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A tip about paragraph breaks inside of character speech (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So, the rule is that if you have a single character speaking across multiple paragraphs, you don't use end quotes on those paragraphs. I get the intent of the rule, but I think it looks awful and is jarring.

What I have been doing for a long time, is to insert a minor action at the end of that paragraph or the start of the next. I don't even notice that I am doing it anymore, it just feels natural to have a character gesture or emote in some way every so often.

The only reason that this came to mind is that one of my new readers pointed out a spot in Chapter 50 where I had used end quotes on a paragraph break of continuous speech. I edited in a minor action instead, the character was recalling a previous thought process, so I had him lean back in his chair and look up, which is the sort of thing people often do during that sort of thought.

One of the advantages of publishing a serial online, you potentially get some good feedback. :)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is great advice, thanks for sharing! I find that adding actions also improves the flow of dialogue and makes it feel more alive, since you can have movement around a scene or reactions between characters.

Tell me more about your serial! I’ve only wrotten serials for r/WP when I was still on reddit 🥲

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, for the story itself, it might just be easiest to quote my blurb:

An ancient, dreadfully powerful dungeon core that had once been sealed away to slowly fade into oblivion is revived by a chance encounter, though in a much-reduced state.

A temple monk on her way home for a vacation is distracted into exploring a newly born dungeon due to the cuteness of its rabbit monsters, leading to an entirely unexpected chain of events.

A kitsune whose death caused a goddess to pity her fate and revive her as a reincarnated dungeon.

These three quickly form bonds of necessity and convenience, but then have to navigate a complex relationship and build their own rules to live by.

And for my particular world-building, Living Dungeons have avatars, which is very important to the core story.

I'm writing over on Royal Road (And cross-posting to Ream right now, I may add scribblehub), so each chapter is being published on the website. This is not a direct income maker, the website is free, but Patreon for early chapters is getting me a small monthly amount and there is the possibility of getting a deal with something like Amazon Unlimited (I would prefer to avoid that specific publisher, but we will see what the future holds).

Anyway, I got drawn to RR thanks to a Reddit serial that linked there, and that was my introduction to the Living Dungeon concept. And after a few months of reading various stories on Royal Road, I felt the itch to write my own. :) I had at one point been intending for it to also be a trope-subverting 'harem' story where everyone had good cause to be involved in the relationship and were well-fleshed-out people, but the core relationship stabilized at a triad, and I dropped the harem idea. I would have had to force it in, it no longer fit.

Bonus though: That meant I got to drop the age of one of the future characters, which felt better for her general concept, and that in turn generated the opportunity to touch on another aspect of the world that I hadn't had reason to describe yet. And I get to have another woman get involved in a romance with interesting dynamics, though I am not quite there yet.

And I might as well link it:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/57517/no-need-for-a-core

I also have several more ideas waiting in the wings, but I am trying to get my backlog a bit more robust before I divert some of my attention to building those up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WOW almost 400k views and over a thousand pages! 👏👏👏 Well done!

Your concept is great, I can see why it’s found success as a serial! Hearing how your plans changed and evolved as you went through the story is really interesting, thank you for sharing 😄

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The views are cumulative across all chapters, so 1k readers x 100 chapters would be 100k views, before getting into things like my editor-in-wife and I revisiting pages as we slowly clean up my early chapters.

But overall, I do feel very good about my story, and most of my other story ideas take place in the same world (if mostly on different continents), so each time I work on any of these ideas, I am fleshing out the world as a whole.