To Market, To Market....

Today is Market Day. Which is always an exciting day for me. Fresh meat, fresh fish, fresh produce, all in one beautiful open market by the water. I have never once come home empty handed, and don't intend to today. I shall return, laden with fruits and cheeses and succulent meats. I enjoy going down there on the weekdays, as it's not so crowded and there's a good selection to pick through. And with the sun shining, it's a lovely day for it.

I will probably be a bad Fey and drop by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I have a horrible sweet tooth, and I have never been able to stick to a caffiene-free diet. I've stopped even trying at this point. And last time we were down there the trays were laden with giant strawberries, dipped in chocolate and smothered with more toppings than I can list. But for lunch the Chinese bakery with their delicious meat filled goodies, and a gelato at the Italian place.

All in all, today looks to be a good day.

It's All Just Words....

So rivendellrose came along to Market today, and we got to chatting about fanfiction and dialogue. I know for me, some character's dialogue comes extremely easy, and some makes me pull my hair out in frustration. Some characters have a more fluid speech pattern, while some have a speech pattern that's so rigid any deviation seems glaringly wrong. Prime examples of these in the HPverse are Moody and Tonks. They both have very set speech patterns and very colloquial speech patterns. And dialogue, for me, is as much a factor of IC as anything else.

Moody's is very gruff, almost working class sounding. He doesn't use many big, long words. Reading dialogue in which Moody says something like 'this place has a foreboding feel to it' jars me massively. Cultured speak from Moody seems to me to be OOC and out of place.

Tonks' is very sharp and truncated. She's one of the few characters we see who uses slang. She uses a lot of contractions, short words and a boisterous choice in vocabulary. I've seen Tonksfic where she sounds cultured and sophisticated, which kills it for me. The only time it worked for me was in rivendellrose's fic which was a take off of 'My Fair Lady'.

For Highlanderverse, Joe springs to mind. Joe uses a lot of slang, a lot of metaphors in his speech, and a lot of rougher vocabulary choices. He also uses less-than-modern slang, which fits his character well. Modern slang terms and flawless sentences don't work for him. Take any conversation between him and Methos and you'll see a huge difference. He also uses lots of grunts and monosyllables. If he doesn't have to say the whole word, he generally doesn't.

The opposite goes, too. Cultured, elite characters suddenly speaking in coarse language or using rough slang. And it can be difficult keeping dialogue consistent with characters like that. I've rewritten more dialogue than anything else, honestly. And coming across badly written dialogue in fan fiction bothers me just as much as OOC character actions.

I also have the most amazing pocket watch in all existence. It has a skull and crossbones on it.

Drabble!

New drabble posted over at snupin100! The challenge this week is 'full moon'. Always a fun topic.