Graphospasm

A Ludicrous Attempt to Teach People how to Format Dialogue

    Let’s take a look at this sentence: 

                “My name is Rolando,” he said in a seductive voice.

    Look at it. Read it. Read it hard. I want you to take very special note of how there are two parts to this single sentence. Yes. There are two parts to one sentence.  Two of them! Two! But it’s still just one sentence. With two parts. Are you getting this?

    Part #1 is the dialogue, which is contained within the “quote” marks. “My name is Rolando.”  Read it. Love it. Accept “my name is Rolando” as Part #1.

    Part #2 is the modifier of the dialogue. It comes after the “quote” marks. In this case, it is the words he said in a seductive voice. Read them. Love them. Accept he said in a seductive voice as Part #2.

    Obviously, the words in Part #1 are the words being spoken aloud, by a character, in a story, who is speaking aloud. Rolando is introducing himself by saying, “My name is Rolando.” The words are being spoken. Out loud. They are spewing out of Rolando’s sexy Spanish mouth, and you love them. You know you do.

    Even more obviously, the words in Part #2 are modifying, or describing, the words in Part #1. They tell us information about the words spoken aloud—in this case, they are telling us that he said them, and not only did he say them, he said them in a seductive voice! Without this information, we could lose ourselves in a murky quagmire of confusion for the rest of our days. Is he really the one saying the words? Or is she saying them?! That sneaky strumpet! And is how is he saying them? In what tone is his voice registered; with what emotion does the speaker speak? WHY MUST YOU CONFUSE US SO?!

    Ahem.

    Remember how Part #1 and Part #2 are still the same sentence? You do? Excellent! Make sure to keep remembering, for later there will be a test. Rolando will love you forever should you pass, but for now, keep this information in mind to be recalled later, because I need to talk to you about periods.

    …

    No, not the bloody kind, you sick freak! I’m talking about punctuation periods. They, unlike Mother Nature and her monthly surprise, are your friends.

    Only, they’re not. Not really.

    Periods are dastardly villains who delight in breaking up families. They hate togetherness of all kinds—especially the togetherness of clauses. They wish to rupture your sentences from the foundation, separating all of your thoughts into distinct chunklets of independent clauses. They do. Really.

    Don’t believe me? Well, then. Take a look at this happy family of a sentence:

                We are together and we are in love.

    Now, take a look at the sentence after a period sneaks its treacherous little hands into it:

                We are together. We are in love.

    You see? What was once a happy family of two clauses joined together by a conjunction is now a fractured set of two independent clauses! The thoughts are separate! They have nothing to do with one another! The period represents an invisible wall of force that keeps the thoughts from mixing! HORROR OF HORRORS!

    Now I want you to recall our little talk about Part #1 and Part #2 of the sentence from earlier. Remember how, even though the parts are separate parts, they are still the same sentence? You do? YES. THANK GOD. ROLANDO LOVES YOU. The reason I ask is because you want Parts 1 & 2 to be together. You want them to be a happy family. You want them to be a unit, one cohesive party, two parts that express one thought, one idea, one concept.

                Therefore, THIS IS WRONG: “My name is Rolando.” He said.

    Note the unhappy not-togetherness created by the period, which separates the dialogue of Part #1 from the modifying description of Part #2 with its invisible powers of dishonorably evil intent. It creates a fragment of a sentence by separating he said from the dialogue he said should be modifying, and since fragment sentences are of the devil and should be burned, Rolando will be displeased. And that is unacceptable.

                                 

    Look at Rolando. Look at him and his grammatic exactitude. You wouldn’t want to disappoint those abs—I mean, his standards like that, would you?

    No. No, you most certainly would NOT.

                Therefore, THIS IS RIGHT: “My name is Rolando,” he said.

    Note how the comma very happily brings Part 1 & 2 together. Commas hold hands. They join things up. In dialogue, they are your friends. In dialogue, there’s no place for a period until the very very end of the modifying text—AKA, the end of Part #2!

    “Alas!” you find yourself declaring. “What if I desire to use something other than a comma in my dialogue? What if I desire… to use an exclamation point?! WHAT SAY YOU THEN, BRIGAND?!”

    Pish posh, says I, for that is child’s play. Watch carefully as I demonstrate the many possible variations of dialogue formatting with the greatest of ease, young grasshopper:

                “This is how you format dialogue,” he said.

                “This is how you format dialogue!” he said.

                “Is this how you format dialogue?” he said.

    The first word after the “quoted” dialogue should always be lower case… unless, of course, it’s a proper noun like a name, or is part of a separate sentence.

                Examples:

                “I hate him,” Susan said without inflection. “He stole my dolly.”

                “I hate him.” She spoke the words without inflection. “He stole my dolly.”

    The modifier ‘she spoke the words without inflection’ deserves a period (which serves a friendly purpose, for once) because it is a complete sentence. It has graduated and moved out of its parents’ house, able to stand on its own as a complete thought. Only complete sentences, never mere fragments like he said, deserve such treatment.

    Just remember, my children, my literati, my grammarians the world over… PERIODS HATE DIALOGUE AND WANT TO BREAK UP HAPPY FAMILIES. Do not fall prey to their seductive powers. 

    Fall prey to Rolando’s, instead.
 
                Grrr-rowl.
 

(And on a completely irrelevant note, today is my 21st birthday. WORD UP BITCHES.)

I Am a Unicorn, Apparently

                I’m sure everyone who knows me as a person knows that I attended ACen 2011, an anime convention of epic proportions held up in the hallowed suburbs of Chicago. I’m also sure that everyone who knows me as a person knows that I took a lot of pictures at said convention, because I’m one of those obnoxious people who likes to show my friends my lame-ass photography as if it were something worthy of a Pulitzer. If you didn’t know that, it’s obviously because you haven’t trolled my blog’s archives (yet), because there was a post about it. Look it up.

                Anyway, I’ve decided that I need to write a little something about the spectacle—a requisite this-was-a-huge-deal-to-me-so-therefore-everyone-else-MUST-care type of post. I mean, it was three whole days of my life, ones shared by what might have been the largest crowd I’ve been in since I went to the World Series with my dad in ’05, so it has to count for something. Maybe. I’m not really sure. All I know is that I’m going to jump right into it; there’s really no other way to start.

                Aside from barely eating because the hotel’s food was way overpriced, meeting some rather interesting individuals who just so happened to live in my college town, and getting told I was a “unicorn” (more on that later), ACen was a fairly normal situation. I’d known it would be packed, but with 20,000 people coming in and out of the convention center every day, it felt even bigger than I’d anticipated and, oh wow, I had NOT expected most of the crowd to be dressed up as various fictional characters (a surprising amount of which were NOT from anime). I’d known some of them would be, of course, but I’d thought they’d be in the minority—was I ever more wrong-o in my life? NO. I was most definitely not.

                Most people had dressed up in something, be it character-based cosplay, steampunk cosplay, or the guy running around in a suit of samurai armor made out of Cheez-It boxes. There was something for just about everyone—Doctor Who, Kingdom Hearts, and even a Big Daddy from the Bioshock games (turns out the older sister of the girl who was in the suit goes to my school; small world). I actually felt rather out of place in my civilian clothes: jeans, a tanktop, and sneakers.

                Funnily enough, though… the plainclothes actually helped me stand out, at one point.

                I was wandering through the artist’s alley taking pictures and looking for Yu Yu Hakusho swag when I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around. Standing before me was a cute guy who also wore civilian clothing. I had no idea what he wanted and gave him a blank, nervous stare, to which he returned a winning smile.

                “Can I take your picture?” he asked, hefting a point-n’-shoot Canon.

                I stared at him for a moment, utterly taken aback. Then I said: “I’m not dressed up as anything.”

                He smiled.  “I know.”

                “Oh,” I said. “OK.”

                I was a bit dazed and didn’t think to question his nonsensical answer since he had seemed to sure of himself about it, so I stepped back and flashed him a peace sign and a grin, waiting for him to snap the pic… but then I frowned as the weirdness of the situation hit me.

                “Wait a minute—this isn’t one of those take-a-picture-of-an-ugly-girl scavenger hunts, is it?” I asked, voice full of suspicion. “Because someone at my school did that to a friend of mine last year and I—”

                He looked appalled. “That’s not it, I swear!” he protested.

                “Then what is it?” I wanted to know.

                He paused for a second. I could see the wheels turning in his head. Obviously he had some explaining to do and was wondering just exactly how to do it.

                His answer was not what I expected.

                “You,” he said, looking me dead in the eye, “are a unicorn.”

                Predictably, I stared him. In shock. Because just what the hell was that supposed to mean?

                “You are!” he said when I didn’t agree with him. “You’re a unicorn!”

                “Uh… how do you reckon?” I managed. A unicorn? Me? Is this guy smoking something? … and does he share?

                “Well, me and my buddies have a bet going on,” he confessed. “One of them doesn’t believe that there are any attractive girls at the convention who aren’t dressed up as something, and it’s true that they’re rare—rare like unicorns.” He waved a hand, indicating my general personage. “Ergo, you’re a unicorn, and since no one believes you exist, I need proof that you’re real if I want people to take me seriously!”

                I started laughing at that point. He snapped the picture all nice and candid-style, shook my hand, and walked away.

                “That better not end up on 4chan!” I yelled after him.

                He turned around long enough to put his hands to his face in mock-horror. “Whoops!” he yelled, and he vanished into the crowd.

                Afterwards I went home and tape an icecream cone to my forehead and covered myself in glitter. Like a boss. It looked something like this:
       
         

                Word up, bitches.

My Laborious Descent Into Alcoholism

     So I finished all my homework yesterday afternoon—YES!—and this freed me up to finish this week’s very late chapter of a story project/novel-thing I’ve been working on. I was all excited and happy and in possession of the oh-so-elusive “free time” concept I’ve heard so much about. The roommate (Chels) was on a date with her boyfriend, my other friend/roomie/conspirator (Mack) was doing sorority stuff, my OTHER roommate (Lucy) was off with HER boyfriend… I was alone, alone at last, and I had a chapter to write. NOTHING COULD STOP ME.

 
     Nothing, of course, but a major bout of the “What the hell am I doing?”-s.
Really. I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I KNEW that I was writing a chapter of my story, and I KNEW that I was going to have to write about the main character being drunk, and I KNEW how I wanted the chapter to end and I KNEW what events needed to happen along the way to get us there… but I had no idea what I was actually doing.

     The plot was repetitive; the characters, dull. Most of all, the narrator’s voice was horrible. Just horrible. I reread what I had already written and it didn’t seem drunk at all, which it SHOULD HAVE BEEN, and when—after at least an hour of banging my head against the wall—Lucy came home sans boyfriend, I spilled my troubled guts to her. She listened to my hysterics with remarkable patience, waiting ‘til I finished to give me her opinion on the subject, which ran somewhere along the lines of the following:

 
     “Well, I mean… we’re taught to ‘write what we know,’ and you haven’t had a drop to drink in months… so… my advice is to go get plastered.”

 
     I didn’t respond right away, turning the idea over and over in my head until it threatened to bruise like an overripe banana. I mean, it made some sort of twisted sense. Have a drink or two, get mildly tipsy, wait a few hours until my buzz wears off, then take whatever inspiration I gleaned from the experience and apply it to Dani’s drunken shenanigans… Huh, I remember thinking, that’s not such a bad idea at all.

 
     WELL, I WAS WRONG.

 
     I WAS WRONGWRONGWRONGWRONGWRONG.

 
     IT WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA AND I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT.

 
     I don’t really like drinking. One of the reasons I try not to drink despite being in an environment that seems to encourage it (that’d be college, kids) is because I act like an idiot when I’m drunk. I’m also something of a heavyweight, so the path to personal inebriation is usually a long one paved by many beers, wine coolers, and shots of liquor. This is, of course, and expensive process and since I dislike spending money on food (on other things, fine, but food, that’ll be gone in a short time so fuck it) I tend to forego buying myself alcohol in favor of purchasing, oh, I dunno, action figures off the internet, books, tabletop gaming strategy guides, Star Trek memorabilia… you know, totally respectable stuff that doesn’t make me a nerd at all, but we’re getting off topic so whatever, moving back to the original point: I don’t like drinking, as previously stated. I don’t really enjoy the tastes of the drinks I’ve tried and I can’t seem to find ‘the one’ for me, the way some people call themselves “vodka people” or whatever, and while that does make them sound like some sort of drunken Russian sub-section of the Lollipop Guild, I do envy their certainty in their drink of choice. They have something certain to fall back on, a tried and true favorite, a fit, and I think the whole social drinking thing would probably be a little easier for me if I had a fabled fit of my own.

 
     And now, I do.

 
     Last night I discovered my fit. Of sorts.

 
     Rewind time: Remember that before Lucy came home and listened to my dramatic sob-story of CRAZY she had been out with her boyfriend, and as it turns out they had gone alcohol shopping because Lucy is something of a self-admitted alcohol snob and she has to go to this big liquor store on the edge of town to get the specific brand of vodka she likes the most; no Smirnoff for her, no way, that’s for the plebian masses, not Lucy.

 
     Now fast forward to when Lucy WAS home, with me, and to the part where she said “You should get plastered.” This was followed by a few seconds of silence; then she reached into her backpack and pulled out a brown paper bag with the neck of a bottle sticking out of it.

 
     “And I think I can help you with getting there,” she said in regards to the plastered thing. “While I was shopping, I saw this, and I think you’ll like it. And it’s a gift, so no, you can’t pay me back. Close your mouth. I can see you trying to convince me to take your money.”

 
     I closed my mouth as per her instruction and took the bottle from her, carefully stripping off the brown paper to see the label: UV-brand Sweet Green Tea vodka.
 

     “Because you’re always guzzling those Sweet Leaf mint tea cans,” was her explanation. “Go on, try it.”

 
     And so I did.

 
     And so I’m thinking that the empty, shattered UV bottle on my dorm room floor might be the reason I can’t remember much about last night. Mightbeing the operative word.

 
     And so I think I also might have liked that alcohol. Considering that it’s all gone judging from the lack of puddle around the broken bottle, and stuff. There’s that pesky might again.

                

Lucy tells me I took this picture before the bottle’s depletion and subsequent demise because I was convinced my boyfriend wouldn’t believe that the stuff exists and I needed concrete evidence to the contrary. The thought of the internet’s proof-giving abilities did not, apparently, cross my mind.

     Piecing together what I did last night is like watching the movie “The Hangover”, only a lot more real and with less Mike Tyson: Like the characters in said movie, I have to figure out the truth through quasi-clever deduction and the clues Drunk Me left for Sober Me to puzzle over. The clues are as follows:

 
   1)      I have a fraternity stamp on my hand that indicates I went to a party at Sigma Nu.
   2)      My toe hurts. Badly. Like, at the I’m-suspicious-it-might-be-broken level of badly. No big deal.
   3)      My box of CheeseIts is empty. Suspicious.
   4)      My Epi-pen is missing. Also suspicious.
   5)      My cast has a phone number written on it. The handwriting is definitely girly.
   6)      I woke up completely dressed, but at my desk in my room, with my shoes still on, but with the laces unlaced.
   7)      My laptop is open, on, and I have two programs running. The first is MS Paint. The second is Microsoft Word.
   8)      My legs hurt. I am also bruised on my shoulders, good arm, and chest, and I have a collection of small cuts on the bottom of my right foot.
   9)      Magically, I have no hangover.
   10)   There is a picture of Earnest Hemingway on my wall. Origin unknown.
   11)   My cell’s call log indicates that while no drunk texts or calls were sent or placed, one call was received from an unknown number at 3:13 AM. The call lasted for roughly four minutes.

 
     These clues are obviously related. Here are my reasonings:

 
     #1 can be directly tied to #8, because dancing at a frat house is a one way ticket to having sore legs. The bruising is slightly less obviously connected, but upon doing some research (AKA, questioning Lucy and her boyfriend, Charlie) I found that I attempted to start a moshpit. It was, apparently, a rousing success, which may or may not explain clue #2.

 
     #3 and #9 are potentially connected. Given my lack of hangover and my lack of CheeseIts, I am more or less certain that I ate the entire box before falling asleep.

     The #3-#9 connection, funnily enough, also ties numbers 5 and 11 together. I placed a call to the number on my cast today and I found that it is the same mystery number I spent four minutes talking to at 3:13 AM. Furthermore, it turns out that the owner of the number lives downstairs. We became acquainted when I wandered into her apartment at roughly 2 AM and she became concerned for my wellbeing given the fact that I was clearly intoxicated, didn’t know where I was, and kept babbling about finding Charlie and Lucy who, presumably, I managed to wander away from at some point during the night (Lucy tells me they lost me in the moshpit). At any rate, Carol (because that’s her name) is the lovely young woman who escorted me to my room, took off my shoes for me, and made me eat the CheeseIts to sop up some of the alcohol in my system. That’s when I stepped on and broke the UV bottle; Carol helped me put my shoes back on so I wouldn’t hurt myself. She wrote her number on my cast so I would be unable to lose it and so I could call her if I needed someone to take care of me. Carol left my dorm at 2:45 AM and called me at 3:13 AM to check and see if I was still alive.

     The above all ties in with #6. Carol claims she left me sitting in front of my computer (where I ended up falling asleep), because I had told her that I had “a very important chapter of my story’s existence to make known to the internet people who sometimes love me, I think.”

     Isn’t that special? YOU GOT A SHOUTOUT, INTERNET. And for a drunk, I certainly am goal-oriented.

     At any rate, both logically and numerically #6 leads to #7. The open word document contains three thousand words, all of which are misspelled but some of which are actually going to be cleaned up and used in the next chapter given that they are quite genuinely drunk and (insofar as I can tell) from the main character’s perspective. The MS Paint canvas contains a highly inaccurate map of Cuba (which I only know is Cuba because it has been labeled for my sober convenience), over which the words “I can’t go here” and “fuck you lied hemm” are scrawled.

                

Uh-huh. Cuba. Yeah. Keep telling yourself that, Drunk-Me.

     The word “hemm” in the Paint document leads me to believe that #7 might have something to do with #10. Earnest Hemingway was well known for writing drunk, and he lived in Cuba, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and… well, I think the drawing might be blaming him for lying to me (unintentionally, of course) about the merits of trying to write while intoxicated, and the picture of Hemingway that’s hanging on my wall—

                

Who’s that peeking out from behind my YYH wallscroll? Also, gratuitous Hiei is gratuitous.

     I have no idea where it came from. I don’t have a printer in my room and I don’t remember walking to the print lab to get it, so your guesses on its origin are as good as mine. Same goes for the whereabouts (currently unknown) of the missing EpiPen, the only clue I can’t seem to find a way to work into my supposed order of events.

     The moral of this story?

     Don’t take writing advice from dead Nobel Prize recipients, and fuck you and your deliciousness, UV Sweet Green Tea.