A healthy dollop of all of them, but for me, it is mostly the latter. I stopped blogging about 18 months ago and then recently started again...

Not many views and fewer comments - but i haven't really contributed to other blogs to garner much publicity. The frog and the scorpion is available December 2008 www.steevanglover.com - or visit my blog Steevs Blog

I'm a big fan of James Ellroy. Anyone else?

American Tabloid is arguablly one of the finest American novels ever written. The follow up, The Cold Six Thousand isn't bad either...

What does anyone else think? The frog and the scorpion is available December 2008 www.steevanglover.com - or visit my blog Steevs Blog

Oh come on - Dawndancer is a fairy story, for heaven's sake! Have you ever tried reading the Brothers Grimm? They are 100% more disturbing than anything I've ever written. Spare me the pseudo-psychological claptrap.

The answer is quite simple:

rate the other items. Work out the average. Then score the (non existent) dialogue on that basis. If the average is not an integer, then either give it the nearest integer or the nearest upper integer. Ie, 4.5 -> 5 or 4.5 -> 4. If you were really anal, you could tweak the other scores until the average with the dialogue rated is the same as the original one without rating the dialogue.

The problem being that this requires the arithmetic ability of a 6 year old. Not everyone has that.

But if the story is about cats that meow and dogs that bark and wag their tail, then the 'dialogue' is not null and the timeliness and significance of a taut wagging tail, pant, pant, with a strained, high pitch whimper and a thread of drool should be rated as surely as if Boozer had said to Foxy:

"I wanna shagya, pet"

Andrew

Thanks for that.

Mavis, I appreciate your remarks, but feel I must defend myself on the amin issue of your critique.

Short stories are either short or not. But to qualify fully for the YWO ratings they must be between 3 and 5,000 words.

Diminuendo is a shade under 5k. I had to edit 700 words from the first submission. That meant analysing every single word.

So the luxury of retrospective conversation was denied me on this one I am afraid.

The other thing about short stories is the maxim, 'less is more'. Either you tell your reader, or you leave it for them to work it out for themselves. I prefer the latter. It doesn't cross every t and dot every i, but it does leave room for conjecture and the occasional 'I wonder...'

I hope this clarifies things a bit.

Best wishes

J90

For those who do; why?

I'm curious.

Does it help develop your writing; gain feedback; gain contacts; publicity?

Or do you do it mainly because it is cathartic?

No problem. Any time.

You can't generalise here.

Yes, some authors will use a formal speech pattern to establish tone etc but sometimes they may fail to do so.

I know I have picked up on one writer who used "do not" instead of "don't"; or something similar. In that case I didn't think the formal tone worked. It wasn't a formal setting from what I remember.

Each case on its merits.

Hi, Ted. Could you pass on my thanks to the reviewer of Tied? Jane Miaow.

I think it should go like this; if there is no dialogue and the reviewer thinks that dialogue is absolutely not needed then a 4 or 5 would be ok.

To award a 5 simply because there is no dialogue whether needed or not would be unfair.

I don't think you can mark each category in isoloation of the others.

Perhaps reviewees ought not accuse reviewers of accusing. Why not interpret the reviewer as having shared an honest reaction or impression? And a potentially useful one?

Sure it's okay to have a character not use contractions, but what if the character's wooden-ness or reserve or conservatism isn't reinforced in other ways, such as via dress, or movement, or the content of the dialog? Then a reviewer's observation that the dialog sounds unrealistic would be justifiable.

Hi Jen, thank you so much for your thoughtful and detailed review.
You make some excellent points. This was the first story I uploaded on the site and a lot of your comments I've heard from other reviewers; damn I thought I'd fixed them! The story veered from ones to fives, but nothing new there, my writing tends to evoke extremes.

The problem is; this is a horse story aimed at young girls but set in the real world. So it does have perfect days and crap days. Although, it's not a thriller as such, Emerald's life is a roller coaster dependant on her mother's choice of partner. But the key is, where ever she lives, her love of horses pulls her through.

I'm going to see what others think but sadly I think you might be right; it may need to go down a darker path to be commercially viable.
Thanks again, let me know when you want the favour returning.
Best wishes, Karen.

Reviewers ought not to accuse authors of ‘wooden’ or ‘unrealistic’ dialog when a character does not use contractions and says for example ‘do not’ or ‘will not’ instead of the less formal don’t and won’t.

Authors use this more formal speech pattern to establish tone and convey the conservative and reserved qualities of a character.

Thanks for feedback, and I will pass on thanks to Random House.

The reviews are provided on a voluntary basis by the Random House reviewers, so this can mean that sometimes a volunteer may find themselves snowed under by the day job, and offering their profuse apologies for any delays. One reviewer recently was saying they wished they'd been able to get to a couple of their delayed reviews sooner as they really loved the stories.

Delays can be beneficial sometimes (sort of) a couple of writers are getting some books sent to them by Random House.