Timewaster's Guide Archive

Thanks, Manny.  Glad you liked it.

Hopefully no one minds that my first post ever is me being more than a little late with a "Brandon's dialog exercise".  I finally got around to listening to the WE episode today and was inspired to write this.  It's a little more meta than anyone else's that I saw, but maybe that's for the best.    Hope you like it.  For what it's worth, my take on this week's writing prompt involves me turning into an ice driad and eating Jason.

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"Wait a minute, wait a minute!"

"You're kidding."

"No!  Wait, darn it!  Wait!  Wait!"

"What is it?"

"Dude, we can't just charge off half-cocked like this!"

"Why not?"

"We don't have any descriptors or blocking or attributions or anything.  We don't even have a plot!"

"So?"

"So?  All we have for a setup is this weak infodump and nobody likes that crap."

"Speak for yourself.  I don't seem to be doing any infodumping."

"The author likes you better, I guess.  I seem to be the one stuck with doing all the exposition."

"What exposition?  You're just whining."

"I'm sorry!  You know I don't like starting off without any idea of where we're going."

"It's called discovery writing, spud.  Free association.  Stream-of-consciousness.  Pantsing.  Call it what you will, it's just a way to get your characters out into the world and see where they go."

"Nice infodump."

"Bite me."

"Seriously.  Is it that hard to build an outline?  Give us some structure?"

"Not all writers use outlines.  Stephen King is famous for not using them at all.  He just starts writing and off he goes."

"And look at what comes of it.  Huge, bloated doorstoppers of books that wander all around and don't really go anywhere in the end."

"You can get those from authors who use outlines too."

"Maybe, but when you have an outline you at least have a basic idea of where you're going, don't you think?"

"I've never really thought about it, I guess."

"That's because you haven't been written as a particularly deep thinker like I have."

"Hey!"

"Please.  We're two-dimensional cardboard cutouts who were put here to do nothing but wander around talking to each other about nothing in particular.  This guy's worldbuilding sucks."

"What worldbuilding?"

"That's my point.  Hey!  Give me something to do!"

"It's a dialog exercise, dude!  What else do you want?  We're not in Lord of the bleeding Rings here.  We don't need a world!  It's not like we're going to march off to Mordor or anything like that."

"We could if we wanted to."

"Stop being petulant.  We could not."

"Sure we could."

"No we couldn't.  We can't do anything like that and you know it.  We do what the author wants us to do and that's all."

"I'm not.  I'm going to surprise him."

"What!  You're off your chump.  You're the one who was so desperate for an outline five minutes ago."

"Outline schmoutline.  This guy's obviously a pantser, so we have to work with what we've got."

"Work with what we've got.  I see."

"Don't take that tone with me.  Haven't you ever heard a pantser say that they love discovery writing because the characters can surprise them in so many ways?"

"Um..."

"'I was writing such-and-such and all of a sudden the character wound up going here-or-there and did this-or-that.'  You've heard it."

"Maybe."

"You won't say it because you don't want to admit that I'm right.  Watch.  I'm going to surprise our author.  I'm going to march off to Mordor."

"Mordor?  Seriously?"

"Seriously.  The noble quest is a clichéd trope, I know, but maybe I can bring something new and fresh to it."

"You're new all right, but I'm not sure I'd call you fresh."

"Oh, look who's got jokes."

"I can't imagine you on a quest, that's all.  What are you going to be questing for?"

"Does it matter?  I'm going to Mordor.  If you're lucky I won't bring back an orc to chop your head off."

"That's it, then.  You're really going?"

"I am."

"So go."

"I am."

"When?"

"Right now.  Farewell!"

"'Farewell'?"

"Hush.  I'm living the trope.  I have to talk like that."

"You do not.  You talk the way the author writes you."

"Nonesense, churl, I speaketh however I chooseth to partake of the language without advisement from the divine hand of our illustrious creator."

"Now you've made him mad.  Or gotten him silly.  I'm not sure which would be worse, actually."

"Forsooth!  I do kindly opportune to express my diction in this idiom of my own volition."

"'Opportune'?  Is that even a word?"

"Verily."

"Can he march off to Mordor now?  Please?"