Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (Page 1 of 2)

I think almost all of us get dinged on stuff like that fairly frequently. I wish I could better comment on your specific issue, but I'm not quite as knowledgeable  as you regarding those aspects of English grammar. The snippit you offered from John Ringo doesn't bother me. All I want is a good story. My favorite author, Janet Evanovich, throws unnecessary dialogue tags around at will. But I don't mind because I love her stories.

As you may know, I'm a professional songwriter/composer. I find one thing that applies to both writing music and writing novels/stories. That is:  Until you become a "member of the club", you are expected to follow the rules pretty closely until you become a member. But once you're a member, you can do whatever in the hell you want. "Club Members" set and tweak the rules because of their influence. Of course, being a "Club Member", in this context, means you have been accepted as a professional by the popular folks in your field and you are no longer considered "aspiring".

But, to your original point, your style of writing would not bother me. When I review a chapter/story/poem here on the site, I review it for technical issues but also explain those issues may not bother me personally, but the info is for the writer's consideration for technical merit..

Good luck with your writing.

Alan

As you study the craft of writing, you might want to also focus on writers known for great writing, not just those who have sold a lot of books. The two are not necessarily correlated.  Depends on what your objective is.  Also, time invested in studying the craft and “just writing” will provide a better return on investment than an exercise like this.

Also, take the feedback you get from any of us on this site (and for that matter, anyone who is not a great writer or great editor) with a grain of salt. 

Lastly,
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

Good luck with your writing.

Vern, that's not the start of the story.  The protag has already been introduced.  That fisherman?  He's named 'Pete' and he's wearing a Saints cap.

It would be a good idea to remember that we are all learning, standing at various points on the line of progression to mastery. With that in mind, we should be aware that
1. Some of the criticisms we receive are things recently learned by another learner, possibly misunderstood before being passed on.
2. Some of the criticisms we receive may be intended as a caution against repetitive use, not an admonition against use.
3. Some of the criticisms we receive are from people who don't understand an individual author's writing style.

There is no argument against use of the progressive. The appropriate use is something we should have learned in freshman English class. IF THERE WERE NO USE FOR THE PROGRESSIVE TENSE, IT WOULD NOT EXIST. But as with all things, use it wisely. Not repeatedly, which makes for boring reading, and only where justified.

There are frequent misuses of verb tense more irritating to the reader than the use of the progressive.

To the Fuzzy Wuzzy example: The repetition of the 'uzzy' is not accidental.  It's there for a specific musical/poetic effect.  It's not sophisticated, but neither is its intended audience.

Notice that the very first thing Ringo's protag/narrator says is 'I was having a dream'.  After that, he gives slow, smooth description.  And by using the progressive aspect, he emphasizes that the protag/narrator is immersed in the experience

So is this written for a -special- effect?  Or just for a -specific- effect?

The argument of audience versus art is a messy one.  (Or should I just write ' is messy'?). I don't have a final conclusion on the question, but if your purpose is to reach the audience, you might make different choices than if you hope to write for the ages, or if you are writing to see how far you can press the technique, or to flaunt your virtuosity to other writers.

Yes, the Fuzzy Wuzzy example is odd-sounding and grammatically tortuous not by accident. By that, it is actually sophisticated. Your author creates his mess by accident.

I won't point out the other mistakes and stick to the was issue. 12 of 128 words are "was" and if 10% of your words are the same word, you have a problem. Moreover, you claim this is about the progressive past tense when only 3 of those was's are used for that purpose, and the rest are simply past tense condition of being.

In the matter of style, your claim: "He emphasizes that the protag/narrator is immersed in the experience," is true, but all the more shows up that pitfall in first-person narrative. Within a character's dialogue, license can be made for ugly patterns of speech, or non-normative if you prefer, but an entire book or even large portions thereof in blah, blah of an ugly English is annoying.

Okay, fine. Let's do this occasionally, but narrate the whole book that way?

It is a guarantee that non-normative target audience does not read.

Running through a grammar/spell/style checker will not find any mistakes except perhaps "know" used too many times.

So like it is better than your sample, for sure.

"I was having a dream. A really odd one. Generally my dreams involved a blonde on a beach who was very open-minded. In this case, I was standing on a dock on a lake. The water was a perfect blue as was the sky. There were hills on the far side and they were such a perfect green it was literally unearthly. It was, easily, the most beautiful place I’d ever seen."
Flesch-Kincaid Grade = 4.48

"Like you know I was listening to my music when like the guy is staring at me, so I am telling him what the fuck, man, who is giving the right to go gazing on me like you king or something and am telling that loud, but he is gazing and staring and going all weird, so like you know it is telling me he is just crazy."
Flesch-Kincaid Grade = 25.85

We are amused.

https://www.online-utility.org/english/ … mprove.jsp

Difficult grammar doesn't mean a sophisticated message.  Easy grammar doesn't mean a simple message.  Neither the grammar nor the message sophistication by itself tells whether the reader finds the story rewarding.

I wonder how Fletcher-Kincaid would score the opening of =A Tale of Two Cities= or of =The Napoleon of Notting Hill=.

It would be interesting to put =The Shield of Achilles= through some readability benchmarks and then to compare the results to what people actually find difficult.  Ditto for the opening two pages of the preamble of Book 1 of =The Last Lion=, also asking what people find moving.  "In London there was such a man."

Why, hello “Bill Weldon”!  How are you feeling today?

It's one of a number of readability metrics, none of which considers the innate difficulty of the topics.  It seems to be chiefly useful for improving the spew of regulation-writing bureaucrats.

I broke the machine.

The language in my construction of unaffixed dialogue, which requires a unique, distinct voice in dialogue from each character, is that of a manic twenty-something black valley-girl NPR reporter - should I ever need that character.

All artificially intelligent means to access writing will break down at high levels of creative literacy.

So too, I suspect, does reading from an editor's point of view. Reviews as galley proofs are not really reviews. Complicated, grammar-licensed paragraphs in fiction have the intention to scramble and confuse the literal minded who can make great bureaucrats and IT personnel but not readers of literature designed to grow and activate brain cells.