---

November 14, 2023 will be the 10 year anniversary of the November 14, 2013 murder of my 8 month old infant son, at BugLight Lighthouse Art Studio of Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, Maine. If you have any information about who his killer is, please call FBI Agent Andy Drewer at 207-774-9322

NEVER FORGET:

My Son Was Murdered, The Killer Walks Free, Your Child Could Be Next!

---

FAQ: What are the most visited pages on this website and how many visits do they get?

Several years ago, I wrote an article on how to write different types of magic uses, or rather how I personally write various types of magic users within the context of my Quaraun books. Today that page is one of my top ten most visited articles. It gets 50 to 500 views/reads/hits/visits per day depending on the time of the years and has had over 200k visits total since it was published.

Amphibious Aliens: Debunking The Atwater Family's Alien Abduction Hoax with more then 30MILLION reads since 2007 and The GoldenEagle: Debunking Stephen King's World's Most Haunted Car Hoax with over tenMILLION reads since 2007 still rank as the two most visited articles on my website, but, neither of those are writing related.

Writing Medieval Servants is my most visited writing related article with over 7MILLION reads.

This website was started in 1996 and has 1 to 3 new articles (all written by me, I am the only writer on this site) published almost daily. In 2017 we crossed ten thousand articles published. As of 2023, EACH article gets MINIMUM 10 to 70 reads PER DAY, with the high traffic articles getting 500+ reads per day.

And since December 2019, my website now gets three hundred thousand to 7 million reads per month - well over ONE HUNDRED MILLION PAGE READS PER YEAR, making it not only the single most trafficked site in the State of Maine, but also one of the most visited websites in ALL OF NEW ENGLAND!

{{{HUGS}}} Thank you to all my readers for making this possible!

---

---

 TRIGGERED! I'm a Straight Cis Woman, but I am deemed Too Gay For Old Orchard Beach, Are you too gay for the bigoted, minority harassing, white power, gay hating psychos of The Old Orchard Beach Town Hall Too? 

---

---

---

---

---

---

Scripts VS Novels: A Look At Writing Dialogue

Scripts VS Novels: A Look At Writing Dialogue

Scripts VS Novels: A Look At Writing Dialogue

I was a script writer before a novel writer. Been doing script writing and short story writing since the 1970s, but I didn't write a novel until 2006. And I've been told by many readers that my writing style (when it comes to novels) is EXTREMELY non-standard. And I think, it's because I'm used to writing in stage play format and short story format, and short story format has more in common with script writing then it does novel writing which is why I'm always saying the common advice to write short stories to practice before writing novels is BAD advice. If you are writing short stories in the same format as novel, well there no way around saying it: your stories are gonna be shit. I wish people would stop telling novelist wannabes to practice with short stories first. Not saying novelist can't write short stories, just saying the writing style from short stories to novels, is so different that using one as practice for the other is bad advice.

But back to your question before I have myself a 10 page rant on why I think that is bad advice!

LOL!

:P

>>In terms of writing, what do you think comics, movies, tv, and other mediums do better than novels? How should we use that to improve our writing?

Now for me, being someone who wrote scripts first and novels later, I have a tendency to write my novels in a weird sort of "novelized-script" format. Many readers have referred to my novel writing style as "avant garde" or "artsy-fartsy", which depending on how you look at it could be either good or bad. It also contributes to the fact that my novels are bottom feeders in terms of sales rank, because a quick check of the "look inside" tells the buyer, "this don't quiet look normal" just by looking at the text itself and how it flows on the page, without even reading the text.

Here, let me show you what I mean. A novel format, on the page looks like this:

It's pretty distinctive, blocks of text.

But a script doesn't have blocks of text, because scripts contains no narrative or descriptions and are DIALOGUE ONLY.

While comics, movies, tv, and stage plays each have their own distinct formats, the basic look of all of them on page is this:

Can you see the difference?

The top of page 1 of the script, tells you a quick sentence for the scene. One quick sentences to describe each act. One or two quick sentences to describe each character, and that is the ONLY descriptions and narrations in the ENTIRE script, and the script may be 100+ pages long. There are generally 10 pages of script for every minute of play, and as most small theatre stage plays are 10 minutes long, most stage play scripts are 100 pages exactly.

In a script the characters names are always in all caps and bolded, and start every sentence. This is so the actors know who is talking. Every action the actor is to take while speaking, is in parentheses and italics. This is so the actor knows not to say those words out loud, but rather to physically act out that part.

Now. when you take that and turn it into a novel, what you get is this:

Well.... you can see how dramatically different that looks from this, right:

Okay, so, back to your question...

>>In terms of writing, what do you think comics, movies, tv, and other mediums do better than novels? How should we use that to improve our writing?

Personally, when I look at a novel and see that it is block upon blocks of descriptive text and narration, I don't even bother to read it.

I personally find descriptions of scenes and settings, and even descriptions of what a character looks like, to be dry reading.

Dull.

Boring.

I've no interest in it at all.

I look for novels that have a high rate of dialogue. If the novel is 70 to 90% dialogue, I'll pick it up and read it. Otherwise, I'll pass.

Why?

I like a character driven story.

I'm not a fan of plot driven stories and I tend to avoid them.

When I look for books to buy, I often go to The Writer's Market, and read through the listings of publisher submission guidelines, looking specifically for publishing houses that request: "Character driven stories" and then I search for that publisher's website and take a look at the list of books they publish and buy those, because I know if the publisher is asking for character driven story, then they will also state something like: "Must contain at minimum 70% character dialogue."

In the publishing industry, a story is considered plot driven if it has less then 70% dialogue and character driven if it has at least 70% dialogue. If you have less then 75% dialogue in your story, then it is NOT character driven and I want nothing to do with it.

MOSt novels however, are plot driven, and finding a character driven story, is next to impossible. MOSt novels published are 60% description and only 40% dialogue. (According to several studies that have been done.) Which means for me, as a reader, most books are slow moving slogs of dull, dry, bored out of my mind, reading.

I prefer fast paced reading, and to have a fast pace, that means your paragraphs have to be fewer then 20 words long. And the only way to have page after page after page of none stop, heart pumping, fast paced, 20 words or less paragraphs, is with steady, none stop dialogue for page after page.

The more dialogue, the faster the pace. And every time you insert descriptive or narrative text, you kill momentum, dead short, and the pace has to slowly start all over again.

The longer the descriptive text and narration, the slower the pace becomes and the more difficult it becomes to pick up pace again later.

So in the end, for me, I think the answer to your question...

>>In terms of writing, what do you think comics, movies, tv, and other mediums do better than novels? How should we use that to improve our writing?

What do scripts do better than novels?

Dialogue.

90% of novels suck at dialogue and will never be read by me because of the 60% narrative to 40% dialogue ratio that those novels have.

Why?

Because for me, I want to know who the character is.

I want to know what they are thinking, what they are feeling, what they like, don't like, why they act like ths instead of that.

You could have to most amazing plot and the best built world ever, but if you don't let me have an emotional connection to the characters, than all your plotting and world building might a well be heaping piles of shit.

And you can describe what your character looks like all you want.

It means nothing.

Describing your character is TELLING instead of SHOWING. Don't TELL me in the description, your character is doing this, that and the other thing, SHOW me in the dialogue instead.

I'm not reading to fall in love with your stupendously amazing plot.

Give me a character who feels real instead.

I'm not reading to find out how good you are at map making and creating alien lifeforms that look like trees. I don't care how great your world is or that it has 5 continents instead of 7.

Give me a cast of characters that are as well thought out and built with as much passion as your world is, and you'll find me your biggest fan.

The plot is just the thing that is happening to the character.

The world is just the place the character lives.

The character is what is important, and far too often authors focus on plot and worldbuilding to perfection, then toss in some underdeveloped cookie cutter cardboard character that makes all their plotting and worldbuilding a waste of time.

And another thing...

In scripts, dialogue is almost always 7 words or less before another character jumps in.

In a script characters almost never make it to the end of a sentence without being interrupted by another character. It mimics real life conversation. Real people have a fast pace of back and forth banter while they talk. Script dialogue mimics this, moving back and forth quickly between characters, with no character even getting to the end of a complete thought.

Not so in novels.

In novels a character can drone on for 10 or 12 sentences while everyone else in the room, quietly, patently, and unrealistically, waits their turn to speak. Real people don't talk like that. Real people jump into conversations. Real people have a fast pace of back and forth banter while they talk.

I can't stand it when novels let a character yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, and NO ONE steps in to interrupt? What a way to pull a reader out of the realism. I find it very hard to follow plots when characters act like this, because it keeps pulling me out of the story, with me thinking: "Who talks like this? How unrealistic is this? I can't see this character as a real guy. Real people don't talk like this. I can't identify with this character..."

There it is...

I can't identify with this character...

The worst thing an author can do.

As soon as something happens to make the reader think those words, you've lost that reader, because they'll put down the book and look for a novel that does have characters they can identify with instead.

And so to me...

>>In terms of writing, what do you think comics, movies, tv, and other mediums do better than novels? How should we use that to improve our writing?

Script writing is very good at being character driven and keeping a readers' attention by helping the reader identify with the characters, because of it's super short sentences in dialogue and it's quick spanning back and forth banter and I feel that novelists could write better novels if they followed after scripts' example in this aspect of writing. Most novelists excell at world building and suck at dialogue. Most novelists write great plots and cardboard characters. Most novelists are too focused on plot and world building to spend time fleshing out an identifiable character.

The biggest difference between scripts and novels is how scripts put characters front and center while novels toss the characters in as an afterthought, putting plot and world before characters.

So, I think it would be to most novelists advantage if they took some script writing courses and used them to improve their character creating and dialogue writing skills.

>>Good question. Movies and TV are nowadays dictating how we digest novels. Lots of people can't really focus on reading for a longer time anymore so we have to be careful with long monotonous sequences. What worked in the last century won't work in the future decades. That's what I think.

And you make a good point.

I have very limited knowledge of either TVs or movies, considering it's been more then 30 years since I owned a TV and I only go to 1 movie a year on Christmas Eve with my brothers as going to a movie was such a rare thing to do back in the 1970s in our childhood, it was rather common for families to only go once a year for Christmas, thus we still do that decades later. It's not so much about the movie as it is, hanging out with my brothers for Christmas, so very little thought even goes into what movie we go to.

In my other post, I complained about the fact that I have trouble finding novels these days that do not focus on wold building a describing the world.

But, you look at novels written from the 1930s to the 1970s and this is NOT the case.

Novels from the 1930s to 1970s were HEAVY on dialogue to the point that most are a full 90% dialogue with only tad bits of descriptions at the front of each chapter.

But books written from mid-1980s to today, have very little dialogue, minimal character interaction, and page after page after page after long, dull, dry, boring page of sweeping landscape descriptions, descriptions of the city, descriptions of the army, descriptions of the battlefront, descriptions of the clothes, descriptions, descriptions, descriptions.

So little story. So little character interactions with other characters.

I feel like most novels being publish these days are nothing but authors trying to describe the amazing world they built... like they want us to be WATCHING their novel like it was a movie, instead of reading the actual story.

And... I don't think a lot of authors even realize they do it!

And I think the reason they do it is because they has so very little experience with the written word. They read one or two books a year, at most, if they even read books at all (and the way some books are written these days I seriously suspect many authors never read a book in their life!).

I think, they watch TV every day and movies every week, and maybe read a book once every five years, and because of this, they have absolutely no clue how to write a story, all they know how to do is write vivid descriptions of what the world LOOKS like. Which is fine if people wanted to read a geography book describing what the world looks like, or if they were writing the descriptions for the graphic designers of a movie set.... but they are not! They are supposed to be writing a novel and they have so little understanding of how a novel is put together, due to their high rate of movie watching vs low rate of novel reading, that it has changed the way novels are being writing these days.

I mean I start reading 7 to 10 books a week and struggle to find even 2 or 3 that I make it to the end of because they are not written like some opening scene of a movie set.

There are so many new releases, especially self published ones, that SOUND AMAZING, in the description of the book, but then you read it and... there's maybe 30 pages of story squished in between 300 pages of scene description.

I spend most of my book buying time in yard sales and flea markets looking for old paperbacks from the 1930s to 1970s instead of reading new releases, just because it's so hard to find a well written story these days... one that actually tells a story instead of telling me how amazing the author is at worldbuilding.

I feel like there's a trend the past 5 or 10 years, with world building being seen as more important then creating characters or working on a plot.

It's becoming really hard to find a book that doesn't put the world front and center any more. And I think TV and movies are the reason for it. I think, because these authors never read how scenes are written in novel, only see the sweeping shots of movies, they think they have to write these massive scenes describing the world.

>>With that knowledge I think the answer to your second question ought to be that we should take advantage of the fact that books rely on the reader's imagination by pushing the boundaries of what they can imagine.

I agree with this.

And, I think that may be what I am seeing too, when I mentioned before that, I feel like there's a trend the past 5 or 10 years, with world building being seen as more important than creating characters or working on a plot. I feel like most novels being publish these days are nothing but authors trying to describe the amazing world they built... like they want us to be WATCHING their novel like it was a movie, instead of reading the actual story.

Yet, older books didn't do this.

Authors 50 years ago didn't feel the need to hold the readers hand every step of the way describing everything in details.

Authors 50 years ago, let the reader use their own imaginations to feel in the details.

I almost wonder, if the current trend in over describing everything in novels, isn't because authors feel like readers nowadays are too lazy to use their imaginations?

It's almost feels like, authors are pandering to the movie watcher habit of not having to use their imaginations any more, thus why so many these days feel like they have to spend 50+ pages describing in detail EVERYTHING before they can even start the story.

I mean, have you ever read a Fantasy novel prologue? OMG! There was a time when a prologue was a quick 2 page introduction to the back history of the story.

Not anymore!

Yie!

For the past 5 years, almost every prologue added to a Fantasy novel, is now a 50 to 90 page detailed description of not only the world, but all the things the author researched as well.

I started reading a book a few months back... it had a 90 page prologue on why Neanderthals make the ideal basis for the book's main character race, and why dinosaurs and Humans should never be in a novel together, and then a detailed history of all the author's Anthropology and Archaeology degrees, then listed off all the actual fossil dig sites he dug at....

I was like... does this guy even know what a prologue is? This is not a prologue, this is a damned history lesson! I mean, if this guy ever wrote a college textbook on the history of the Jurassic Period, he'd be amazing! He really knows his stuff, I'll give him that. But you don't put stuff in your novel! I just felt so much, like this guy had never read a novel in his life and the only movie he had ever watched was Jurassic Park, and that the only reason he wrote this novel was so he could tell fans of dino-sci-fi they were jerks for liking those types of books.

And I contacted this guy and asked him about it...oooooooooh boooooooy....

WOW! I got a 60+ page response telling me that Fantasy readers needed to be taught a lesson, and that they had no business making up fictional races that couldn't possibly exist, and he proudly boasted that he never in his life ever read a fiction novel and never would....yow.

Well, it certainly showed in his novel writing, that he had never read a novel before writing one.

But the point is... he was mad, because Fantasy authors and Fantasy readers use their imaginations! And he wrote a book that was supposed to show Fantasy readers why they were wrong to like make believe... he had the book listed as "A Fantasy Novel" and it was a non-fiction History Text, that tried to be a novel and failed badly. And this particular book, it went WAAAAY overboard on the descriptions. I mean, he went Charles Dickens over board on describing the ridges of fossils and the dust on the sand at the dig sites...

And he admitted (on a public forum) that he did that because he felt it was BAD to allow the readers to use their imaginations.... And I wonder how often someone goes into writing a novel, with exactly that mind set?

Novels are such a wonderful canvas to paint the start of a picture, then let the reader's mind fill in the rest. A reader can imagine a far more detailed image of the world in their mind then the author will ever be able to write.

Movies are pictures. They show us things. Novels are words, and I wish more authors would focus on building insanely captivating characters for their stories and leave the world building to architects. I can imagine the world with a few clues, but, I'd rather not be left imagining who the character is, because the story is supposedly about the character (NOT the world the character lives in), and I want to know what makes that character tick, rather then know the point of gravity on your fantastic planet.

Crosspost & Embed Features Are Now Live & Out Of Beta! Yay! (I've Been Beta Testing Both For The Last 6 Months Or So Now Everyone Can Use Them! Go Ahead And Share Any Post You Make or Find Here Via Embed and/or Crosspost! Have Fun!) from StorylWritersGroup

What do you want to become? 
What did you do today to step closer to that goal?
Whatever you do, be your best at it!
And remember to have yourself a great and wonderfully glorious day!

~EK
EelKat.com
pinterest.com/eelkat/

By EelKat Wendy C Allen

If you ever made fun of or had any part in the destruction of my farm, and the illegal selling of half of my land to Colliard, you shall lose your land.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in my being homeless since 2006 - YES, I AM still homeless in 2023, you shall become homeless.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in the backhoe driving over my house, you shall lose your house.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in my car being cut in half, you shall lose your car.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in my becoming crippled, you shall lose your health.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in the murder of my son, your child shall die an equally horrible death.

Evil men go out of their way to try to drive a person to suicide.

Are you an evil man?

Are you sure you're not?

How many people have YOUR hate filled words killed?

Next time you go to do a mean thing to a fellow human, stop and really think about the consequences of your actions.

Did you ever notice how every one has a story to tell about me, yet not one of them ever speaks the truth?

What lies has YOUR gossiping tongue spread about me?

Did you know...

October 16, 2006, bomb blew up my house because of YOUR lies.

August 8, 2013, the house which replaced the one the bomb blew up, was driven over by a backhoe.

November 14, 2013, my 8 month old infant son was murdered because of your lies.

November 14, 2013, I was beaten up, paralized for 5 months, spent 18 weeks relearning to walk, I'm now crippled for the rest of my life, because of YOUR lies.

Are you proud of what you have done?

Enjoy your eternity in Hell. You earned it. You've certainly worked hard for it.

~EelKat

If you have any information about any of these events, please call FBI Agent Andy Drewer at 207-774-9322