Please stop doing this one weird trick!

[conuly]

Yes, it's true that each time you switch speakers you start a new paragraph, but that does not mean that you stay in the old paragraph right up until the moment somebody else speaks.

As soon as the action switches from Alice to Bob, that's when you start the paragraph.



1. Alice shook her head. "I don't think that works, Bob." Bob turned around in confusion.

"Why not? It makes perfect sense to me!" Alice sighed as she struggled to explain.

"It just... doesn't!"

2. Alice shook her head. "I don't think that works, Bob."

Bob turned around in confusion. "Why not? It makes perfect sense to me!"

Alice sighed as she struggled to explain. "It just... doesn't!"

You see? One of these definitely flows better.

On an unrelated note, if somebody says they welcome otherwise unsolicited editorial corrections of spelling, grammar, general word choice, exactly how much should one take them at their word, and how many suggestions are too many?

Comments

[hilarita]

I'd drop a few suggestions (2-3) first of all, and then ask if they're still interested in editorial suggestions.

[cactuswatcher]

I think this is a matter of style, and can't be written in stone. That said, I agree in principle, and that's the way I write my own things. But I've been translating somethings lately that have had many paragraphs of the following form which obviously was standard for a long time.

(From Tom Sawyer)
Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as much as a week and at breakfast one morning Sid said:

"Tom you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me awake half the time."

Since I'm not trying to copy style 100% I'd usually break the paragraph then start a new paragraph with 'At breakfast one morning Sid said, "Tom...' But occasionally I leave the change of subject and colon and start the new paragraph with the quote. If the first paragraph has been changing subjects quickly, and the quote is something short like a non-pivotal 'yes' or 'no,' I might even put the quote in the first paragraph. It depends on the context.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, this is something that a line editor should pick up, and it makes a huge improvement.

[redbird]

I would probably start by offering a couple of corrections like "there's a word missing here, I think it might be Alice" or "'sook' here should be 'shook'? and see what sort of response I got. If they seemed to actually appreciate those, I might give them some grammar corrections or the sort of copy editing that's partly a matter of opinion. I wouldn't start with saying an adverb would work better at a different place in the sentence, or that "so" would work better than "consequently." At one point, a lot of reviews and discussion about the Thomas Covenant books said some version of "take away the writer's thesaurus"

I occasionally leave comments on AO3 that, after saying I liked the work, have "unsolicited spelling/grammar correction." Those are for either very obvious things, or ones that made me stop reading to try ti figure them out, as in the "there's a word missing here, I think it might be Alice" where it matters where the missing word is Alice, Toto, or tea.

[cimorene]

+1 Unfortunately there's no way to know in advance quite how far they mean it.

[topaz_eyes]

if somebody says they welcome otherwise unsolicited editorial corrections of spelling, grammar, general word choice, exactly how much should one take them at their word, and how many suggestions are too many?

I welcome unsolicited editorial corrections, because I do my own editing. I know I make grammar mistakes and less-than-ideal word choices, because I'll find them months or years later. :-\

About taking writers at their word for it? If there are only a few minor corrections, I think you can take the writer's word because they obviously put effort into line edits. If there are a lot of major errors, they probably won't be as welcoming as they sound. If you say anything at all, point out only the most obvious errors that directly interfere with the story.

(As a beta I've corrected bona fide editorial mistakes that the writer then reversed. While that's their prerogative, I won't beta for them anymore.)

If the writer claims to welcome unsolicited corrections, but also uses tags like "no beta we die like..." then imho just move on. It's not worth your time.

[cimorene]

Although in your example, Sid's actions are part of the same sentence (and not in error; it's a natural sentence and in character), and the convention that you don't split mid-sentence has precedence.

But that aside, you could also argue that it was an example of knowing 'rule-breaking' on Twain's part. That rule often has to be negotiated with when the narrator voice is colloquial and naturalistic like this, since in speech it's common to join multiple people's actions and words in one sentence.

Of course that's part of why you said it's a matter of style - stylistic conventions are always a matter of context. But I do think it's a case of an exception that proves the rule, because that line break shows his awareness of it; and he is still evidently trying to facilitate reading comprehension.

Whereas passages like conuly's above, that go against convention by dividing the speaker from the dialogue repeatedly without any plausible reason, are probably the result of misunderstood stylistic guidelines and not deliberate authorial choices.

[conuly]

Moreover, Mark Twain was writing over 100 years ago. Conventions in orthography change over that time, just as they do in speech.

[mount_oregano]

As an editor, I only correct things that are objectively wrong, and for which I can cite the rule in the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the main authoritative professional style guide in the United States. Merriam-Webster is the main authoritative dictionary for word usage.

I usually want to be paid, too.

[movingfinger]

I just don't read really badly written texts for recreation these days. There are so many well-written texts to enjoy. Should I happen to open something that looks like your Alice and Bob example, I will give it a page or so to see whether this was an accident, and if it is the pattern and I will be bumped and jogged off-step through the whole thing like that, I close it and read something else.

Unless I have personally been asked to critique, proofread, or edit something, I do not.

[conuly]

In the particular cases I'm not publicly shaming, the writing itself isn't bad. The writer just has orthographical and/or formatting issues.

The writing is good enough for me to ignore it, but omg.

[alexseanchai]

in these examples it's not even a flow issue, like, it would be a flow issue if the dialogue had dialogue tags, but since none of it does, we're looking to the sentences with actions to tell us who's speaking, and if the same person's action and dialogue are in different paragraphs, we're getting confused about who's speaking

[adafrog]

I hate when people do the first one.

[darkoshi]

I'm reading a German ebook where there isn't always a new paragraph when the speaker switches. It took me a while to get used to it.
That made me wonder if German doesn't have the same rule. But after doing some searches now, I found 2 pages which indicate that German *does* have the same rule. So apparently it's only this book that wasn't following that rule. Though in the author's defense, he did say the book hadn't been nicely formatted for publishing yet.

[sallymn]

Oh dear, yes that is one of the mistakes that though maybe seeming minor to some writers, I think actually makes for jarring the reader so... needs to be fixed, and learned.

[marahmarie]

That's like me - I don't try to fix style unless it mangles things beyond redemption, and if it does 1) it usually can't be fixed anyhow, at most it can possibly be smoothed out and 2) it's not worth blowback from someone attached to their style to the point of not taking any correction or criticism on it (been there; it sucks).

I've also come to see over the years there's something to be said for just letting a writer write as they do, not trying to mess with it - to let their voice shine through even to the detriment of established norms on how to write. Personality over style, I guess.