Your work looks good. Articulate and well constructed. You introduce a number of speakers right up front, but get to sorting them out before too much time passes.
You might consider standardizing the colors a bit -- and be careful when using quoted dialog. Word processors tend to want to capitalize the next word after a period, and this happened to you in several places. For example,
"Call me Molli." Molli said with a smile.
should be
"Call me Molli," Molli said with a smile.
Similarly,
"Ho there, travelers..." The equine said.
should be
"Ho there, travelers," the equine said.
In the latter case, since the dialog break tends to create a pause, you would only use the trailing ellipses when you're really forcing the reader to note that the speaker's attention had trailed off. That didn't seem to be appropriate for the context here.
Generally, dialog that is followed by attribution gets an ending comma, exclamation mark, or question mark as appropriate.
Also -- many women have "curves in all the right places." Still, this is a too-easy phrase, and rarely part of an impersonal narration. Don't just slyly allude -- describe her! What does she look like? The reader's mind is your canvas; don't stint on the brushstrokes.
And while I think about it, I AM planning on changing font colors for each character, as well as the font itself for their speaking style (Mordecai's a bit gruff; Juvessa sounds like Xena).
Color and font changes for characters is a novelty, and sometimes an annoying one. It also limits the media that you can use for your pieces.
I think you'll find that well-written dialog does not need that trick.
It's occasionally used in comic strips, and sometimes to good effect, because speech attribution is merely the stem of a bubble and that can be ambiguous. Schlock Mercenary used to do this, for example, but it has largely moved past the technique since then.
"Schlock Mercenary" still does it, it's just generally more subtle now. Ennesby and the new AI (whose name escapes me at the moment) both use different fonts from the standard human one. The host on "Glamour Assault" always speaks in italics.
The Sandman comic books did the same trick, to good effect.
But I think it works much better in comics, since they're a visual media, than in text-only stories. It works as an occassional tool in text -- for instance, Terry Pratchett's "Death" has his own font for dialogue, which gives his speech a unique emphasis and "sound". But I wouldn't suggest it for every character.
Your work looks good. Articulate and well constructed. You introduce a number of speakers right up front, but get to sorting them out before too much time passes.
You might consider standardizing the colors a bit -- and be careful when using quoted dialog. Word processors tend to want to capitalize the next word after a period, and this happened to you in several places. For example,
"Call me Molli." Molli said with a smile.
should be
"Call me Molli," Molli said with a smile.
Similarly,
"Ho there, travelers..." The equine said.
should be
"Ho there, travelers," the equine said.
In the latter case, since the dialog break tends to create a pause, you would only use the trailing ellipses when you're really forcing the reader to note that the speaker's attention had trailed off. That didn't seem to be appropriate for the context here.
Generally, dialog that is followed by attribution gets an ending comma, exclamation mark, or question mark as appropriate.
Also -- many women have "curves in all the right places." Still, this is a too-easy phrase, and rarely part of an impersonal narration. Don't just slyly allude -- describe her! What does she look like? The reader's mind is your canvas; don't stint on the brushstrokes.
Best wishes.
===|==============/ Level Head
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Hmmm... will do. It just got updated with 18 pages of new material. I'm ahead of myself.
Cut and pasted to my notes for later. Thanks for the input! :)
Lizard Rat out.
Scribbling Lupine in Albany NY
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Lizard Rat out.
Making More Notes in Albany NY
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I think you'll find that well-written dialog does not need that trick.
It's occasionally used in comic strips, and sometimes to good effect, because speech attribution is merely the stem of a bubble and that can be ambiguous. Schlock Mercenary used to do this, for example, but it has largely moved past the technique since then.
===|==============/ Level Head
Reply
The Sandman comic books did the same trick, to good effect.
But I think it works much better in comics, since they're a visual media, than in text-only stories. It works as an occassional tool in text -- for instance, Terry Pratchett's "Death" has his own font for dialogue, which gives his speech a unique emphasis and "sound". But I wouldn't suggest it for every character.
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"Tag", an abbreviation of the ship's name, Touch and Go. The ship itself got an ornate christening, but some time later the Captain began referring to his AI as Tag.
In the "Schlock Mercenary" universe, the ship's AI is often given a name derivative of the name of the ship itself. Recently, for instance, we see that the battleplate Popigai has an AI named "Popi".
Now, with "Tag," we have a ship's AI name that is a diminutive of both the name of the ship -- and its captain. ];-)
===|==============/ Level Head
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