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.
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.