alexseanchai | (no subject)

Okay, pausing the Week 6 lecture eight minutes into the twenty-eight to argue with the professor: Why the hell is "advancing the plot" not an intended function of dialogue in prose fiction? Or even just in literary fiction? Maybe it is just that I'm writing a genre that is not the literary genre, but my story that I wrote for his class, most of the plot happens in the dialogue and not the thoughts of the narrator. Because the story lies in the character interactions.

(And also the editor who had a look at "Inherit the Flame" told me I shouldn't ought to spend the first third of the story entirely in the narrator's head! ...I still really need to rewrite that. Especially in light of the "everything tastes like mashed potatoes" metaphor for depression, because that gives Akinyi and Meredith a really compelling reason to want to stay Underhill: life doesn't taste like mashed potatoes!)

But seriously. What is the purpose of divorcing dialogue from plot? "To distinguish prose fiction from television and movies" doesn't count!