/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23331871]

People that say dialogue should only exist to move the plot are retarded. If I want to write a 1000 word dialogue between two characters sperging out about craft beer and hops to show that one of the characters is only superficially supportive of the other character's problems and only likes to have her around to sperg out about craft beer with, then I'll do just that.

Dialogue is an extension of character and you can never have enough of it. I hate this obsession with minimalism and prose being a mechanical, robotic vehicle for muh action and muh plot.

Let the characters sit in a restaurant and talk like human beings for god sake. Tarantino does it. Why in literature, especially in this modern age where everyone knows Tarantino and worships him (I don't) you'd think dialogue rules would be as loose as they are in those films.

[Anonymous No.23331873]

>>23331871
dialogue is gay, just write a play, fag.

[Anonymous No.23331877]

>>23331873
theater is gay and you can't write long, beautiful descriptive scenes in plays, faggot

[Anonymous No.23331894]

>>23331871
A single long dialogue about craft beer will not demonstrate that effectively, it is pretty much "trust me bro, he is always like this." Stop learning about literature from social media and read more, no one outside of genre thinks that way and many writers use a great deal of dialogue, Gaddis wrote two novels almost purely in dialogue, one reaching 1000 pages.

[Anonymous No.23331912]

>>23331894
I have a friend who is a genre guy, some stories published.
He used to get me to edit his stuff, but he drives me bonkers with his worship of the almighty plot when we get into convo.
I talked him into reading Hemingway and he told me he thought the novel
was pointless.

[Anonymous No.23331921]

>>23331871
yeah you go and do that and I'll throw it out and read a less boring fucking book

[Anonymous No.23331925]

Dialogue is pleb, but back and forth monologues are based

[Anonymous No.23331928]

>>23331894
It'll be one of many instances is the point. I want there to be these long dialogue scenes that have multiple reasons to exist. For bonding between characters, for characterization, for the pleasure of having interesting bits of knowledge discussed between two people (in this case, I have one of the characters going on about how lagers aren't found in craft beer places because cold fermenting is more costly etc).

Sure, as I write, I want to find a way to incorporate these discussions into something profound within the characters. But sometimes, I just want there to be a wholesome bonding scene where two friends enjoy the time they spend with one another, talking about something they love. Why is everyone in a rush? Why can't there be moments like these that exist?
>>23331912
I get you. It's not like my work is "plotless." It's just very slow moving and it has layers. Sure, I try to make every word count and every bit of dialogue matter, but of course, that means a lot of it is so subtle that it requires multiple readings and an almost paradoxical superficial attitude, in that, you should want to read something for it's pleasure first and foremost. It's like reading Proust for the deep themes is something you for sure can do, but you should also want to read Proust because you might like dinner parties or duchesses or are repressed sexually lol.

[Anonymous No.23331930]

>>23331871
It's good to give the reader a reason to keep reading from sentence to sentence, and keeping the plot constantly moving is an effective way to achieve that. But the idea that fiction should all be geared towards serving some specific narrative core is, in general, an unhelpful and arbitrary way of thinking about books, imo. You could think about a novel as a one big machine whose inner workings aren't important except inasmuch as they produce some final, compact product called 'plot' or 'message'; or you can think about it as a big terrarium, in which you let loose all kinds of flora and fauna, and see how they interact and evolve, or as a city with remote corners and secret tunnels and occasional zones of undeveloped wasteland or interesting ruins. A novel is a framework in which all kinds of material can be inserted, and that's part of what makes it great. If you're interested in a particular voice or a particular kind of personality, you can put it into dialogue with others, or set it in the context of an environment or social situation, and see what kinds of aesthetic effects get produced. You can take a philosophical message, or social critique, and see how it gets subtly inflected by being placed into different narrative forms. You can simply reel off fun similes, if you want, like in a Raymond Chandler book, or come up with a series of amusing grotesques, like in a Charles Dickens book, or make up little songs for your guys to sing, like a Thomas Pynchon book, and all those things are interesting to read in themselves, they're cool things writing can do, and it's good to have a form loose enough to accommodate them without imposing a hierarchy of importance or significance.

[Anonymous No.23331947]

>>23331871
sex

[Anonymous No.23331948]

>>23331928
You sound like a beer nerd and more interested in beer than the story.
>Why can't there be moments like these that exist?
Proust went of for over 4000 pages doing this and many others have done the same. Less time seething about what people on social media say, more time reading.

[Anonymous No.23331956]

>>23331930
>or you can think about it as a big terrarium, in which you let loose all kinds of flora and fauna, and see how they interact and evolve, or as a city with remote corners and secret tunnels and occasional zones of undeveloped wasteland or interesting ruins.
>f you're interested in a particular voice or a particular kind of personality, you can put it into dialogue with others, or set it in the context of an environment or social situation, and see what kinds of aesthetic effects get produced. You can take a philosophical message, or social critique, and see how it gets subtly inflected by being placed into different narrative forms.

These two things are exactly what I am trying to accomplish with my stuff. It all takes place in this massive city and I want, through a shit ton of POV, to show this intermingling of character's lives. Having characters take a break from their role in the book, sometimes they meet other characters that have their own POV in odd places, and they sort of "share their wisdom" with one another before departing and resuming their "plot."

The bit about how certain authors have their own little niches, like Dickens with grotesque characters or Pynchon with songs, or probably DFW with footnotes, is something I haven't really thought about as something unique to them. Very motivating.

Writing feels as if I'm just screaming into a void, hoping that what I'm doing is in any way meaningful to anyone other than me.

[Anonymous No.23331959]

>>23331894
>Gaddis wrote two novels almost purely in dialogue, one reaching 1000 pages.
And both suck.

[Anonymous No.23331961]

>>23331948
I don't use social media. I post questions I have on /lit/ when they come about, but I write about 5k words every single day.

Also, beer is only one of the things I talk about, given one of many characters works as a brewer.

[Anonymous No.23331966]

>>23331961
It's like saying DFW cared more about tennis than writing.

[Anonymous No.23331973]

>>23331871
I agree with you, OP. There is a kind of novel that is mostly based on dialogue. The novels of Jane Austen, Dostoevsky and even Dom Quixote are examples.

[Anonymous No.23332006]

>>23331961
If you don't use social media where do you get all these flawed ideas about literature?
>>23331966
No really, OP is talking about characters swapping trivia, not bonding over the nuances of something shared. The examples OP provides are rather superficial like the comment about lagers, tells us nothing of use, just gives us a random fact which is currently true but may be irrelevant in a year.

[Anonymous No.23332012]

>>23332006
You seem to only care about the plot, not about the nuances of human interaction. Sad! Not all dialogue has to be this hyper-important thing. A character can exist independently of your own needs. They are not there for you.

[Anonymous No.23332013]

>>23331973
Now I get why Nabokov said Dostojewski should’ve been a playwright lmao

[Anonymous No.23332019]

>Let the characters sit in a restaurant and talk like human beings for god sake.
That would be the most boring book of all time.

>Tarantino does it.
>comparing film to literature
fucking christ

[Anonymous No.23332032]

>>23332012
>swings to fence
I never even mentioned plot. He wants the conversations to tell us about the characters, swapping random facts does not do that unless they are autistic. We need to understand what beer is to them if we want to understand them through their dialogues about beer. IJ is actually a really good example of this done well.

[Anonymous No.23332036]

>>23332019
Fantasyfags when the book doesn't have dragons and nigger-magicians

[Anonymous No.23332091]

>>23332036
>fantasyfags
Nice strawman. Name one novel in the /lit/ top 100 with a dialogue heavy scene where the dialogue doesn't contribute to the plot or themes of the novel.

[Anonymous No.23332118]

>>23331928
>for the pleasure of having interesting bits of knowledge discussed between two people (in this case, I have one of the characters going on about how lagers aren't found in craft beer places because cold fermenting is more costly etc).
You want to rant and preach about subjects you like but keep an ironic distance by having a character saying it in a made up setting.
Writing many characters "sharing their wisdom" implies you think you have many lifetimes of wisdom to share. I happen to be projecting but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

[Anonymous No.23332170]

>>23332118
No, I want to give life to characters by having them share what they want when they want. I don't want the characters to be at the mercy of the characters, using them as fleshlights for their own self-projected power fantasies.

[Anonymous No.23332179]

>>23331871
>People that say dialogue should only exist to move the plot are retarded. If I want to write a 1000 word dialogue between two characters sperging out about craft beer and hops to show that one of the characters is only superficially supportive of the other character's problems and only likes to have her around to sperg out about craft beer with, then I'll do just that
When people say things should support the "plot" they mean the story and a story is just a series of events that are more than the sum of their parts when condensed. If your character not caring about the other is important to the story you can get away with literally anything as long as you illustrate it in an interesting way.
A's an aside that bitch looks anorexic.

[Anonymous No.23332196]

>>23331873
a play wiuld be an inprovement, since they cant take 5 hours talking about the night or the fucking grass

[Anonymous No.23332389]

>>23331871
>If I want to write a 1000 word dialogue between two characters sperging out about craft beer and hops to show that one of the characters is only superficially supportive of the other character's problems and only likes to have her around to sperg out about craft beer with, then I'll do just that.
You can get this point across in far less than 1000 words without losing anything of value in the process. There is no point to having your plot stall this hard for no reason.

>then I'll do just that.
You can. But I think the majority of people who read that would find it very boring. If you're writing a book purely for yourself that's fine but if you're planning on releasing it to the public then you need to always keep the audience in mind and think to yourself "Would anyone actually want to read this? Is this entertaining?".

[Anonymous No.23332468]

>>23332170
Aircraft carriers can exert power over the air, sea and land. Some carriers and subs run on compact nuclear reactors. They can run for decades on the fuel on board, excess energy means they can do things like generate oxygen. Only Russia has portable nuclear reactors like this being used by consumers in the form of large ships with reactors that dock at towns needing power. Access to energy correlates with economic output but I think it also has serious psychological effects. People intuitively feel the potential of all that power like they intuitively feel the effects of peak oil and peak resource extraction growth.

[Anonymous No.23332516]

>>23332389
Tbh I have a very hard time liming myself because the thing I love in literature, especially Proust and Tolstoy, is that extreme detail and depth of dialogue, set dressing, character movements, inner thoughts etc. People say Proust writes 300 pages of nothing, but I say he's written 300 pages of everything.

>If you're writing a book purely for yourself that's fine but if you're planning on releasing it to the public then you need to always keep the audience in mind and think to yourself "Would anyone actually want to read this? Is this entertaining?".
The thing is, it is entertaining. I know people love Proust and Tolstoy, even today. Am I going to appeal to Sandersonfags? Of course not. But I just don't think there has to always be an immediacy to the plot. There is no rush. It will come. Stop and smell the roses.

[sage No.23332939]

>>23331871
people who post pictures of egirls on /lit/ are low-T faggots who should kill themselves and i dont read their posts.