META FANFIC: Fandom Grammar answered my question!

[campylobacter]

Because I'm perverse and like to write fanfic in 1st person, there are some situations when I try little narrative tricks that amuse me, but aren't standard enough for grammar and punctuation manuals to address.

I'd asked about how to interrupt dialog with INTERNAL DIALOG over at fandom_grammar and they finally answered! And used most of the dialog I provided, from Firefly, The X-Files, and Stargate SG-1. :-D

If you haven't discovered fandom_grammar, give it a shot! The community is friendly, nerdy, scholarly, and covers lots of fandoms.

Comments

[misshapenmuse.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to write in first person narrative. I do good to write in third person narrative let alone anything else. Cool community, though.

To the pic: Sadly, Dr. Daniel Jackson isn't the only one who gets excited about research. Sometime I wish this bug had bitten me when I was high school, I would have been a better student. :D

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

The trick to writing in 1st person is not worrying about capturing the immediacy, because it's exactly the voice I use when commenting in LJ, writing email, and chat!

Once I got over that, it made me more confident (although I'm interested in what readers think about whether I'm successful) in writing 1st person. It also prevents my BIGGEST PET PEEVE:

Head-hopping (http://research-writing-techniques.suite101.com/article.cfm/headhopping).

OMG, I hate head hopping (http://fictiongroupie.blogspot.com/2010/02/head-hopping-how-to-make-your-reader.html).

Head hopping (http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=47905) is the Number 1 reason I'll stop reading a book I've bought. I'm more forgiving when I see it in fanfic, but I always refrain from pointing it out when I comment because I get so pissy when talking about it. :-D

[lc59.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, that's a fascinating site. I do a lot of things intuitively but I liked having them verified.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

I love how some topics generate really fascinating, more in-depth discussions of the subject. Some members of the community have taken courses in linguistics, and I totally go jonesing when they bandy about terms such as "semiotics" and "syntactic constraints".

They're taking suggestions (http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_grammar/698.html), if you have a pet peeve you'd like them to address. I asked my question 5 months ago, but because it was more complex (venturing into similarities to tmesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmesis)) they simplified it in the response entry.

[lc59.livejournal.com]

Yeah I think it's a community I could waste a lot of time in...so I shall resist the urge,lol.
I shall also resist the urge to give them my pet peeve too,lol...it'd probably just get shot down anyway because it's a result of being taught how to spell correctly when I was in school...unlike now.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

They won't shoot you, I promise!

They're not a contentious lot... they understand the difference between descriptive and prescriptive viewpoints (http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_grammar/45259.html), including several entries about the differences between UK and American spellings/usage (http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_grammar/44227.html).