Dialogue and its place in a paragraph

Discussion in 'Dialogue Development' started by CMastah, Nov 13, 2014.

  1. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Honestly, I'd say the "noticed her" is a judgement call... the rule is that you shouldn't be writing anything she wouldn't have noticed or known herself, but I've known when people have noticed me - I've noticed them noticing me. So for me, that wasn't a super-clear break in POV. Obviously Shadowfax disagrees...
     
  2. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    It's all in how you write it. If it were clearly not a change in POV the different interpretations would be less likely.

    Yes, my character can notice people looking at her. That's what I would write. If I merely say, "they noticed her," then I'm out of the noticed person's head.

    As she made eye contact, the strange men froze in place. She raised her sword. “Who are you and what do you want? This is my sister’s home and you’re not welcome here.”
    Personally, I'd change a few more things. What does "strange men" mean? Are they odd looking or strangers? And I'd break up the two spoken sentences, they don't flow well together. Does she care what they want if they aren't welcome anyway?
     
  3. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Assorted thoughts:

    - "...strange men noticed her..." could be from her POV, but it's ambiguous; 'noticing' is something that happens in a person's mind, and if we're reporting on the men's minds, then we're in the men's POV. So she doesn't know that they noticed her by observing their minds; she knows it by observing their actions. So to eliminate the ambiguity, I think it's better to drill down to what she observed--preferably without any "filter" words like 'saw' or 'heard'.

    To use another example of the same concept, you could say, "Joe smelled the scent of onions coming from the kitchen." That would, by default, be from Joe's POV. It could theoretically be from someone else's who observed Joe smelling the onions, but for that to happen without a great deal of ambiguity, you'd need Joe to lift his head and sniff, or remark on the onions, or grimace at the scent, or something.

    - "...strange MEN..." addresses the actions of more than one person simultaneously. That makes the POV even more confusing--are we omnisciently using the POV of more than one person, or is she noticing the behavior of more than one person in order to observe that all of those people are noticing something simultaneously? That's why, in my example, I switched to one person. I realize that if you have multiple people you don't want to ignore the others, so you'd need some other rewrite

    - To eliminate ambiguity in speaking, I think that it would make sense to cut the sentence into two:

    The strange men noticed her and froze in place. She raised her sword and said, “Who are you and what do you want?"
     
  4. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    If you want to follow those rules. It's accepted, but not a must.
     

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