Meta-fiction, first draft
Any criticism not already contained in the text would be appreciated. Apologies for any formatting issues. Word copy-pastes into LJ imperfectly. Several sections aren't indented, but looking at the HTML, it's a mess of span's and style's and junk that I don't know enough to mess with. Just pretend it looks pretty.

This Vaguely Suggests the Content of the Following

By Vance Berisford

“Perhaps we should explain who we are,” he said across the table.

“No,” came the response. “That would be too obvious, too blunt. A more delicate way to introduce characters is to let their traits be known indirectly. For example, if you let them see two characters conversing, they will learn all sorts of things.”

“In what way?”

“Well, they will certainly change what they are picturing when they see this next pronoun,” she said. “They knew we were at a table, but maybe they imagined two males, maybe they thought it was a board room table, or a poker table. Now they are picturing things differently. They see a man and a woman. They see a kitchen table, maybe, or a restaurant. They suspect a relationship, love; the more sinister suspect that we are fighting.”

“They would definitely think we were fighting if they could tell that I was raising my voice,” he said, raising his voice. “But I still think that we should use the beginning to introduce ourselves. Otherwise, why would anyone be interested?”

“No, the beginning is an exposition - a way to set the stage. They’ll figure out who we are eventually. I say start in the middle of an argument. People will be intrigued. They will want to know why we were arguing, what we’re arguing about, and who wins. Or we could just let them see us talking about something random, like the following punctuation: a colon, two commas, a period.”

“Yeah, but we can’t start a story out talking about structure and grammar and…”

“Three periods together are called an ellipsis,” she said, interrupting. “To indicate an interruption of a speaker, you can end a line with an ellipsis. You can also use an ellipsis on a line by itself to represent a short passage of time in silence, especially if the silence is awkward. We could talk about things like that.

“If I were to start talking about something else, entirely” she continued, “the correct thing to do is start a new paragraph with an open quotation mark, even though the previous paragraph ends without one. But it’s really a matter of personal preference and aesthetics that determines where the boundaries of paragraphs are.”

“No, a proper paragraph should start with a thesis statement,” he explained. “The second sentence should give a piece of information supporting the first. The third should give some additional information. The forth etcetera. And so on. And so on. Seven sentences is probably too much. The last sentence should recount the thesis, in order to form a proper paragraph.

“But this isn’t what we’re here for. No one wants a grammar lesson. I’m the kind of person who wants to introduce myself. I state facts. I write short sentences. I use simple sentence structures. That’s who I am.”

“Well, that’s not the way I think it should go. I’m not going to describe myself. We can do better than just a list of traits.”

“I guess that’s up to you.”

…

“So, what now then?” she asked, after a short passage of time in awkward silence.

“You still need to develop your character.”

“Umm… A priest, a rabbi, and an Irishman walk into a bar. The bartender turns to them, takes one look, and says ‘What is this - a joke?’”

“What was that?”

“A joke.”

“Ok,” he said, half asking.

“It’s meant to help make me seem personable and likable, without me having to say how personable and likable I am,” she said. Smiling. “See what a mean about subtlety?”

He nodded, unimpressed.

…

“So, what now then?” she asked.

“Now its time to indicate that conflict exists. A good way to do that would be to HAVE SOME CAPITAL LETTERS!” he yelled.

“You can’t start yelling yet. It’s far too early for that. You can show anger and raised voice through the use of italics. It will show that we are in conflict, but that we haven’t exploded into a full-scale fight. Yet.”

Italics also represent internal deliberations, she thought. To emphasize text that is already written in italics, you just leave those words out of italics, which can be very confusing to readers.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m not thinking, I’m talking.”

“Thinking should be done in brackets.”

“No. Brackets around a text indicate a note added ex post facto [Ed: after the fact], by someone other than the author. Some modern[ist] writers [John Barth, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, for example] use this tactically to indicate that while the narrator may seem to be knowledgeable or even semi-omniscient, there is someone above them, some super-omniscient interrupter [even though there isn’t], that knows more than the narrator, that will reveal some secrets hidden even from the creator of this world [but it’s really the same person] at the time the passage was written [2/4/2008 9:09pm, EST]. It introduces another level of abstraction into the standard, three-level reader[-editor]-narrator-character construct.”

“Spoken paragraphs shouldn’t be so long. It’s unrealistic.”

“Yeah, people don’t talk like that in real life.”

“I know. Short sentence supporting my point.”

“Two words.”

“One.”

“Sentence fragment to signify rapid exchange of dialog.”

“Brief follow-up.”

“This is starting to get confusing.”

“I know. There hasn’t been a ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ for a while.”

“People have likely forgotten who is speaking,” one of them said.

It is usually a bad idea to write a story entirely as dialog. Readers get no sense of immersion; their senses are not engaged by long strings of dialog. A second-rate author is in danger of leaving the reader to the mercy of his temporal reality – a slight pressure on the thumbs holding back the covers of the book he’s reading; a light smell of sharpened pencils; the hard contrast of black Arial over soothing, intentionally off-white paper; the crinkle of the starchy pages. All this serves to remind the reader that he is separate from the action, that he has no stake in the characters, that his reality is not what he is reading.

However, you don’t want to spend too much time describing the scene. Characters are really the heart of any story and you shouldn’t wander too far away from them. The exception to this rule is that you may discourse freely at the beginning or end of a section. You may want to spend time setting the mood for a particular exchange, or explaining the significance of what has just occurred. You could spend several paragraphs elaborating liberally.

An extra line break after a paragraph indicates the end of a section – that the action is moving into a different phase. If this is the first such break in a story, astute readers will know that the exposition phase is over. After the characters and setting are introduced, the story moves into its heart, sometimes called the rising action. The middle of a story serves to reveal and prolong the conflict, and yet, ultimately, to usher in its resolution. These two functions are both complimentary and contradictory.

Exposing a dialectic truth during the story can make a writer seem profound. Readers may, in fact, be confused when it is explained that something is “both complimentary and contradictory”, but they will dwell on it. They may figure it out, they may ignore it, but either way, the reader will think that the paradox that has been shown exposes both the complex nature of reality and the author’s wisdom and insight. Explaining candid facts that enlighten the reader will make the author seem intelligent and honest. Thus, a good writer will serve to both confuse and enlighten the reader. These two functions are both complimentary and contradictory.

A writer shouldn’t rely on this technique too much, though. It tends to make him look showy, pompous, and arrogant. Readers want to feel like they are reading the work of someone intelligent or wise, but they don’t want their faces rubbed in it. A good writer will both display his intelligence and restrain his prose. These two functions are both complimentary and contradictory.

“This is going awfully,” he said.

“Yes, we’re bored and we’re boring,” she agreed.

“We’ve been here for hours while the previous sentences were written and rewritten. They still don’t sound right, and now I don’t even feel like arguing anymore.”

“Me neither. But why would anyone want to read that? Two people sitting around, agreeing, talking grammar.”

…

“No one, I guess.”

…

“We haven’t even really shown our characters yet.”

…

“Should I ask you a question?” he asked, unenthusiastically.

“If you want to, but I’d just give a noncommittal answer,” she answered. Noncommittally.

…

“I know exactly what the problem is with this story,” she said ominously.

In order to heighten tension or prolong suspense during climactic moments, certain second-rate writers will insert a paragraph of tangentially related material during a key plot point. In movies and television, there are a few tricks that accomplish a similar goal: slow-motion footage, zoom-ins on the faces of key characters, commercial breaks, etc, anything that wastes time and ticks away precious, nervous seconds. You see it a lot in soap operas. It’s harder to accomplish in books. With written words, the expansion is spatial, not temporal. People are free to scan down the page; their eyes will jump almost instinctively to the next line of dialog. They may ignore the paragraph that is meant entirely to distract them, or only skim it for Capitalized Words. Or even if they read it, their attention will be focused on anticipating the next line of dialog and they won’t absorb anything; they will read and immediately forget anything that isn’t the story’s climax. Unfortunately, writers run the risk of alienating uncommitted readers. If the tension hasn’t been fully developed, or if the reader hasn’t found himself interested in what happens to the characters, he may get bogged down in the details of a filler paragraph. A boring story will begin to seem even more boring. He may read every word, not knowing or caring that the key moment is just inches away, that he can skip ahead to that all-important turning point, to the crucial, momentous line of dialog that will allow him to experience the vicarious satisfaction of the characters. Hopefully you’ve stopped reading this paragraph by now. This is just filler to illustrate my point. Please continue.

“The problem here,” she continued, “is really with our second-rate author. He reads too much and he has a hard time relating to others. His writing suffers for both of these. He has trouble writing believable characters because he relates so poorly with other people; he doesn’t understand or handle human emotions well, even his own. In fact, if he understood people a little better, he probably would spend more time socializing, living and enjoying his life, instead of wasting his time in meaningless, modernist books. And when he did write, it would be about people, about love and happiness, sadness and conflict; it wouldn’t be a mess of self-referential literary devices; it wouldn’t be this preposterous meta-fiction.

“He thinks a short appeal to his isolation and sadness towards the end of an absurd story will leave you in a more sympathetic mood, that it will make this outlandish, clumsy story seem poignant or endearing.

“But it doesn’t. It’s still clumsy. Look at us, you and I. Obviously we’re allegorical constructs, but even that hasn’t come off right,” she said. “We’re described only as pronouns,” she said. “Is that all we are?” she asked. “We don’t do anything except talk. And even that is awkward and stilted. There are no expressions of fervor or humanity, for chrissake! The only emotions we’ve shown are through typography and excessive punctuation!!!” she exclaimed. Suddenly leaning forward. “Where is the action?” she said. She pounded her fist on the table. She had a flash of intensity in her eyes, as if ignited by her sudden outburst of passion.

The man gazed intently in her eyes for several seconds before she sighed and slouched back into her chair. “You are right,” he said, moving his gaze to the floor. “No one knows what we look like, what our history is, why we’re who we are, or where we are. Why should anyone care what we do?” As he spoke he held his Bic pen in his long, skinny fingers, tapping it casually on the yellow pad resting on the long, clean, cherry-wood table where he was sitting alone. [No] As he spoke he ran his long, skinny fingers over the scar on the back of his left hand. The scar came from when he crashed his bike when he was 5 years old. [No, that’s me] As he spoke, he ran his long, skinny fingers through his crimson-red beard. The beard was short, but it had taken him a month to grow it. People assumed his red beard implied Irish descent, but it actually came from his grandfather, who was Scottish, and after whom he was [No, still me] As he spoke, he let his medium-sized, average-length fingers rest idly on the table.

Instinctively, she fingered the scar on her left hand, which she got when she crashed her bike when [damn it!] Instinctively, she fingered the scar on her right hand which she got when she crashed [ahem] which she got from a fishing accident as a child. [Better]

“This is going awfully,” he said. “We should just end this. This is the end. Here”

“No, we can’t end like that”, she insisted. “This isn’t that kind of story. It’s going to end with some sort of ambiguity, maybe leaving the reader to wonder if the resolution has already been given and that he has simply missed out on the point of the whole…”