No One I Love

I’m almost ashamed to admit how little I know about other stories on Tumblr. I know some exist and I used to follow a couple. But they all seem to have stopped updating. Conner used to write on several and he still has a list of other stories on his site (although I don’t know how up-to-date it is). I know of a couple that are/were planned, but haven’t heard that they’ve started yet.

Feel free to share any good ones and I’ll pass them along!

You read them all at once?! Wow! Thank you. That means a lot! I haven’t even done that in a while myself. Haha. I assume “RLfic” means real life fiction? Good description! I always say 85% non-fiction/15% fiction, so RLfic is a great way to describe it! Thank you again for the nice message. I’m glad you’re enjoying them and I hope you continue to do so! 

Well, before I answer your question, I just gotta say that I am:

• shocked
• humbled
• elated
• shocked
• thrilled
• speechless
• shocked

about your message and kind words! I’m not even sure that list does justice to how this made me feel. Ever? Really??? That’s not possible, is it? Haha. Thank you - seriously. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m rarely speechless… but I don’t even know what else to say.

On to the question…

Conversations are tough. In fact, a big part of the reason I’ve always said these are 85% non-fiction/15% fiction is because of the dialog. Some conversations you legitimately do remember word-for-word, be it because they occurred with someone special or because they had to do with something special… maybe they made you laugh or cry or experience some other emotion. Those are easy because you only have to fill in the little bits -  you can remember the important parts.

As for the rest, well… in my opinion, the individual words themselves aren’t as important as what they’re expressing. Did I say “hell no!” during that conversation or did I say “I think not!” isn’t really the main reason for writing through dialog - the fact that I said “no” in some way is. So what I do is take a few factors into consideration and then run with it:

Who’s talking?
What do they sound like?
What little quirks or idioms or patterns of speech do they frequently use?
What sort of dialect and/or accent do they use?
How does their speech flow? 

With that, you can imagine how a conversation about almost anything would go in your head. Combine that with the story you’re trying to tell, and you can craft a dialog that might not be word-for-word what was said, but it could have been. You don’t even have to be present to be able to create dialog like that!

So, if you’re trying to write about conversations you were actually a part of, it should be easy if you don’t worry about nailing every single word exactly how it was spoken, but instead, try to focus on the main point of the conversation. What was significant about the conversation that makes it worth writing about? Who expressed what emotion or thought or idea? Knowing what you know about them, how would they have expressed those thoughts or ideas?

Toss in the answers to those other questions from above about how they literally speak (and a little artistic liberty) and presto: dialog.

Main point: it doesn’t have to be exact as long as it gets the message across.

Hope that helps!

Hopefully he agrees and doesn’t think I’m just Rick Rolling him ;-) Haha.

I’d probably have to take it down from here if I were to publish it through someone else and I don’t really want to do that. They don’t typically like to publish freely-available works. I might self-publish it in some digital format when it’s done, just to give folks the ability to read it without Tumblr if they so choose.

Yep! Wednesday it is.

Every other day for now. If I get far enough ahead I may do more later.

Well thank you :-) I’m glad to be able to share it with you again!

It’s funny… I ALMOST posted the music video for “Tonight, Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins earlier today. Haha. But yes, there’s a specific time. Unless something happens, all posts are scheduled to go out at 7pm CST. That’s in about an hour and a half :-)

Sometime between my day job and writing the story I will get that information written out. I’ve started a couple of times and then been distracted by something shiny. Haha.

Maybe tonight. If not tonight, tomorrow :-D

You are 100% correct. The character of Brian is based off of me. So yeah, you were talking to “him”… haha. Part of that 15% of fictional leeway I granted myself was a new name, though :-P

It begins a few weeks into NOIL Will Ever Read This and goes up until present day-ish.

Well, if you’re still working on the second installment, then you haven’t got to that part yet. Haha. Brian was most definitely in the first installment. He just didn’t have a name then… (hint, hint)