Lena Brassard

Lena Brassard

KotSQ: Second Revision #5

I’m replaying Planescape: Torment in 10-minute increments between meetings and also rereading The Dark Tower1, so I’m eyebrows-deep in the two things that most influenced Grave Oversight and having feelings of the “maybe I didn’t give up on that forever, after all” variety. That was very much a sales-threshold project that failed miserably2, but if it strays even slightly into passion project territory, I might be moved to poke at Book 2 a little.

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Talk to me like one of your fictional French girls

Wanting people to be direct and being direct myself has been “rude” all my life, and the current trend is to blame my “rudeness” on “autism.” (Not one of my diagnoses, officially or self, but it’s a handy ableist blanket for some people to throw over “every behavior that’s inconvenient for me.”)

While editing a primer on dialogue, it occurred to me this could instead be attributed to being a lifelong reader.

Well-written dialogue doesn’t go in circles. Well-written dialogue doesn’t include small talk. Well-written dialogue doesn’t let characters hem and haw without somebody telling them to quit bullshitting and get to the point. Well-written dialogue largely bypasses the meaningless, time-wasting mouth noises that somebody decided are real-life “social skills.”

Well-written dialogue is my ideal form of verbal communication.

What a shame it’s “rude.”

With that, I’m off to spend the day with pretend people who are incredibly rude—not because they murder people for a living but because they don’t chitchat, obviously.