Nothing but the effects of dust and vapor in the thin skin of air

Been reading rionaleonhart's post about writing strengths/weaknesses. It's quite fun to analyse your own stuff, trying to avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect. I am, overall, quite happy with my writing, though I feel I lack any kind of concrete style, so this is a fairly self-deprecating list (I'm arrogant enough to start out assuming I'm perfect, and so this is me picking holes in that).

- I like to think I'm fairly good at both dialogue and description, but I can't do both at once. People have conversations in voids, or hang out in scenery with nothing but indirect speech to tide them over. Mushing together tends to end up with something along the lines of:

"Dialogue," he verbed, actioning.

"Dialogue dialogue," she verbed adverbly, actioning in scenery. "Dialogue."

He improbably-verbed, "Dialogue." He actioned.

Characters either hang in space for the entire the conversation, or accompany every sentence with some form of fidget. I also can't handle a conversation between more than three people; characters go completely mute. Council scenes in Greenhelm are a pain, because there are just too many characters, all of whom ought to be saying something relevant (often the same thing, or over the top of each other). This is why some of them tend to fall asleep, or sulk.

Also, it's the same actions over and over. All the show-don't-tell has left me with a group of actions that I use as shorthands for emotions, but they don't always show the same emotion (which is realistic, but when the one character uses the same action twice in one conversation for two different things, and another uses it in response for something else entirely, it's kinda meaningless). Characters are constantly tilting and cocking their heads, chewing on their lips, and tugging on their own hair. I have to watch myself to make sure I don't use any of them more than once in a section, and not by multiple different people in a chapter. All my characters are bald with terrible neck strain and ragged lips.

Also, improbable verbs and adjectives. Which, later, I can't remember why I used. Sometimes it's cool, but a lot of them time they just feel like typos. I just get sick of words like "said" and "asked".

( And I continue... )

Your go! Also, comment. Am I right about myself?

---

Simultaneous speech. How do you convey it without priviledging one statement over the other? Or am I asking the impossible for text?

So, I wrote an article on UK copyright for the magazine, which was huge and unweildy and a little rambly, so I lopped off the case studies. I'll rework them into an article for next issue (the Lexicon case having gone to court then, which'll help), but I thought you guys might be a little interested in a few examples of extreme stupidity. Sorry about the style; unpolished article can be a little grating, I know. I hadn't really thought that I wrote differently for lj/articles/fiction etc, but I really do. There's not the number of links I'd put into a web thing either, since a paper article full of links tends to be a bit clunky.

( plagiarism )

( Fanfiction )

( Harry Potter and the Lexicon )

Anyway, I just though you guys might find these interesting, since I know a lot of people won't have heard about the Lori Jareo and Lanaia Lee fiascos (unlike the Lexicon, which hit national news). I will rewrite this for the summer issue of the magazine, hopefully incudin the results of the Lexicon case. If you spot any glaring errors, do point them out ^_^

It's almost 1 am. Usually, I'm in bed by ten, just because I get bored. Recently, that's not beeen happening, even though I'm always deathly bored anyway. Tonight, I had a sudden darkfic craving, and went into melodramatic 'essay' mode. Livejouanl does that to me - ever since I got this I've been writing really random nothings, which are generally just very pretentious. Like the following, really.

( Sleep Grows Dull )