The other day Evan was talking about the possibility IM novels and blog novels and although I think the idea is a good one I have seen it realized today in some really horrible ways. I already knew about the book ttyl by Lauren Myracle, a novel written in the form of instant messages between three high school girls. Now if this were realistic instant messaging the novel would be completely unreadable, and when things are straightened out into understable prose it just feels dry and stylized. I haven't actually read it, just glanced through to see how the form worked out. Looks like the sequel just came out--ttfn, gotta catch 'em all. Today I was digging through our delivery boxes and I found this: Confessions of a Boyfriend Stealer [a blog] by Robynn Clairday. I don't think this is quite what Evan had in mind. It's basically a diary format, with a few comments attatched at the end of each chapter. I found one entry with links of any kind and they were to Doritos and M&M's, the author's two favorite snack foods.
I can understand why the authors for Young Adult girls are writing this kind of stuff. That group is very open to experimental stuff and right now they're all going crazy over Manga like Boys Over Flowers and Fruits Basket, American authors have to keep up. It is sad, though, that they've taken what could have been really exciting forms of prose and turned them into what is only a sad imitation of what happens everyday on junior high girls' AIM accounts and xanga blogs.
Posted by linnea at March 2, 2006 11:51 PMmaybe we can find someway to ban little girls from the internet, or going out in public... etc.
Posted by: katzman at March 3, 2006 1:04 AMLOL. R U K1dd1ng? Sw331. gIv iT uP 4 l33t sP33k.
Posted by: funke at March 3, 2006 10:38 AMActually, I wanted to point out that any realistic conversation would be unreadable: just try carrying around a tape recorder with you all day and see what you get. Pretty boring, usually, unless you happen to have utterly brilliant friends (which you do), but even then, the dialogue only sparks intermittently.
However, if you meant that the conversation would be unreadable because it is mostly comprised of numbers and symbols and acronyms, then maybe we just need to learn the language first.
I'm just curious why teenage girls always get such a bad rap. We hate their music, despise their flicks, hope to goodness we never dress the way they do, and ridicule their communication style. I've done it myself, but, well, now I am wondering why?
Actually, maybe leet speak (l33t) is really the invention of internet geeks, mostly guys, and not teenage girls after all. It's supposedly the first alphabet language to be glyphic rather than phonetic.
I'm actually not sure if lol and ttfn are really leet speak after all, now. I don't spend much time in the culture.
Posted by: funke at March 3, 2006 10:50 AMAnd I apologize for saying "after all" and "actually" so many times. Sheesh.
Posted by: funke at March 3, 2006 10:52 AMLeet speak is phonetic - the numbers are just an alternate way of representing letters.
Interesting post, Linnea. However, in contradistinction to Sarah, I happen to think that my conversations are brilliant. (I mean not all of them, and they would be boring to listen to you, but they could make good book dialogue.)
Posted by: Evan Donovan at March 3, 2006 11:42 AMDisregard the "you' in the last sentence of that comment - I think I meant to type something like, "they would be boring if you listened to them verbatim (errs, umms, pauses, like's, etc.)."
Posted by: Evan Donovan at March 3, 2006 11:45 AMBut, Evan, I think your speech faculties have been corrupted by way too much freaking education (in other words, you already think like a book, so modeling book dialogue on your speech dialogue is really just like modeling book dialogue on book dialogue). Since you are not a realistic person, your conversations don't count.
And how is lol and rofl phonetic?
youth culture so idealized and so hot right now
and the problem with sounding like a book is everybody can read your internal diaglog
lol and rofl are not necessarily leet speak. They're IM-teen-speak, which is a more generalized trend in the population. Anyway, they're not glyphic, if that means pictographic, as I think it does. They're just abbreviations: lol = laugh out loud, rofl = rolling on floor laughing. They may be slightly onomatopoeic, but that's just fortuitous.
I love how you just said I'm not a realistic person. Are you including yourself in this criterion of unreality, as well? (Note that I think it's actually quite a good distinction.)
Good grief, it makes it hard for me to write "everyday speech" dialogue, tho. I had a friend who tried to write a play in HS. All the dialogue was pretty much impossible to say. It had weird features of assonance, alliteration, and syntactical subordination that made it unlikely that anyone would ever come up with it on the spot. (Now that's a sentence I wouldn't say aloud.)
And Hope, I love the way you think. Or write. Or both. I was talking to some of my friends over wine on Christmas break, tho, about how little connected I've been to youth culture for so long. Over here, it's even worse. Heck, I don't even hear about major news events until days after the fact. I live in a bubble of theology, blogging, poetry, and Wikipedia.
I could never understand how Marcel Proust could write perceptively about social life while living in a cork-lined room. Don't you have to be a socialite to know society?
Posted by: Evan Donovan at March 3, 2006 5:12 PMMy comment was a subtle retort to your claims to brilliant dialogue. It has a layered meaning. :P
Posted by: funke at March 3, 2006 6:02 PMhttp://bagpipeonline.com/index.php?path=/archives/000374.php
Posted by: Laura at March 3, 2006 6:15 PMSam's pubescent longing for Sally was almost too much to bear. Almost. His daily torture began at 8:30 every Monday. Sally slipped quietly into Dr. Blather's class just before it began and would inevitably sit just one row in front of him. Ahh, such a frenetic warmth churned through his stomach! Shedding any pretense of playing student, Sam watched with awe as the dark brown hairs on the back of her neck twiched when she raised her hand or reached for her bag. He didn't move or flinch, and took no notice as Dr. Blather lived famously up to his name. Sam wanted to explode with the raw joy of sitting so near her. Slowly, as though enraptured in the professor's ramblings, Sam inched his desk forward with his feet. He peered intently, deep into the fragrant pores of her skin, and became lost amid the follicles and stratum-corneum that framed his existence each fated Monday morning. Sigh.
Posted by: Oggham P. Sphinx at March 4, 2006 8:13 PM