Have you ever noticed how when your writing all the people are doing stuff for a reason, there’s actual thought and plot, no one does stuff because it seemed like a good idea at the time or they were bored or whatever.
I can’t get a hold of the confusion that goes on in actuality in peoples heads. And if I try to then it just looks a mess on paper. It might just be that I’m a shit writer, or at least confused when not writing about the end of a world in some way.
Nanowrimo word count for any interested parties: 2083.
Writing is not like speaking is not like thought – weird, true, but the case. Writing in a way that sounds like someone talking, as opposed to a hideous meltdown and mess, is very tricky.
I haven’t tried, but I’d assume a genuine stream of consciousness is going to look crappy whatever…
Stream of consciousness dialogue always looks shite on the page.
There’s there’s back er backtracking whatsits and y’know pauses… ers an ums an all that and you never well hardly ever get proper punctuation and syn er syntax an all that cos people don’t speak like they talk in books. Text is kind of like aaaah representation or ah alternate reality type thing you know where everyone where people um talk er naturally and because they’re like repeating themselves over and over and over because er they haven’t got what er what they’ve just said on the page and they’re having to make sure they’ve said I mean on the page in front of them and they’ve got to work out what they’ve said and what they’ve not said and if it’s all clear even as they’re going along.
The original opening paragraphs of Maria (the thing I wrote with the graphic sex scene) were written in pretty much stream of consciousness, seconds after waking up and rolling out of bed.
It was something to do with the morning after being drunk (but without a hangover) as being like having mushy fruit with the consistency of smoke inside your head.
It sucked.