I’ve seen this a number of times. People can’t be bothered to learn to write, so they come up with this nonsense so that they don’t have to figure out dialogue, beats, etc. He can “TM” it all he wants, but t’aint nuthin’ new about it. We’ve had a few dozen “novels” like this go through our shop and of course, they don’t sell at all.
Dear New Writer Hint: there’s a REASON that you don’t see any other books out there like that. That’s not because it’s a good idea; it’s because it’s a TERRIBLE idea.
I saw that. I’m still freaking speechless from that assertion. I mean, blame the messenger much?
Think about it: “Brad, your novel is confusing to read and I don’t like it. It isn’t any good.”
“Oh, well, it must be because you are confused by quotation marks, descriptions, beats, etc.”
Yeah, riiiight. We’ve all seen this. How many times have you seen some writer talk about how if people don’t love or like his work, it’s because they’re too stupid? If I see a writer saying that, anywhere, anytime, I simply move right along. I’m clearly too stupid to spend my money on his book.
Ron Miller
3 years ago
Wait until you get a load of the book itself.
Julie
3 years ago
“It frees the cast of characters to interact without the limitations of quotation marks.”
… what.
So I read some of this dreck (by which I mean “skimmed”). I guess keeping a consistent tense is also a limitation. The good news is that this book absolutely deserves that cover.
My dude, I do not need to know the brand of the nightie this girl is wearing, nor do I need a blow-by-blow of her morning before-work routine, up to and including the fact that she turns left out of her bedroom to go into the bathroom and raises up said nightie to pee.
I also don’t need to know the brand names of the clothing she puts on. Is this a novel or ad copy?
Okay so you guys made me glance at the preview. This seems actually like MORE work than to just have written the dialogue. Also, why would he think this would work? People don’t curl up with screenplays for a reason. Zero immersion.
It’s simply bad. He obviously thought (somehow) that he had this bold new idea–“Book Play Format” which he’s asserting a TM on, but it just doesn’t work. You’re right when you say that people do not curl up with screenplays for a reason–and screenwriters/scriptwriters also don’t put in all that godawful, boggy, plot-slowing detail (brand of nightie, etc.) for a reason–because it stops the immersion, the suspension of disbelief, and kills the story dead. That’s why movies (and plays) have costumiers, prop people, and the like–to fill in all the background cruft without slowing down the plot.
Honestly, this isn’t the best of both worlds–it’s the worst of both. It’s a shame–this is where a creative writing course or teacher would have saved him a LOT of time.
You have more faith in creative writing teachers than I do. I feel like best-case scenario, the teacher explains that this is stupid, and the author ignores him. Worst-case, the teacher actually encourages this in the name of “finding your own voice” or something like that.
Like any profession or vocation, there are good and bad. Yes, some will take that easier path–“find your own voice” and give up trying to steer them–but I’ve seen plenty more that wouldn’t.
The problem with today’s society–and I dunno, perhaps it was ever thus–is that in CW groups, writer’s groups, crit groups–nobody ever wants to say anything “bad” any longer, like “this is unreadable.” Or even a nice version of it, like “there’s a reason this sort of format isn’t used.” Or ANYTHING that would have spared this poor bastard all this work to create an unreadable mess.
We’re told it’s not “bad writing” because writing is ART and art is SUBJECTIVE. Which leads to reviewers writing shit like, “It’s well written, except it was info dumpy in the beginning, dragged in the middle, and the characters were two dimensional.”
Or that could be that reviewers think “well written” means “they used spellcheck and the grammar isn’t atrocious” which…well…no.
Y’know, I had been curious what would happen with Amazon’s new Kindle Vella program, right? And to my horror, I discovered (via the KDP forums) that apparently, all these “young writers” (who write in serial form on Wattpad, Radish and A03) all thought it was meant to be a WIP site, where they would post their stuff and get feedback from readers–whilst being PAID, mind you.
I tried reading any number of them, out of curiosity and trying to be fair-minded.
Holy s**t, what a pile of well…s**t. Not even sh*tty-first-draft territory, but simply BAAAAAD. Half of them appear to not understand storytelling at all. (The kind of scripts or manuscripts that you’d expect if you were teaching the first CW class to a group of 9th-graders, pretty much.) The other half sorta get it, but don’t understand anything else–beats, action, dialogue, moving the bloody plot along…
I will be surprised, from what I’ve seen, if Vella survives. Amazon still hasn’t issued a statement to the publishing authors that it’s not meant as a WIP site, like Wattpad, and the searching, tagging, etc. is nearly non-existent. OH, and there’s no viable way to rate the things, either, like 1-star for those that should be avoided at all costs.
I have to say, they really mangled that launch. They used terms and phrases that the young writers completely misunderstood (“interact with your readers in an entirely new way!,” is what they took to mean, WIP-critique/private-feedback, rather than public reviews!, as merely one example), and the other functions, as I said, searching, tagging, sorting…what a mess. (sigh).
What is it meant as, then? I’ll admit that when I read the description, my impression was the same as those young writers: it was an attempt to monetize the fan-fiction format. I had no interest, either as a writer or a reader, so I moved on. But if that wasn’t the intent, do you know what it was?
I’m quite sure–n.b. this is solely my educated opinion and not the result of Insider Information, please note–that Amazon meant to simply monetize SERIAL content. Not Amateur or FanFic content.
Amazon already did both of those. They did Kindle Worlds (fanfic/WIP), which was both. they tried Kindle Serials, but that was a by-invitation only program. They wanted something that could take advantage of the marketplace that Wattpad PREMIUM has created, as well as RADISH. (both have paid content, not just “slap it up here and see what people say” stuff.)
Wattpad’s Premium program is by invitation only; Radish has a program that gives monetization opportunities to more-popular serials. It’s clear that serials have a following amongst the young, on phones. But, will those selfsame young people pay for it? Hmmmmm…it’s easy to talk about how great the latest Werewolf Erotica is, when it’s FREE. To give the would-be author pats on the back and all that. But now, we’re talking paid. Not free, not remotely. More expensive, in fact, overall, than a regular full-lenght novel, if you do the math.
I mean…seriously, who in their right mind is going to PAY for WIP? I don’t want to pay to be someone’s proofreader or beta; if they want that, they should be paying me, not the other way around. Would you, @Zsuzsa, pay to read someone’s cruft? I damn sure won’t.
You should see all their posts–they want PRIVATE comments and critiques, not public–they don’t want reviews, where others can see them. Trust me when I tell you, most of them desperately need them (reviews). It’s as though they imagined this idealized scenario, where they could write 1000words/night, slap it up there, get loving comments and private critique and, oh, yeah, get paid for it too. It’s as though they simply didn’t think through the obvious realities around people only wanting to pay for professional product, and professional product meaning (gasp!) proofed, edited, and the like.
On the other hand, we apparently live in a society, at least, here in the USA, wherein 40% of people surveyed thought that they–THEY–could compete at the Olympics, as they are now.
So…why the hell should I be surprised that younglings think that I should be willing to pay to read their midnight ramblings, sans proofing, editing, skill or talent? Hell. I’m surprised they don’t want us to pay MORE for them.
Someone asked me about Vella, but I hadn’t got ’round to looking into it. Tbh, I thought it was Amazon trying to do Wattpad x Kindle Unlimited and writers got paid per read/view whilst readers just bought a flat rate subscription. I also wondered how they’d handle the cover issue, since Wattpad writers are used to not giving a flying fuck about image copyright because they’re “not making money” from the images they steal.
No, KV readers buy “tokens.” No bloody idea why Amazon thought that was a good idea–I guess they think that teens, et al, won’t consider tokens as they do money and spend them more wantonly. (That’s my best guess.)
And yes, I’ve noticed that the cover scenario is interesting–lots of let’s call them “minimal” covers, at best. I’ve long wondered how on earth Wattpad justifies what they allow over there on image, er, “borrowing.”
red
3 years ago
Pro: Not only is the reader spared the confusion of quotation marks, but also the use of contrived alternative versions of “he said/she said,” such as “Suzy Jo bemused,” “Grynthlthoerpe grunted,” and “Tom exclaimed questioningly, gesturing flailingly with ‘air quotes’.”
Con: The reader is not spared from suboptimal narrative interludes inflicted betwixt the bouts of play-formatted dialogue. I read the preview. I did my time. And I’m not going back.
Red: I’m always confused.
— Ain’t that the truth!
[Ed.: With typeset material the last line would be introduced by a quotation dash, which additionally frees the reader from the confusing need to know the identity of the speaker.]
— Her underwear has more names than I have underwear!
To be fair, the one that you found is a completely different bastard child format of screenplays and novels. It’s…something alright. If I had to pick a category for it, however, I think I would put it under “chutzpah” for the fact that the author posted a five-star review of his own book.
If you’re going to put your screenplay in print… why not have it in actual screenplay format? I know that Kindle can’t handle the formatting, but on paper, why not do it right?
Kindle CAN handle the format, bygod! And how do I know? We just did 5 screenplays, that’s how I know. 🙂
I don’t know why they don’t (these bastard stepchildren) make them as screenplays proper. I think it’s simply ignorance. They don’t know any better.
This poor fellow, here, above, actually thought he was inventing something NEW, this mishmash, this amalgam of the two. But I’ve seen this more than a few times and it’s almost invariably (in my discussions with the perpetrators, er, authors) that they find writing normal novel or book dialogue “too hard.”
How, for the love of Pete? I was trying to format a short story that has some screenplay segments in it, and every guide said, “Give up and kill yourself.”
Ah’m a trayned perfesshnul. Don’t try this at home.
It depends. We have done the whole two-column thing but I don’t bloody recommend it. (Perfeshnul hint: a table for each piece of dialogue, with invisible borders. Yes, really.)
I typically recommend doing it more play-like, less scriptwriter two-column, (so, speaker name at the left-margin, followed by a colon, with the dialogue on the following line), but yes, we’ve done them.
Book Play format™, or Boomer discovers how Wattpad users like to write.
Boomer? Hold that bias, sport.
I’ve seen this a number of times. People can’t be bothered to learn to write, so they come up with this nonsense so that they don’t have to figure out dialogue, beats, etc. He can “TM” it all he wants, but t’aint nuthin’ new about it. We’ve had a few dozen “novels” like this go through our shop and of course, they don’t sell at all.
Dear New Writer Hint: there’s a REASON that you don’t see any other books out there like that. That’s not because it’s a good idea; it’s because it’s a TERRIBLE idea.
According to writer’s description of a book-play, quotation marks confuse people, as do descriptions and most other aspect of a book.
I saw that. I’m still freaking speechless from that assertion. I mean, blame the messenger much?
Think about it: “Brad, your novel is confusing to read and I don’t like it. It isn’t any good.”
“Oh, well, it must be because you are confused by quotation marks, descriptions, beats, etc.”
Yeah, riiiight. We’ve all seen this. How many times have you seen some writer talk about how if people don’t love or like his work, it’s because they’re too stupid? If I see a writer saying that, anywhere, anytime, I simply move right along. I’m clearly too stupid to spend my money on his book.
Wait until you get a load of the book itself.
“It frees the cast of characters to interact without the limitations of quotation marks.”
… what.
So I read some of this dreck (by which I mean “skimmed”). I guess keeping a consistent tense is also a limitation. The good news is that this book absolutely deserves that cover.
My dude, I do not need to know the brand of the nightie this girl is wearing, nor do I need a blow-by-blow of her morning before-work routine, up to and including the fact that she turns left out of her bedroom to go into the bathroom and raises up said nightie to pee.
I also don’t need to know the brand names of the clothing she puts on. Is this a novel or ad copy?
“Enjoying this sample?” NO.
Okay so you guys made me glance at the preview. This seems actually like MORE work than to just have written the dialogue. Also, why would he think this would work? People don’t curl up with screenplays for a reason. Zero immersion.
It’s simply bad. He obviously thought (somehow) that he had this bold new idea–“Book Play Format” which he’s asserting a TM on, but it just doesn’t work. You’re right when you say that people do not curl up with screenplays for a reason–and screenwriters/scriptwriters also don’t put in all that godawful, boggy, plot-slowing detail (brand of nightie, etc.) for a reason–because it stops the immersion, the suspension of disbelief, and kills the story dead. That’s why movies (and plays) have costumiers, prop people, and the like–to fill in all the background cruft without slowing down the plot.
Honestly, this isn’t the best of both worlds–it’s the worst of both. It’s a shame–this is where a creative writing course or teacher would have saved him a LOT of time.
You have more faith in creative writing teachers than I do. I feel like best-case scenario, the teacher explains that this is stupid, and the author ignores him. Worst-case, the teacher actually encourages this in the name of “finding your own voice” or something like that.
Like any profession or vocation, there are good and bad. Yes, some will take that easier path–“find your own voice” and give up trying to steer them–but I’ve seen plenty more that wouldn’t.
The problem with today’s society–and I dunno, perhaps it was ever thus–is that in CW groups, writer’s groups, crit groups–nobody ever wants to say anything “bad” any longer, like “this is unreadable.” Or even a nice version of it, like “there’s a reason this sort of format isn’t used.” Or ANYTHING that would have spared this poor bastard all this work to create an unreadable mess.
We’re told it’s not “bad writing” because writing is ART and art is SUBJECTIVE. Which leads to reviewers writing shit like, “It’s well written, except it was info dumpy in the beginning, dragged in the middle, and the characters were two dimensional.”
Or that could be that reviewers think “well written” means “they used spellcheck and the grammar isn’t atrocious” which…well…no.
Y’know, I had been curious what would happen with Amazon’s new Kindle Vella program, right? And to my horror, I discovered (via the KDP forums) that apparently, all these “young writers” (who write in serial form on Wattpad, Radish and A03) all thought it was meant to be a WIP site, where they would post their stuff and get feedback from readers–whilst being PAID, mind you.
I tried reading any number of them, out of curiosity and trying to be fair-minded.
Holy s**t, what a pile of well…s**t. Not even sh*tty-first-draft territory, but simply BAAAAAD. Half of them appear to not understand storytelling at all. (The kind of scripts or manuscripts that you’d expect if you were teaching the first CW class to a group of 9th-graders, pretty much.) The other half sorta get it, but don’t understand anything else–beats, action, dialogue, moving the bloody plot along…
I will be surprised, from what I’ve seen, if Vella survives. Amazon still hasn’t issued a statement to the publishing authors that it’s not meant as a WIP site, like Wattpad, and the searching, tagging, etc. is nearly non-existent. OH, and there’s no viable way to rate the things, either, like 1-star for those that should be avoided at all costs.
I have to say, they really mangled that launch. They used terms and phrases that the young writers completely misunderstood (“interact with your readers in an entirely new way!,” is what they took to mean, WIP-critique/private-feedback, rather than public reviews!, as merely one example), and the other functions, as I said, searching, tagging, sorting…what a mess. (sigh).
What is it meant as, then? I’ll admit that when I read the description, my impression was the same as those young writers: it was an attempt to monetize the fan-fiction format. I had no interest, either as a writer or a reader, so I moved on. But if that wasn’t the intent, do you know what it was?
I’m quite sure–n.b. this is solely my educated opinion and not the result of Insider Information, please note–that Amazon meant to simply monetize SERIAL content. Not Amateur or FanFic content.
Amazon already did both of those. They did Kindle Worlds (fanfic/WIP), which was both. they tried Kindle Serials, but that was a by-invitation only program. They wanted something that could take advantage of the marketplace that Wattpad PREMIUM has created, as well as RADISH. (both have paid content, not just “slap it up here and see what people say” stuff.)
Wattpad’s Premium program is by invitation only; Radish has a program that gives monetization opportunities to more-popular serials. It’s clear that serials have a following amongst the young, on phones. But, will those selfsame young people pay for it? Hmmmmm…it’s easy to talk about how great the latest Werewolf Erotica is, when it’s FREE. To give the would-be author pats on the back and all that. But now, we’re talking paid. Not free, not remotely. More expensive, in fact, overall, than a regular full-lenght novel, if you do the math.
I mean…seriously, who in their right mind is going to PAY for WIP? I don’t want to pay to be someone’s proofreader or beta; if they want that, they should be paying me, not the other way around. Would you, @Zsuzsa, pay to read someone’s cruft? I damn sure won’t.
You should see all their posts–they want PRIVATE comments and critiques, not public–they don’t want reviews, where others can see them. Trust me when I tell you, most of them desperately need them (reviews). It’s as though they imagined this idealized scenario, where they could write 1000words/night, slap it up there, get loving comments and private critique and, oh, yeah, get paid for it too. It’s as though they simply didn’t think through the obvious realities around people only wanting to pay for professional product, and professional product meaning (gasp!) proofed, edited, and the like.
But that’s just my $.02.
<I>Would you, @Zsuzsa, pay to read someone’s cruft? I damn sure won’t.</I>
No, but I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that Vella wasn’t for me.
Yes, and I saw that. Hell, I wouldn’t pay for Scott Turow’s S****y first draft, much less this stuff. That’s my $.02, FWIW.
On the other hand, we apparently live in a society, at least, here in the USA, wherein 40% of people surveyed thought that they–THEY–could compete at the Olympics, as they are now.
So…why the hell should I be surprised that younglings think that I should be willing to pay to read their midnight ramblings, sans proofing, editing, skill or talent? Hell. I’m surprised they don’t want us to pay MORE for them.
Someone asked me about Vella, but I hadn’t got ’round to looking into it. Tbh, I thought it was Amazon trying to do Wattpad x Kindle Unlimited and writers got paid per read/view whilst readers just bought a flat rate subscription. I also wondered how they’d handle the cover issue, since Wattpad writers are used to not giving a flying fuck about image copyright because they’re “not making money” from the images they steal.
No, KV readers buy “tokens.” No bloody idea why Amazon thought that was a good idea–I guess they think that teens, et al, won’t consider tokens as they do money and spend them more wantonly. (That’s my best guess.)
And yes, I’ve noticed that the cover scenario is interesting–lots of let’s call them “minimal” covers, at best. I’ve long wondered how on earth Wattpad justifies what they allow over there on image, er, “borrowing.”
Pro: Not only is the reader spared the confusion of quotation marks, but also the use of contrived alternative versions of “he said/she said,” such as “Suzy Jo bemused,” “Grynthlthoerpe grunted,” and “Tom exclaimed questioningly, gesturing flailingly with ‘air quotes’.”
Con: The reader is not spared from suboptimal narrative interludes inflicted betwixt the bouts of play-formatted dialogue. I read the preview. I did my time. And I’m not going back.
Red: I’m always confused.
— Ain’t that the truth!
[Ed.: With typeset material the last line would be introduced by a quotation dash, which additionally frees the reader from the confusing need to know the identity of the speaker.]
— Her underwear has more names than I have underwear!
Hey, Sportsfans–I think that this may be contagious–this half-assed bastard child format of screenplays+novels, looked here: (Nathan, this is a contender for…well, something): https://www.amazon.com/Americana-Royalty-C-Joy-King/dp/0692177205
To be fair, the one that you found is a completely different bastard child format of screenplays and novels. It’s…something alright. If I had to pick a category for it, however, I think I would put it under “chutzpah” for the fact that the author posted a five-star review of his own book.
If you’re going to put your screenplay in print… why not have it in actual screenplay format? I know that Kindle can’t handle the formatting, but on paper, why not do it right?
Kindle CAN handle the format, bygod! And how do I know? We just did 5 screenplays, that’s how I know. 🙂
I don’t know why they don’t (these bastard stepchildren) make them as screenplays proper. I think it’s simply ignorance. They don’t know any better.
This poor fellow, here, above, actually thought he was inventing something NEW, this mishmash, this amalgam of the two. But I’ve seen this more than a few times and it’s almost invariably (in my discussions with the
perpetrators, er, authors) that they find writing normal novel or book dialogue “too hard.”How, for the love of Pete? I was trying to format a short story that has some screenplay segments in it, and every guide said, “Give up and kill yourself.”
Ah’m a trayned perfesshnul. Don’t try this at home.
It depends. We have done the whole two-column thing but I don’t bloody recommend it. (Perfeshnul hint: a table for each piece of dialogue, with invisible borders. Yes, really.)
I typically recommend doing it more play-like, less scriptwriter two-column, (so, speaker name at the left-margin, followed by a colon, with the dialogue on the following line), but yes, we’ve done them.
Seriously, it’s not fun. Doable, yes. Fun, not.
P.S.: email me if you want; I’ll show you what we do.
That table idea sounds like hell on earth.