Ah, sorry, I thought that inference would be obvious by the time the reader started the second line of dialogue. Thanks for letting me know it wasn’t! I feel stuck between repeating the line with Noa’s name attached (which feels clunky to me), using a worse title, and the current situation.
Nod. A possible solution (slightly clunky but I think the sacrifice of poetry is well worth the clarity) is to begin with 1-2 sentences of scene-setting:
“A fictional dialog:Noa, Olga and Mala are discussion [social games and lying], when Noa makes the claim: ‘Blatant lies are the best kind.’”
An issue I run into with dialogs is keeping track of which character is saying what, especially when I don’t have a strong sense of who they are.
I ran into when *I* was recently constructing an anonymized (nonfictional) dialog. Someone suggested naming them after Game of Thrones characters who represented the sort of viewpoints they were expressing. That still felt too confusing. I later tried naming them “Frustratio” (who’s main characteristic was that he was frustrated) and “Mistakio” (who’s main characteristic is that Frustratio thought Mistakio made a mistake).
This wouldn’t work here, since the characters don’t especially have different main characteristics, just slightly different beliefs. But the status quo was a bit hard to follow.
I’m curious if it’s meant to be ambiguous who is indignant about what? I had to read it several times to figure that out (and then I didn’t write it down, and forgot it)
Ah, sorry, I thought that inference would be obvious by the time the reader started the second line of dialogue. Thanks for letting me know it wasn’t! I feel stuck between repeating the line with Noa’s name attached (which feels clunky to me), using a worse title, and the current situation.
You could have someone respond to the statement, and include the name of the person they’re addressing.
Nod. A possible solution (slightly clunky but I think the sacrifice of poetry is well worth the clarity) is to begin with 1-2 sentences of scene-setting:
“A fictional dialog: Noa, Olga and Mala are discussion [social games and lying], when Noa makes the claim: ‘Blatant lies are the best kind.’”
An issue I run into with dialogs is keeping track of which character is saying what, especially when I don’t have a strong sense of who they are.
I ran into when *I* was recently constructing an anonymized (nonfictional) dialog. Someone suggested naming them after Game of Thrones characters who represented the sort of viewpoints they were expressing. That still felt too confusing. I later tried naming them “Frustratio” (who’s main characteristic was that he was frustrated) and “Mistakio” (who’s main characteristic is that Frustratio thought Mistakio made a mistake).
This wouldn’t work here, since the characters don’t especially have different main characteristics, just slightly different beliefs. But the status quo was a bit hard to follow.
I’m curious if it’s meant to be ambiguous who is indignant about what? I had to read it several times to figure that out (and then I didn’t write it down, and forgot it)
No, I meant it to be straightforward. Oops!