I’ve had a
change of opinion about my Sarcasm Quotes idea. I’m still a fan of using
a superscripted S in place of quotation marks to denote sarcasm, but I also
suggested that regional accents should be included in this system. That was a terrible
idea. It was brought on by my poor ability to write phonetically, and was
basically a tool for laziness. It wouldn’t even work very well since having to
write all of a foreign characters dialog with the same quotes would be tedious
and wouldn’t carry any more meaning that just establishing an accent once, then
using normal quotes. The plan was probably just to use them when making movie
references and what not, but the accent is typically implied if the reader is
familiar with the quote, so what’s the point?
My new idea
is to stay closer to the idea of sarcasm quotes, and use quotes to show other
expressive forms of dialog. I made a new list using single letters that can be
found on my Quotes List page. It
now includes quotes like A for Angry, M for Monotone, S for Sarcastic, and W
for Whiney. I tried to find an elemental style of speech for each letter, since
in my new system the styles are made to be combinable. Now you can write DS for
Deadpan Sarcasm, ES for Excited Sarcasm, PS for Pained Sarcasm, or TS for
Thoughtful Sarcasm. This makes it possible to not only show general sarcasm in
dialog, but the specific type of sarcasm, which I’m pretty excited about. The
other styles can be combined as appropriate too, but sarcasm seems to be the
easiest one to mix, which is why I still consider it the backbone of the
system. Maybe I just want to make sarcasm as fun to write as it is to speak.
The major
flaw with this idea is my own limited understanding of language. Separating and
describing the elemental styles of speech seems like a job for a linguist, not for
some dude with self-diagnosed Asperger’s. If I had a lot of money I’d fund the
creation of a system, similar to how the Shavian Alphabet was done
(which is a pretty sweet alphabet by the way, although I think phonetic
alphabets should be more careful with their symbol choices so that bad
handwriting won’t be a major issue), but I don’t, and working on it myself is
more fun anyway. Suggested additions or improvements would be most appreciated
though, and the system is still very much in a nascent state. I don’t even have
styles for I and Y yet, and can’t think of a way to describe J for Jovial that
isn’t exactly the same as E for Excited. The description in general are all
fairly crude. I would love to do this well, since a general guide to expressive
speech forms would be valuable even if it wasn’t codified into written language,
but I just keep struggling with the difference between tone and pitch. I do
think I was able to nail Q for Questioning though since a raise in pitch at the
end is an easy one. If only everything were that simple.
 |
| The Shavian Alphabet |
In the end,
this may just be another idea that is good in theory, but doesn’t really pan
out in the execution. It’s fun to think about though, and expect to see some of
these new quotes showing up in my future writing. I’m tempted to do some more
dialog heavy writing, such as a short story or something to see if this system
would be too tiresome when fully implemented (maybe it could spice up my old Jurassic Park erotic fanfiction). Sarcasm
Quotes are an ongoing project that I will likely continue in the same random
and unscientific manner in which it started. Until the next time.
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