As a writer how do you write text messages in stories?

[Blind_Justice]

It's a slightly different example, but in my "Ghost in the Machine" story, I had someone watch a conversation unfold in an old text-only chatroom. I added a note to Laurel, explaining the strings of text and what they were supposed to be and she let it pass through. Looks something like this:

[11:56:03] SM1L3Y: Well, here I am, as you wanted. Happy?

[11:56:10] Mr. J: Thank you for responding so quickly, Smiley. Sorry for not meeting in the real world, but I'm a little tied up. I have a job for you.

[11:56:15] SM1L3Y: Job sounds good. It's been awfully quiet the last week or so.

[11:56:23] Mr. J: You haven't heard? Going online has become kind of a hazard lately. That's the reason why I'm contacting you specifically.

[11:56:26] SM1L3Y: Dangerous? Huh?

[11:56:34] Mr. J: Yes, dangerous. As in "brain melting" dangerous. People are dying.

The timestamps especially can be used to add detail to the conversation - longer pauses indicating hesitation or the like. In lieu of a plugin simulating the small text bubbles, I think this could work for sms.

 

[Duleigh]

I think I do enter the tags in the site submission box (that's what you meant by story text field?) but I may have done it in the word processor too. I usually write it as a plain text file, which is different from a .doc file (correct?). I suppose I could try it both ways and see what happens.

A text document (.txt file) is a simple string of ASCII characters that we train ourselves to read as a document. That is what Notepad in Windows creates, I'm not sure what a Mac does, I haven't dealt with Macs since 1997 and that was Mac clones. A .doc file is a very different item that starts with the ASCII characters and gets very complex from there. Character alignment, various forms of font such as tru-type fonts, font and background color, pagination, document security, animation, and other devices such as tables, HTML links, hidden text and symbols, you can even write a virus and embed it in the word document. (I had some real fun with those!) All of that information is stored in the paragraph mark, which is normally hidden.

The new format, .docx is a lot more fun.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Many stories of mine are set before text messages. I don't remember how I handled them in stories where I used them or even if I have used text messages.

 

[gunhilltrain]

A text document (.txt file) is a simple string of ASCII characters that we train ourselves to read as a document. That is what Notepad in Windows creates, I'm not sure what a Mac does, I haven't dealt with Macs since 1997 and that was Mac clones. A .doc file is a very different item that starts with the ASCII characters and gets very complex from there. Character alignment, various forms of font such as tru-type fonts, font and background color, pagination, document security, animation, and other devices such as tables, HTML links, hidden text and symbols, you can even write a virus and embed it in the word document. (I had some real fun with those!) All of that information is stored in the paragraph mark, which is normally hidden.

The new format, .docx is a lot more fun.

Thank you, but is any of that going to help me on Lit?

 

[Duleigh]

Thank you, but is any of that going to help me on Lit?

Oh, gosh no, not in the least, but it is handy to know that stuff so you know why your PC just went to a spin cycle of death not long after opening a .doc file from a sketchy source.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Oh, gosh no, not in the least, but it is handy to know that stuff so you know why your PC just went to a spin cycle of death not long after opening a .doc file from a sketchy source.

I know, I think I have a bit of tech knowledge, but it keeps getting away from me. I've noticed that when talking to people my age and up, who didn't grow up with it. I noticed that with my mother, who has passed now but she lived well into the Internet age. (My dad passed in 1990, somewhat before it really got rolling.) She had a hard time with something like simply setting up a file structure to store documents.

 

[Bramblethorn]

A text document (.txt file) is a simple string of ASCII characters that we train ourselves to read as a document. That is what Notepad in Windows creates, I'm not sure what a Mac does, I haven't dealt with Macs since 1997 and that was Mac clones.

Mac comes with TextEdit, which has RTF and plaintext modes.

 

[rvagirl]

The conversation has become very technical (and it’s fascinating), but I wanted to offer an example of how I deal with texting. The short of it:
make up most of a fake phone number for each character and employ them like character tags in a script.

Here’s an example from one of my stories. This is the first time the characters have ever texted.

626-780-xxxx: Hi, it's Hester Madden.

703-996-xxxx: Hi, Hester Madden. Thanks for texting me. What's that area code?

626-780-xxxx: Pasadena. I got an American number when I came here for university. Is your 703 from home?

703-996-xxxx: It's one of two that we have where I grew up. The DC suburbs are so self-important they've got 703 *and* 571 covering the same area.

So those area codes are really accurate IRL. The middle three digits are made up random numbers. I use the xxxx instead of more numbers to avoid accidentally posting some random poor soul’s number in my smut.

I personally like the little bit of research I get to do about each character like this. Finding out in which area code they got their number is a finding out more about who they are, albeit in a small way.

I guess I should say that this is an American style solution and you’d want to adapt it to how your country’s phone codes work.

 

[NotWise]

Mac comes with TextEdit, which has RTF and plaintext modes.

Ubuntu has so many text editors that it has a utility to pick which one you want to use. Other linux desktops are probably in a similar situation.

 

[PennameWombat]

BTW - my cousin's penname was Wombat also

Your cousin must be a person of wit, intelligence and debonair affect. Unlike me .

A text document (.txt file) is a simple string of ASCII characters that we train ourselves to read as a document. That is what Notepad in Windows creates, I'm not sure what a Mac does, I haven't dealt with Macs since 1997 and that was Mac clones. A .doc file is a very different item that starts with the ASCII characters and gets very complex from there. Character alignment, various forms of font such as tru-type fonts, font and background color, pagination, document security, animation, and other devices such as tables, HTML links, hidden text and symbols, you can even write a virus and embed it in the word document. (I had some real fun with those!) All of that information is stored in the paragraph mark, which is normally hidden.

The new format, .docx is a lot more fun.

I did my master's thesis long enough ago that I used TeX and LaTeX (yeah, I know they're still actively used, but I used them when LaTeX was the Bright New Thing). So I was quite used to using markup languages when HTML came along. I always appreciated the ability to make a document look exactly like I wanted it to look. But digging under the covers of .doc and .docx and .odt and most XML files isn't something I generally care to do. It's like reading auto-generated SQL or HTML/CSS. It's not... fun.

But when it goes wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong!

But because I am borderline insane, I have looked through the source for a few stories on Lit.

Thank you, but is any of that going to help me on Lit?

For its stories, Lit uses a significantly simplified subset of HTML and CSS. So long as you paste your story into the submission box, what HTML the site supports will be recognized. But it's not much. If you try to put the HTML tags into a .doc (Word format) file and submit that, they'll be ignored and treated as text. You'd have to convert it to HTML or plaintext with inserted HTML tags and paste into the submission box (other postings have covered this as well.) But you don't need full markup if you're inserting, just put in text with your selected HTML tags for specific sections.

Which means all of the work that the various browsers have put in for rendering isn't needed for the story text itself. The broader site uses a richer set of capabilities.

And like I said before, what little HTML is supported for story display isn't processed by the Lit mobile app. It simply flows the text.

 

[PennameWombat]

Ubuntu has so many text editors that it has a utility to pick which one you want to use. Other linux desktops are probably in a similar situation.

Is it time for an Emacs versus vi war?

 

[NotWise]

Is it time for an Emacs versus vi war?

I don't even have Emacs, so no. I could get it, but I have 31 flavors of vi, so there isn't much need.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't even have Emacs, so no. I could get it, but I have 31 flavors of vi, so there isn't much need.

My brain doesn't remember vi any more, but I think my fingers would still remember some of the commands if I didn't actively think about it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

The conversation has become very technical (and it’s fascinating), but I wanted to offer an example of how I deal with texting. The short of it:
make up most of a fake phone number for each character and employ them like character tags in a script.

Here’s an example from one of my stories. This is the first time the characters have ever texted.



So those area codes are really accurate IRL. The middle three digits are made up random numbers. I use the xxxx instead of more numbers to avoid accidentally posting some random poor soul’s number in my smut.

I personally like the little bit of research I get to do about each character like this. Finding out in which area code they got their number is a finding out more about who they are, albeit in a small way.

I guess I should say that this is an American style solution and you’d want to adapt it to how your country’s phone codes work.

As you may know (or maybe not, it was in 1981), that phone number problem came up when a band called Tommy Tutone used a "real" phone number as the title of a song. Everybody who had that number in various area codes was instantly flooded with calls from all sorts of kids and crazies who dialed it.

The plot is that some drunk guy in a bar sees "Jenny's" number written on a wall, probably by a dissatisfied boyfriend, and imagines what would happen if he tried calling her. It's on YouTube if you are curious.

 

[GinnyPPC]

This page lists a few ways to convert Word to HTML: https://www.wikihow.com/Convert-a-Word-Document-to-HTML.

I use the site https://www.textfixer.com/html/convert-word-to-html.php to get my word docs into html. It automatically formats all the bold and italics into <strong> and <em>. Very simple to use.

 

[NotWise]

My brain doesn't remember vi any more, but I think my fingers would still remember some of the commands if I didn't actively think about it.

I use Vi for programming. I took up a project last spring for the first time in quite a while and found that my "muscle memory" for the keyboard operations was very rusty. I had to reacquaint myself, and until then fumbling around with the keys was very frustrating.

Vi is no longer the default text editor on Ubuntu. They've switched to gedit, and now I have to cross back and forth between the two editors. If I click on a code file it comes up in gedit. If I'm working from a command line I automatically use Vi.

 

[NotWise]

I use Vi for programming. I took up a project last spring for the first time in quite a while and found that my "muscle memory" for the keyboard operations was very rusty. I had to reacquaint myself, and until then fumbling around with the keys was very frustrating.

Vi is no longer the default text editor on Ubuntu. They've switched to gedit, and now I have to cross back and forth between the two editors. If I click on a code file it comes up in gedit. If I'm working from a command line I automatically use Vi.

 

[shakna]

Vi is no longer the default text editor on Ubuntu. They've switched to gedit, and now I have to cross back and forth between the two editors. If I click on a code file it comes up in gedit. If I'm working from a command line I automatically use Vi.

$VISUAL is your GUI editor.
$EDITOR is your CLI editor.
If you don't have either of those set, then Ubuntu will go have a look at

/usr/share/applications/defaults.list

, because it uses the OpenDesktop standard.

 

[Duleigh]

But digging under the covers of .doc and .docx and .odt and most XML files isn't something I generally care to do. I

I used to teach CSRs for Microsoft office on Mac clones. It was a great gig until Apple shut down the clones.

My brain doesn't remember vi any more, but I think my fingers would still remember some of the commands if I didn't actively think about it.

I never got past using the cheat sheet for VI which I still have somewhere. I only used it to clean up data files that got corrupted when being transferred to Scientific Atlanta conditional access controllers. (how's that for dating some ancient technology!)

 

[PennameWombat]

I use Vi for programming. I took up a project last spring for the first time in quite a while and found that my "muscle memory" for the keyboard operations was very rusty. I had to reacquaint myself, and until then fumbling around with the keys was very frustrating.

Vi is no longer the default text editor on Ubuntu. They've switched to gedit, and now I have to cross back and forth between the two editors. If I click on a code file it comes up in gedit. If I'm working from a command line I automatically use Vi.

Vi for quick and dirty editing of text files.

Emacs for real work