I think it's fun. I've decided to write an old-school Narnia-type children's book where the children neither talk nor behave like real children. Here's the opening. (Special shout-out to Andrew Najberg for the idea of people suddenly finding a lot of blood in their house.)
Chapter One, In which There is a Great Deal of Blood.
Thomas and Zooey tromped from the school bus with their usual end-of-the-day lack of verve and pluck. They scuffed gracelessly up the walk to the front door and, in his usual manner, Thomas shoved the door open unceremoniously. The school day was over, and laziness could at last begin.
Except that the living room was completely covered in blood.
"Oh my," Zooey remarked.
"That is quite a lot of blood," Thomas said.
Zooey nodded in agreement. "It does appear to be a great deal of blood."
Thomas and Zooey stared in silence at the gory tableau. The walls were spattered in crimson; the floors were puddled in scarlet. Unidentifiable chunks of macabre red clung to suede couch and the cream-colored venetian blinds. It was, indeed, a great deal of blood.
"I confess that the presence of so much blood and the apparent lack of our parents does not sit well with me," Zooey said at last. She twisted one of her auburn curls nervously around her slender index finger and frowned.
"It troubles me as well, sister of mine." Thomas strained his ears. "And the house is much quieter than normal."
"Perhaps eerily so?" Zooey suggested.
"Eerily, yes. Like a horror movie," Thomas admitted.
Neither one of them moved.
"Oh!" Thomas said brightly, as if a cheerful idea just occurred to him. Oftentimes the greatest comfort in the face of the unknown comes from within one's own mind, and it was so in this case. "I bet this is fake blood," Thomas explained. "This situation is so like a horror movie because it is a trick put on by our parents. After all, it is uncommon to come home to a room covered in blood."
Zooey looked at the room doubtfully, her brow furrowed. "It looks awfully real." She pinched her nose. "And it smells weird. Coppery."
i thought i left a comment here?
ReplyDeleteoh well.
i said something about how a narnia adventure in a land of blood and gore might be fun.
also about how writing good-sounding dialogue is hard, and if they're kids its harder, so i just try to think of the kids as being kind of more naive and unaware than the adults, which is how i remember being when i was little.
anyways, most of my dialogue is really just characters explaining things to eachother or telling stories. trying to make it sound like they're actually talking is beyond my abilities...
Honestly, dialog is one of my favorite things, and if I had a strong point, I'd say it's dialog. But, I also really, really like hyper-stylized dialog, where it's not plausible at all (like, to some extent, this excerpt.)
ReplyDeleteWith this, my goal is to have lots of fun writing very, very unrealistic dialog. I think it will be fun.
Also, from what I've read so far of your writing, you do pretty well at dialog!
ReplyDeletei just hope it's not hard to read, or boring. in my head it's a fun story, and very clear, so it's hard to guess how it is for someone who didn't actually make it up and write it themselves.
ReplyDelete