Welcome to another edition of Behind the Story, where I give you a behind the scenes peek into my inspiration and writing process as connected to my published works. Today’s entry is:
What You Make Of It, published by Fantasia Divinity in June 2017 Read The Inspiration There is a literary magazine called The First Line that provides writers with first lines as prompts that they want every story in that issue of the magazine to start with. If your story is not accepted in The First Line, the writer is free to submit it elsewhere. “What You Make of It” is one of two of my published stories that started with a first line from The First Line. The other, “Don’t Lie to Me” when edited between drafts, ultimately does not start with the first line prompt anymore, but “What You Make of It” kept it word for word, the line being: “George pressed the call button and said, “Mrs. Whitfield, you have a visitor.”” If you see the story, you’ll see I made George a woman, because why the hell not. I kind of hoped that it would make it stand out amongst the other stories submitted to The First Line for that issue. Ultimately, the story was not accepted at The First Line, but was later accepted and published by Fantasia Divinity. The Icebreaker “What You Make Of It” is a short little short story that was an icebreaker for me in terms of story acceptances at a literary magazine. Before this, I had a dry spell in which I hadn’t had a story published in a literary magazine since 2011. The reasons are several. Post-college, out in the world with my Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing, trying to figure out a career, trying to become a writer, trying to figure what type of writing I wanted to write… I had bit of a writer’s existential crisis in terms of creativity and focus and vision on where I wanted to go. I worked through this over the years, and in 2015 renewed my focus in writing and in submitting my short stories to literary magazines. I dealt with a lot of rejections for a lot of stories. That is something young writers -- all writers -- have to learn to deal with: a lot more rejection and failure than success and recognition. Despite the lack of success in literary magazines, I kept writing and I kept submitting, and eventually -- two years later -- I broke through the ice, got paid a grand three dollars for this story, and more success has followed after.
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Welcome to Behind the Story -- a ‘behind the scenes’ series of blog posts that give you the inside scoop on my the stories and other written works I’ve had published. I’ll be starting with the oldest and moving forward through time.
In the Eye of the Beholder, published in 2011 by Outrageous Fortune. Read When I attended Susquehanna University and majored in creative writing, the major required that we not just study our preferred form of writing. (My perferfer form is -- gasp, surprise -- fiction.) The poets couldn’t just study poetry, and so forth. We all had to take introductory courses in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. And, no, before you ask, “creative nonfiction” does not mean lying. It means the forms of nonfiction unlike say history textbooks, journalism, or the cooking instructions on a macaroni and cheese box. It means the forms of nonfiction that use the techniques of creative writing: imagery, scene-setting, pretty prose, and so forth. In the the introductory class, the three forms of creative nonfiction we studied were memoir, personal essay, and literary journalism. When it came to taking an advanced level course, I pursued the class focusing on personal essays, the one of the three I most preferred while not really preferring nonfiction-writing that much at all. I am a shy, private, and sensitive person. I’m really not all that interested in telling people all about my life and my problems. I find it really hard to brag. Anyone who's followed me on any sort of my personal social media would know my posts are few and far between. I’m basically the opposite of this blogpost. Writing this is not in my nature. If in case you are asking “wtf is a personal essay?” Well… if you’ve read many articles online, you’ve probably read one. It’s a blend of memoir and essay, integrating personal/ autobiographical story and also outside facts and also having an opinion or coming to a conclusion at the end of it. In my Advanced Creative Nonfiction: Personal Essay class, I wrote the only piece of nonfiction I’ve ever written that contained any salt of quality, and it also changed my life. That personal essay was: “In the Eye of the Beholder.” It was published in 2011 in Volume 2.2 of Outrageous Fortune, a literary magazine of undergraduate work edited by undergraduates. As you might be able to deduce from the title, it is an essay about beauty. Also self image, self esteem, and how that is all internalized, all set around the stretch of time I was serving as a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding. If you want to know more, you can go read it. Now it’s time for me to take a big breath. So, yeah, writing “In the Eye of Beholder” changed my life. Now, a lot of things I’ve read and many a things I’ve written have changed me in small ways, however, many of them were changes in regards to my writing life, my creativity, or my writing career. The work of writing “In the Eye of the Beholder” and the amount of introspection and digging deep it required of me served as the fall of the butterfly wing that makes a tsunami of personal growth. A few months after writing “Beholder” I looked in the mirror and I saw a different person. Like the shape and size of my body looked different to me than it had been in mind’s eye, that it had been the day before. Nothing about me had changed physically between the writing and that moment, but my perspective of myself and my body had changed so much. I’m sure if I can quiet illustrate the reality. Growing up as an overweight child and teenager in a time were slender and skinny were the major standards of beauty being reinforced by society, having internalized this, having many of my other issues tangled together with my body image issues. While I had become more slender in my college years, all that internalized negativity didn’t go away just because I had made hitting the gym into a habit, or that I had gone down from a 14 to a 12 pants size. That moment wasn’t a destination, just part of a journey that I am still on that has overcome many hurdles. When I go back and skim “Beholder” now, some clunky turns of phrase want to be to pull out my metaphorical editors pen. Even more, what I find is a time capsule of perspective from my 20 year old self, and it’s like reading my own diary. So that’s the story not just behind “In the Eye of the Beholder” but after it and around it and all the way to now. Welcome to Behind the Story, number three, -- a ‘behind the scenes’ series of blog posts that give you the inside scoop on my the stories and other written works I’ve had published. I’ll be starting with the oldest and moving forward through time.
Lately, originally published by the Eunoia Review in November 2011 (Read here) While accepted and published by the same magazine at the same time as Smoking Section, the subject of the previous Behind the Story blogpost, Lately was written a year (or so) later. Originally, it was written for a literature for children writing class. While this story is from a child’s perspective and uses not-too-complex language, working now as a children’s librarian with a lot of training in kid lit, I won’t say it exactly fits in that genre. As you may have noticed, it was published in a mainstream lit mag, not one geared for children. While this is in no way supposed to be nonfiction, this story is probably the one thing most based on real life that I have ever written fiction-wise. Growing up, a girl in my neighborhood who lived right across the street, a girl who was friends with my sister and I, was killed in a random, hit and run car accident. I think I was at an age too young to really feel grief in that painful, heart-wrenching way, but I remember my sister going through it and not really knowing how to help. That was the core heart of this story, but again, this is a recreation and not anyway supposed to represent fact. However, the moment when one of the girl’s points out a fast-moving truck as a possible culprit -- that is a straight up memory. Welcome to Behind the Story, number two, -- a ‘behind the scenes’ series of blog posts that give you the inside scoop on my the stories and other written works I’ve had published. I’ll be starting with the oldest and moving forward through time.
Smoking Section, published by the Eunoia Review in November 2011 (Read Here) I love this story. This incarnation that was published was written my sophomore year of college, in the first week or two. I remember just typing away at the idea, sentence by sentence in a very careful way but in a relatively short time frame. Again, this never ended up in class but was shared with my classmate writing group. My first, earlier incarnation of this story -- and I say incarnation rather than draft because it was so different -- was written in my senior year of high school. The inspiration was twofold. One is obvious in the text of the story. It was around that time that a lot legislation was being passed banning smoking in restaurants and bars, and those laws inspired a lot of public debate. So that was the surrounding political debate. Two, a particular plot point in one episode of Boy Meets World. (It was a Mr. Feeny story line.) So that is where it came from. It is truly interesting to see how disparte inspiration can be taken and reformed into something new. I hope the reader picks up what the characters are actually arguing about when they are arguing about new smoking laws. The reason I love this story so much is because I felt once I completed it that I had been able to execute my vision for the story. We creative types often have standards higher than our abilities at any given moment, and this was a point in time they met. Welcome to Behind the Story -- a ‘behind the scenes’ series of blog posts that give you the inside scoop on my the stories and other written works I’ve had published. I’ll be starting with the oldest and moving forward through time.
Surface, published by LitSnack Magazine in December 2010 (Read here) Surface was my first published short story. I wrote it while I was in college but it wasn’t for my any of my creative writing workshop classes. However I did share it in a writing group some of students had formed to share stories and receive feedback. The core idea of the story was inspired from a detail I heard about a distant, far-extended family member who passed away after diving into a pool while intoxicated. Swimming pools had always been fun in my family, from being a little kid splashing around all summer to more than one family wedding where grooms, brides, and others were tossed into said pools. In fact, my dad threw my mom into a pool at the party they first met, so I guess pools and fun is sort of in my heritage. A pool being turned into this vicious, haunting thing was disonnent to my personal experience. Before it was accepted at LitSnack Magazine, I recall it being rejected by another magazine with the note that the editors didn’t like how impersonal it was with the character, particularly the POV character being unnamed. I was stubborn about it them. (I found it awkward to introduce character names and liked the aesthetic of he/she third person statements.) With perspective, got to say that I agree with those editors! I feel like this early story is a little embarrassing, like a middle school class photo. At the time, a semester or two or three (my timeline memory is a little fuzzy) into my college creative writing education, I was trying to write serious, literary fiction and that meant writing about death and grieving apparently. But writing (and publishing in the world of literary magazines) is just a series of learning processes and stepping stones. This first publication was an important stepping stone for me. PS - It is heartwarming to go look at the comments on this story. Six out of seven are spam, but the first was a person who read and liked my story! Thanks friend! Want to hear what my voice sounds like and also hear my thoughts on how Harry Potter has affected Millennials, catch me as a guest host on the podcast Return 2 Sender: www.return2senderpodcast.com/podcast-episodes/2018/3/20/episode-6-bu-bure-bureaucracy-with-margery-bayne
Sometimes you have year long dry spellings with publications. (Cough, ahem 2012-2016... although it was 2015&2016 that were particularly brutal because I was very actively writing and submitting with no success.) And sometimes you have two stories that are unexpectedly published on the same day. That day is today: February 1st, 2018. While you can always find my full list of publications under the publications tabs (including these as I have already updated it), here they are presented in all their glory. "Castles at Night"... a 1500 word magical (and family-friendly) story, podcasted by Manawaker studios, available here: www.manawaker.com/podcast/ffp-0303-castles-at-night/. AND "Seeds" ... a 1600 word Persephone and Hades myth retelling in which Persephone might be a little more proactive and, ahem, manipulative in getting what she want. Published by Enchanted Conversation, and available here: www.fairytalemagazine.com/2018/01/seeds-margery-bayne.html Enchanted Conversation also made me this wonderful cover art and made it available for my use. One of the often lofted pieces of creative writing advice that is tossed around is that one should eliminate all adverbs from their prose. A few months ago, a literary agent on Twitter extended the axe to include adjectives, and it kind of exploded into some drama in writing and publishing circles, including Chuck Wendig who engaged in a wonderful take down and break down of said remark which you can read here. Now, I have never agreed with the starkness of this advice even when it was only applied to adverbs (and extending it to adjectives just blows my mind, Adjectives? Like even colors?). This is even though I’ve been hearing it repeated for years, since I started in my creative writing BA in 2008 (#old). But I also do not not believe in it. By which I mean, underneath the rule™ is an actual kernel of helpful truth. We just have to mine it out a bit. Writing Rules Overall First of all, writing rules are more like guidelines than actual rules. To all rules there are exceptions. All rules can be broken. Second of all, writing goes through trends. Many are long term trends. Still, trends. That’s why they split up literature classes into various periods and artistic movements. Writing rules that are repeated like fact right now have all the potential to change. Third of all, writing rules are opinions. They reflect certain tastes and preferences. There is quite obviously many different types of creative writing being published in the world right now, and not just amongst different genres. There are wordy things and Ernest Hemingway-like succinct things. There are things that follow the strict rules of grammar and those that go with a dialectal grammar or voice. First person and third. Writing better at prose than story and writing better at story than prose. And so on. Just as there's all kinds of writing (and the writers that created it), there are all kinds of readers who want to read different things and have different tastes. Quick Definition Time Adjectives are words that modify nouns. Ex. The large [adjective] house [noun]. Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Ex. The really [adverb] fast [adjective] car. He ran [verb] quickly [adverb]. But Why? You know how I mentioned the kernel of truth up there? Also, do you know how the cut adverbs (and adjectives!!!) advice comes with no or minimal additional information? Yeah, that’s where that kernel of truth is hidden. There is actual logic and reasoning and in depth writing advice in the notion of cutting adverbs, but is rarely or minimally discussed. Instead, people treat it as a call to begin an adverb cross out word search on your draft. And honestly, it’s less of a case of cutting adverbs, but replacing them. Let’s took at the cases of when/why you should cut (but really replace) adverbs. Why #1: The specific adverb is clunky/awkward Some adverbs are common place and fit smoothly into a sentence. “The blood red car” (Yup, “blood” here is an adverb as it modifies “red” an adjective.) “She said loudly.” “He ran quickly.” Some are awkward to get your mouth around. “She said shakily.” “He ran jaggedly.” If it is awkward to say or awkward to the ear, that might be a sign that it will stick out like a sore thumb to the reader. In writing critique circles, when discussion the minutiae of prose, we often discuss things that ‘take us out of the story.’ Those are the awkward or confusing turns of phrases or sentences can confuse and stop up the reader, ruining the flow of the story. If you adverb is awkward and ruining the flow of the story, you should definitely considering cutting/replacing it. Why #2: The verb/adverb pairing could be replaced by a stronger verb. Taking the samples from above. “She said loudly” ---> “She yelled” or “She shouted” or “She screamed” Now, all of those alternatives have slightly different connotations and are not interchangeable, but that’s also part of the point. “Said loudly” can mean a lot of things, while the other options are more specific/more detailed, aka stronger verbs. “He ran quickly” ---> “He sprinted” In your mind’s eye, can’t you just see how much faster this fictional he is running when he sprinted. Isn’t it such a more powerful word? While I am also do not fall on the side of ‘everything should read like Ernest Hemingway’ (I definitely love flowery F. Scott Fitzgerald too much for that), one of your writing considerations should be ‘How can I explain this fully but with the least amount of words?’ This ‘Why #2’ applies to any instance of the word ‘really’ (except all the exceptions for dialogue and voice and the cases you just 'really' need to use it). (In fact, I had a high school teacher who banned all uses of the words ‘really’ and ‘very’ in our papers, but that was academic writing not creative writing.) You might rebuke me here and say ‘what if one of the stronger verbs doesn’t fit what I mean?’ Such as, what if you mean ‘said loudly’ and not ‘yelled.’ To which I say, ‘Hey, you don’t have to cut every adverb’ and also ‘Think creatively, though, about what you want to say.’ Which segues into… Why #3: Can you say it better way? In the case of this example, ‘she said’ is a common dialogue tag, and dialogue tags are rife with their own conflicting writing rules. One common rule that is mostly accurate is that most of the time you just want to use ‘he/she said.’ In the cases were you don’t, taking on an adverb might not be the best option to add emphasis to your dialogue. For example, instead of ‘She said loudly’ ... What about: She raised her voice to speak over the crowd. “Blah, blah, blah.” Or: Her voice reached a pitch it only did when she was under the max amount of stress. Or: She tried to tap down her anger, but her voice came out booming regardless. Or: She said, like a roll of thunder. Notice how these all say more than the adverb ‘loudly.’ Notice how they all even say more than the ‘strong verbs.’ When you choose to say it in a more creative or more detailed way, you as the writer have the opportunity to tell more than the pitch of a character’s voice (in this example), but can use your descriptive words to impart theme, reveal character, create mood, set the scene, and/or impart your voice/style into the prose. Am I saying that you should replace every adverb with a piece of lyrical prose? No. A hundred times no. Because that would be just as (or more) ridiculous than saying to cut them all. And as I said in the beginning, all writing rules (even mine here) can be broken, are trends, and are opinions. What I am saying is that if it is so important that you added that adverb, that the reader know it was said ‘loudly’ that you balk at cutting it, maybe there is more in the story to mine. Why #4: Adjectives I… I just don’t know what to say about cutting adjectives. That’s just ridiculous. The traditional advice is ‘cut all adverbs’ but this literary agent added adjectives to the chopping block and… really. Adjectives? Like color, shape, and size. Like saying brown hair or green eyes. How sparse and unimaginative that writing would be. Like, the only sense I can come here is that maybe, sometimes, consider if you are relying on adjectives instead of interesting descriptions, such as… The musty cave/The cave smelled musty ---> The cave smelled like a damp sponge Her gossamer skin ---> Her skin was as thin and wrinkled as tissue paper. (And those changes use adjectives. The real rule there is… your creative writing projects shouldn’t be about showing off all the vocabulary you memorized. It should be about creating eviseral images and emotions). Keep your adjectives, folks. Like all things in creative writing, use them wisely, but keep your adjectives. Conclusion Hey folks, don’t take the ‘cut all your adverbs’ advice like it’s time to pull out the red pen and ink up your in progress manuscript. But also don’t ignore it totally and throw in all the adverbs. Sometimes your adverbs will just flow and get the job done. Ex. The blood red car. (Sometimes I think this adverb advice is really directed at -ly adverbs.) Sometimes your adverbs/verb pairing can be turned into a stronger verb. Sometimes your adverb means you want to focus on a detail of something, and then you should really dig into the details of something by using a more creative approach. Sometimes in your writing you just need to get from point a to point b, and the adverb serves the purpose. And sometimes your should cut it. Instead of drawing blood with your editor’s pen, instead ask a series of questions: Do you really need it? Is there a stronger option available? Can you make your writing stronger by exploring one of those stronger options? The advice to cut all adverbs (and adjectives) is so misguided. But hidden in that advice is suggestion to give your adverbs a second look, and not to rely on fancy vocab words to convey images, imagery, and emotions. Going into 2017, I had several writing and writing-adjacent New Year’s Resolutions. I had some somewhat successes and some outright successes, and along the way many lessons. The Outright Successes: 1 - Finish draft of (Name Redacted) project. I had started this particular project many times (It was an idea I’ve had since high school) and written a two-thirds draft the previous year. In 2017, I did finish a complete draft, around 70,000 words. Since then, some attempts were made to redraft, but I think the story needs more time in the drawer, so to speak. 2 - Write 300,000 creative words, counting all original fiction, fanfiction, and creative nonfiction, including this blogging, but nothing school or work related. I have not reached this yet, but I plan to within the next few days before 2018. (Or get to a close enough negligible amount.) I’m a few thousand words away, but a few thousand that is doable. I used this wonderful word tracker called write track. I knew to achieve this or any word count goal I would need to track it like goodreads tracks reading or the nanowrimo cite tracks the nano word count. Searching around, I found write track which lets you set yearly and project-specific word counts, and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a tool like this. This word count achievement is all the more meaningful for the writing endurance it built up in me, writing (almost) daily and often writing when was I’m not initially inspired. It also helped me finish many, various projects. The Somewhat Successes: 1 - Submitting two pieces a week to literary magazines/writing contests/publishers. I started out strong, but withered away as the year went on. However, I continued to submit throughout the year, at least a two or three a month. I found some new tools, as such as the Submission Grinder, (which I promise you is indeed a writing website and not an erotic website) to use to find places to submit. I also have several acceptances! (3 short story acceptances and 1 contest 2nd place win). I will continue submitting regularly into 2018. Because its become a habit, I think I won’t put specific numbers and keep doing what I am doing. Two a week wasn’t necessarily realistic with the limited number of short stories i had to submit and dealing with the deadlines, submission periods, and turn around times of the literary magazines themselves. 2 - Writing two blog posts per week (for this very blog). Again, strong start, and then it withered away. I will continue to blog, but I think it is better to write when I have something to say than to force content. I will follow the advice of the one of the writing blogs I follow and ‘slow blog’ as I have been for the last few months. (It’s not a failed resolution if you learned something about yourself!) Writing Resolutions for 2018 1- Journaling. I want to start journaling! For writing so much in my life, I have never been much of a journal or diary writer. In particular I want to keep a ‘mindfulness journal’ that I write in the morning as a way to start off my day. I have not particularly know what that means yet, but I’m going to do this. (I want this to be part to a bigger ‘morning routine’ resolution, which journaling is a part.) 2 - Write smarter not harder. There was some consideration into increasing my yearly word count, which you read above was 300,000 for 2017. However, I think that is a good amount to shoot for, being a heft, y’know 300,000. It’s also manageable with my life with a full time job, being a part time grad student, and having a social life and other hobbies. So I do not want to write harder… I want to write smarter. So what the fuck do I mean by that? Several things… (Because when one sets goals they should be measurable and have a plan to accomplish them)... a) Stop writing in front of the TV like I think I can write into the TV. b) Use more structure/prep before writing novel-length original fiction. I find I can ‘wing it’ when it comes to original short stories and to fanfiction of any length. (I believe this type of writer, in certain circle, is called a ‘pantser’ as in a seat of your pants writer, and as opposed to a ‘planner.’) Perhaps I can be a pantser with these because I’ve had more practice with both of those genres and perhaps because they are bit more low stake. However, I struggle with novel-length original fiction, often starting strong and then the story drifting away somewhere 30,000-40,000 words in. I want to finish things goddamn it! I need to prep better. My first plan it to use the advice I’ve gleaned from a wonderful writing book I just read called The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. I also have personal resolutions such as above mentioned morning routine and maybe, finally, getting myself to stop biting my fucking nails, but writing dominates a big part of it. Remember when you formulate your New Year’s Resolutions or any big goals throughout the year to plan them properly. Set yourself up for success! And good luck. Here’s my straight up disclaimer: I do not intend this to be a snobby hate fest for ebooks supposed inferiority in comparison to print/physical books. This is intended to be an exploration of my reasons, as well as a thesis on what makes ebooks lack a certain appeal for readers like me. Disclaimer ended.
There are probably several reasons that need to be addressed first before I get to my thesis. First of all, despite being a smack-dab-in-the-middle millennial, I was a late adopter to smartphones, having only transitioned from my flip phone that had battery power that would last a goddamn week, to a smartphone about one and a half years ago in summer 2016. For reasons of monetary frugality. Which is the same reason why I never had a tablet or ereading device before that point. It’s not that I’m a luddite, but my favorite piece of technology is not my phone but will always be laptop computers, recently being my wonderfully portable chromebook. As a writer, having a qwerty keyboard is a necessity for a useable piece of tech. All this to illustrate the point that (although you can read ebooks on computers), I never owned one of the portable devices used for ereading until fairly recently. Second of all, I’ve worked consistently in the public library since I graduated from college in 2012, meaning I’ve always had free and easy access to every book I could think of without even having to drive out of my way to pick them up. Third of all, I must consider my book buying habits. See my point above: public library and free books. I am a giant library user, and a giant reader, and a giant book lover, but also frugal and have limited space. I don’t buy every book I read or want to read. I buy books I know I want to reread, to pick up again, skim favorite parts, and put sticky notes in. I buy books for aesthetic reasons: for the cover art, for anniversary editions, for complete sets. I have multiple copies of the Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings, and The Outsiders entirely for aesthetic and collector reasons. I also buy strange and interesting finds in used book stores for discounted prices, although that experience tends to be more like a search through a thrift shop or antique shop for hidden treasures than a trip to Barnes and Noble. As you can see, the discounted price for ebooks does very little for me when I can free books from a library and want to buy physical copies of my favorite books and of the prettiest books. Someone: “But what if you want to pack several books for a trip?” Me: “I just make room to pack several books. No seriously, I packed like four books for a weeklong beach trip. Reading on my phone at the beach while wearing sunglasses doesn’t sound like it is going to work so well anyway, does it?” Since getting my phone (and before then, using a computer), I have borrowed several ebooks via library services and purchased a few as well. (Let me make clear right now that I’m differentiating here between ebooks and eaudiobooks. eAudiobooks are the bomb, but that’s apples and oranges. Audiobooks, whether on cassette tape, CD, or digital are essentially the same end product on different types of devices.) The reading experience has never really clicked for me. But here’s the strange thing… the problem is not reading on a device that I find troubling. I read a lot on my devices, computer and phone. From blogs to news sites to even lots and lots of fanfiction. I’m comfortable reading on a device. My excuse cannot be eye strain or the distractions of the internet that is just a touch away when I have a device in my hand (which are the common issues I’ve heard.) So to my thesis: I propose that the problem with ebooks is their format. In their desperation to get the reluctant to convert, they decided to format ebooks ike codex books. (Unfamiliar with the term codex book, just think books as you know them, sheets of paper held together by a spaine as opposed to say… scrolls). They have artificial page flips and print book formatting. While the user is given control over the size of the text and even have a few font options, ebooks are trying to look like print books. And I don’t like it. Like I said, I read a lot online, and reading on a screen is a different experience than reading a physical book. For example, the page flips. Everywhere else online, we read by scrolling down, not by flipping pages. Having read fanfiction for many years before the ebook boom, that is more natural to me than the page flips, and is a more natural reading experience than flipping a page. We (in the west) are taught to read left to right, top to bottom, and we just want our ears to keep going down. Flipping the page is a necessity of the codex. There is no need for it on a screen. Furthermore, repeating many people who have said the same thing, it is a lot easier to flip through the pages of a print book than an ebook. Let us scroll. Let us use search and find features like internet browsers have casually built in. No, I’m am not proposing we have endless scrolling 80,000 word novels. Again, I hail to the formatting decisions of fanfiction sites like fanfiction.net and AO3.org. Let the read scroll and read for the length of a chapter, and then have a next and previous buttons. That is also how blogs and sometimes longer news stories do it too. Another nitpick, the spacing of the words on the ebooks page. Again, they emulate book formatting which is standard English practice: indented paragraphs with no spaces between. Perhaps you have noticed the unspoken rules of internet writing and publishing. (Maybe they are spoken somewhere, but I’ve just picked it up by observation.) Look at my blog post. Go look at a news article on the New York Times website. Notice something? No paragraph indents. Instead, there is a line space between paragraphs. I believe this is done probably because it is easy to format as well as easier to read on a screen. (Additionally, I believe that serif fonts are easier to read in print, and san serif fonts are easier to read on the screen, but New York Times haven’t caught up with this one yet). I think ebooks would be a more enjoyable experience if they emulated the way every other field is publishing online, and how online readers usually read. And it definitely would for me. |
Margery BayneInsights from the life of an aspiring, struggling writer; a passionate reader, and a working librarian. Archives
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