What does this mean?

[NotWise]

I had this comment from an anonymous reader of my Summer Lovin' contest story:

Good story but...

by Anonymous user on 22 hours ago

The blog format, instead of a full paragraph format, makes it difficult to follow the dialogue.

The story (in I/T) is My Sister's Wedding.

Can anyone tell me what they might mean by "blog format?" as opposed to "full paragraph format?" I think they might be talking about the missing dialog tags, but that's only because they mention dialog.

 

[HollyLoriAnnalee]

I had this comment from an anonymous reader of my Summer Lovin' contest story:



The story (in I/T) is My Sister's Wedding.

Can anyone tell me what they might mean by "blog format?" as opposed to "full paragraph format?" I think they might be talking about the missing dialog tags, but that's only because they mention dialog.

Just a cursory once-over of your piece, it seems they might be commenting on your decision to start a paragraph with narration and include dialogue in the middle?

Example:
My room was only a few doors away from the elevator. Robin started exploring while I hung my suit. "This place is huge!" she said. It's almost as big as my apartment. It's almost a suite. The bed is huge, too. Do you have plans for it?"

In a way, I get the criticism. I feel that a lot of people read these stories on their phone? I might have structured it like this:

My room was only a few doors away from the elevator. Robin started exploring while I hung my suit.

"This place is huge!" she said. "It's almost as big as my apartment. It's almost a suite. The bed is huge, too. Do you have plans for it?"

But that's a style choice. I'm just trying to figure out the meaning of the comment like you are. Who knows.

-Holly

 

[ElectricBlue]

My guess is the same as Holly's - dialogue embedded in a paragraph. No idea what the reference to blogs is all about, though.

I'll often write: Dialogue, short narrative, complete the dialogue.

But I reckon I nearly always write:

Narrative

Dialogue

that, is, separating the dialogue from a narrative leading paragraph. I'm a fan of "white space" to make it easier on the eye.

 

[NotWise]

HLA and EB, thanks for your help.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I don't get the same impression. I'd take the comment at face value. They said it looked like blog format to them and not full paragraph format. Focusing on the quotations is ignoring what the comment actually referenced.

Blog format requires short paragraphs. Your story does have a lot of short paragraphs. I think maybe they were too short for that reader's taste. They probably read on a full screen or on a tablet. It's a very fine line, here, balancing proper paragraph formation with avoiding blocks of text that don't look good on a phone. There's a reason paragraphs are structured the way they are, and we lose some of the relatedness when we break them apart. I'm not criticizing how you did it. I'm just guessing that it was too broken up for this reader's tastes.

I know a lot of people dislike dialog within paragraphs. I'm not one of them. I think that excising the dialog and leaving funny little one-sentence and two-sentence paragraphs hanging out there is disjointed and doesn't reflect what you see in hardcopy published works. I do think that the separated dialog has become a preference at this site, or at least among people who participate in this forum and in AH. I see no relationship between that and blog style. If anything, blog style, which this reader didn't like, would dictate that you break out the quotes.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

To me it sounds like Mr. Anon Y. Mous was using some mind altering substance and had no idea what he wanted to say. I wouldn't give it a second thought.

 

[NotWise]

To me it sounds like Mr. Anon Y. Mous was using some mind altering substance and had no idea what he wanted to say. I wouldn't give it a second thought.

I think he saw something he didn't like. He just wasn't very good at expressing it.

We had a thread recently that touched on paragraph length, and I checked the length of paragraphs in "My Sister's Wedding." It was a spot check, looking for long paragraphs, but I found nothing longer than 80 words, and 60 words was fairly typical. The range was down to just a few words.

After EoN's answer, I googled "blog format" and found that guidance suggests short paragraphs. I think the paragraphs in the story are short enough to qualify, so that might be what he meant by "blog format."

Maybe his reference to dialog was caused by putting dialog at varying points in paragraphs, but I'm not going to change that. Too many rules removes options. I put the dialog where I see it fitting the pace and flow of images and ideas.

So I guess my response to Mr. Anonymous would be along the lines of "I'm sorry if my writing style slowed you're reading or decreased your reading comprehension."

 

[KeithD]

There's nothing wrong about embedding dialogue in narrative paragraphs, by the way. It just shouldn't (usually) be dialogue from more than one speaker. But sometimes that works fine too.

 

[SimonDoom]

I suspect that Nyx is correct: the reader thought the paragraphs were too short. It's an unusual criticism here because I think most readers prefer shorter paragraphs when reading something on a screen, especially when reading it on a phone. I think your paragraph length is fine. I try to mix it up but I use many short paragraphs. I usually set dialogue off in a separate paragraph and I sometimes use one-sentence narrative paragraphs for dramatic emphasis.

This sort of thing is a matter of style, with no one right answer.

 

[Norman_Altair]

I suspect that Nyx is correct: the reader thought the paragraphs were too short. It's an unusual criticism here because I think most readers prefer shorter paragraphs when reading something on a screen, especially when reading it on a phone. I think your paragraph length is fine. I try to mix it up but I use many short paragraphs. I usually set dialogue off in a separate paragraph and I sometimes use one-sentence narrative paragraphs for dramatic emphasis.

This sort of thing is a matter of style, with no one right answer.

I concur.