Assignment 3 by anonymouse

[anonymouse]

Thank you so much, Aussiegirl

Quoting email and chat, especially chat, conversations is something 'net authors' (such as me) have to confront. I've read cybering logs as stories in the past and, frankly, they're very difficult to get into -- even in cases where I'm one of the authors of the original. In many respects, they depend more on contextual settings than any regular 'dialog' in a story.

My only personal criticism of my own work is, should such quotations be italicized? Italics, like every other type of punctuation, can be overdone hence, I summed it up on balance and thought, to italicize all the quotations of mail and chat in this story would be unbalanced in the text. But I'm open to other opinions here.

anonymouse

PS: 'New verbs' such as cybering are tricky things to deal with.

[Aussiegirl1]

Thank you so much, Aussiegirl

Quoting email and chat, especially chat, conversations is something 'net authors' (such as me) have to confront. I've read cybering logs as stories in the past and, frankly, they're very difficult to get into -- even in cases where I'm one of the authors of the original. In many respects, they depend more on contextual settings than any regular 'dialog' in a story.

My only personal criticism of my own work is, should such quotations be italicized? Italics, like every other type of punctuation, can be overdone hence, I summed it up on balance and thought, to italicize all the quotations of mail and chat in this story would be unbalanced in the text. But I'm open to other opinions here.

anonymouse

PS: 'New verbs' such as cybering are tricky things to deal with.

Good point about the use of italics. I agree with your choice and think it worked well in your piece. If you had used them, it could have taken away from the story, but again I too would love to hear what others think.

It is hard to get into some " chat" stories, but I think you used it well to set up the main part of your story.

It is great that we live in an age where new words are being constantly invented! I think you used the word cybering very well

AG

[anonymouse]

Something I forget to mention in my comments about Assignment 2 -- 'the Scroll Test'.

As a reader (personal reviewer) of say, asstr text stories, the first 'test' I apply is the 'scroll test'. This is to say, I scroll the text and look at the opening words of every paragraph. If I see lots of the same opening words in every paragraph, I move on. I apply the same test to my own work. If I see myself being repetitive, there had better be a darn good reason for being so.

The same test (for me) can and should be applied within paragraphs.

anonymouse