Unrelated to story, but sorta - either way soooo worth sharing

writing
#1

Hi everyone,

Happy New Year!

I was all ready to get into the Writer’s Room on Subtext last night, and then somehow - who knows how - I came across a singer that totally blew me away. After listening to one of his songs, I had to listen to another of his songs, and another and another, and next thing I knew it was midnight, well past Writer’s Room class!

Best singer in the world is right here: https://youtu.be/JEz1qGS0T1Q

Enjoy!!!

PS. Just to tie this in to writing and try to get it on topic (:smile:) … Did you know that we read a sentence with the same part of our brains that processes music? Well, true. It’s in the beat of the sound of words.

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#2

http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212

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#3

Definitely a great singer @whitepaws ! But I especially loved the note about the speech and music brain processing. @MWollaeger that illusion thing was super cool! Everyone should try listening to the Demo 1 and Demo 2 files (in order).

I read to my daughter almost every night*, so I do a large portion of my fiction reading aloud, and I’m very aware of how the sentences / phrases sound. I do my best to bring this awareness to my own writing too.

(Incidentally I also have a pet peeve with many modern books who have taken the “reduce dialogue tags” advice too far, so that when you read the book aloud, it becomes very difficult for the listener to parse out who’s saying what! Since they don’t have the advantage of seeing the paragraph breaks.)

* she’s 13 now and we read some pretty cool books, right now it’s Book 2 of Brandon Mull’s Beyonders series. We’ve been doing this her whole life, and I’m well aware that it’s probably darn rare for a teenager to let her dad read to her every night, so I’m afraid to go more than a night or two without this routine. Don’t want her to start questioning it!

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#4

Hadn’t thought about the minimal dialogue tags on the reading experience! You are right, @mlucas, especially with audiobooks on the rise. We should be writing for the listener (who is also the reader) because most readers read silently in their heads anyway. Sometimes, I buy the audiobook and ebook to listen along while I read — it gives my own inner reader a rest. That low-dialogue-tag rule has to be tossed out the window.

Even Hemingway, the minimalist that he was, didn’t skimp on dialogue tags. His other trick was to include the name of the character within the dialogue to make sure the reader knows who is being talked to.

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#5

We are reading “Keepers of the Lost Cities” and they have almost no dialogue tags. I add them in half the time just to make sure that things are clear.

I’m jealous that your 13 year old lets you do it.

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#6

Just listened to demos 1 and 2 now - freaky! The ghost phrase stays in your head. Oooh.

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