importance of style
Feb. 6th, 2012 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catnessMeta was shaking all over. Her face turned pasty pale, providing a stark contrast with blue circles appearing around her deeply-set eyes of matching color, and angry red spots glowing on her cheekbones. She staggered a few steps on her long trembling legs and heavily crashed on the sofa, raising a cloud of dust accumulated in the olive-green velvet cover.
"What is it you're trying to do?" asked Alt, raising his eyebrows in the universal gesture of sarcasm.
"Damn if I know," said Meta, carefully avoiding dialogue tags. "I really want to get a hang of this show-don't-tell thing, but I don't understand crap about body language. Does it look more like fear or surprise to you?"
"It looks like you're a pathetic overacting clown. Why don't you just tell them what you're supposed to feel, and be done with it?"
"Nah, where's the challenge in that? Let them guess. If writing is hard, reading should be harder! And it makes for such a sense of accomplishment when the book is finished."
Alt shrugged, visually spelling "whatever". "I don't think anybody cares for hard work when they just want to read a story."
But Meta wasn't listening. She dived under the sofa, extracted a thick tome with two words starting with "emo" and "dic" visible on the cover, and started to leaf through the pages. Her face morphed, changing shapes and colors as her eyes followed the descriptions. "I'll parse you, human emotions!" she hissed through clenched teeth.
"Dialogue tags," said Alt impassively.
"Ly-adverbs," retorted Meta. "Just shut up and let me concentrate. I almost got it. Raised eyebrows, tensed lower eyelids, lips stretched horizontally."
"This is going to be so much fun. Not." Alt propped his feet on the coffee table, lit a politically incorrect cigarette and prepared to get bored out of his wits.
"What is it you're trying to do?" asked Alt, raising his eyebrows in the universal gesture of sarcasm.
"Damn if I know," said Meta, carefully avoiding dialogue tags. "I really want to get a hang of this show-don't-tell thing, but I don't understand crap about body language. Does it look more like fear or surprise to you?"
"It looks like you're a pathetic overacting clown. Why don't you just tell them what you're supposed to feel, and be done with it?"
"Nah, where's the challenge in that? Let them guess. If writing is hard, reading should be harder! And it makes for such a sense of accomplishment when the book is finished."
Alt shrugged, visually spelling "whatever". "I don't think anybody cares for hard work when they just want to read a story."
But Meta wasn't listening. She dived under the sofa, extracted a thick tome with two words starting with "emo" and "dic" visible on the cover, and started to leaf through the pages. Her face morphed, changing shapes and colors as her eyes followed the descriptions. "I'll parse you, human emotions!" she hissed through clenched teeth.
"Dialogue tags," said Alt impassively.
"Ly-adverbs," retorted Meta. "Just shut up and let me concentrate. I almost got it. Raised eyebrows, tensed lower eyelids, lips stretched horizontally."
"This is going to be so much fun. Not." Alt propped his feet on the coffee table, lit a politically incorrect cigarette and prepared to get bored out of his wits.
