There was a girl on a romance novel reader forum who was like "I read 300 books this year but I only read the dialogue" And at first I was a bit appalled but then I was like "wait. Why don't we suggest comics to these people!?!??!" - ThreadSky

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social • 70 days ago

There was a girl on a romance novel reader forum who was like "I read 300 books this year but I only read the dialogue"

And at first I was a bit appalled but then I was like "wait. Why don't we suggest comics to these people!?!??!"

Comments

pigstain.bsky.social•69 days ago

Nobody hates actually reading more than avid 'readers' it seems

tigerpournelle.bsky.social•70 days ago

What in the world made you feel that this was a problem and that you had to step in and that "we" needed to come up with a solution for "these people" who are enjoying their thing.

sarahmargs.bsky.social•70 days ago

???? She makes comics, Einstein

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

Ahahhaah aAaaahhhh AHAHHAHAHAHHAHAAA

agent53.bsky.social•70 days ago

She's missing out, because half the entertainment value of a romance novel is seeing how many synonyms of penis and vagina the author uses.

mythicaldragoness.bsky.social•70 days ago

Only read the dialogue?! I am trying to imagine how that would .......🤔........nope not understanding how that would be a good reading experience.

Like your solution !

littlegiantsquid.bsky.social•69 days ago

If it's trashy kindle unlimited romance titles I would get it, they're probably burnt out from reading basically the same story over and over and don't realize

mythicaldragoness.bsky.social•69 days ago

Maybe . I tried reading one and that was enough for me so I will take your word on it. 😂

andstacey.bsky.social•70 days ago

Right? Plus, how would you do it? Just look for quotation marks, or wouldn't you basically have to skim the whole book anyway to find the dialogue. I don't understand this.

mythicaldragoness.bsky.social•70 days ago

Agreed. And with only the conversation it would lose.....context? None of it makes sense.

andstacey.bsky.social•70 days ago

I'd be interested to ask this person about a book after reading it, to see what the book was about to them.

As the OP said, comic books makes a lot of sense for this person.

mythicaldragoness.bsky.social•70 days ago

That would be interesting. Good point.

andstacey.bsky.social•70 days ago

Wow, don't think anyone's ever said I'd made a good point before, especially online! This place really is the anti-Twitter! 🙏🏽😂

pocketsizedsatan.bsky.social•70 days ago

Thats genius

troubleddivination.bsky.social•70 days ago

That is insanity, and I refuse to believe thats a real thing, to protect my own sanity.

emotionengineps2.bsky.social•70 days ago

I tried to get back into reading novels but couldn't. Then I started reading Scott Pilgrim and finished about a quarter of the 1st volume in one sitting.

emotionengineps2.bsky.social•70 days ago

It ain't the greatest but I was hooked in better than the novels I borrowed but never read

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

Scott pilgrim is pure comics it's a fun read!

emotionengineps2.bsky.social•70 days ago

It was fun laughing at how you know what hasn't aged well

mealexsh.bsky.social•70 days ago

I would recommend Shakespeare: not much else but dialogue in his works.

katherinepemberton.bsky.social•70 days ago

Unfortunately I missed my book group meeting last week because of illness. A new guy turned up who apparently doesn’t read books but watches a lot of tv adaptations….

starphaux.bsky.social•70 days ago

Could also be plays

historycat.bsky.social•69 days ago

The term is graphic novels thank you very much.

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•69 days ago

Thick comics chunky comics fat comics

kaurifish.bsky.social•70 days ago

I love graphic novels/comics and dialogue in general (some of my favorite parts to write).
But a good interior monologue, scenery description or details of a meal? Gotta have them.

resist33.bsky.social•70 days ago

Someone told me my memes were awful!
I told them they weren’t memes, they were pictures so Maggots could understand what I was talking about!

aa-ok99.bsky.social•70 days ago

Nice!!

arishem34.bsky.social•69 days ago

Haha!
Oh, wait! As a HUGE comic reader in my day, I recall a TON of narrative, that's the best part. 😉

liluziverurteilung.bsky.social•69 days ago

Galacta's dad! 👀 (I forgot his name 😞)

neilak20.bsky.social•70 days ago

I bet she was so confused by those books, though :o

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

I'm betting she read a synopsis and through the dialogue has a rough enough approximation of the romance story

neilak20.bsky.social•70 days ago

Possibly, but, like very little of the action, I bet.

its-its.bsky.social•70 days ago

I agree with her. Back when I read Anne Rice I gave up excessive description of things like decor, wallpaper, etc. You get a paragraph, tops. I want context, dialogue, and action. I also don’t read names once I know characters, prepositions, articles, and excessive adjectives. Unless it’s poetry.

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

That's rough hahhaa

its-its.bsky.social•70 days ago

I’m sorry. I want to read books quickly. I’m sure I’m not the only person that reads like this. 😅🫠🤫

brian49047.bsky.social•70 days ago

Who reads only dialogue?
Who counts only dialogue as the book?
One romance book is the same as every romance book, just different quality of kinks and fetishes.

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

Nah there's really good ones!

brian49047.bsky.social•70 days ago

I don't need mass market, rom-com, hallmark romance. Hell I don't believe in love. So maybe why I'd prefer to read the old ones then the romance tropes that get rehash today.
I'm just old lol

brian49047.bsky.social•70 days ago

Toy may be right, and I'll admit I don't read romance because the originals (like Romeo or odyssey) are more likely to get second third read then spend my money trying to find new. Just not my vibe. That's OK too.

hungrygren.bsky.social•70 days ago

I mean.. It's not much of a stretch to say one of the greatest and most recognizable pieces of literature(two if you count reading plays) are romances. The odyssey and Romeo and juliet. There's a absurd amount of High Works of Art that are romance.

alexandraerin.com•69 days ago

Romeo and Juliet is tragedy, not romance. All romance is a love story, but not all love stories are romance.

brian49047.bsky.social•69 days ago

Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
It could be argued Anna Karenina could be in that list.

Connecting love and romance even in day-to-day life is dismissive of types of love and types of romance.

brian49047.bsky.social•69 days ago

all romance stories are NOT a love story.

hungrygren.bsky.social•69 days ago

A nothing precludes a romance from also being a tragedy

alexandraerin.com•69 days ago

That's flat out wrong, but I'm not going to keep debating in someone else's comments so I'll just say you have very strong opinions about a subject you have not given much thought or study.

brian49047.bsky.social•70 days ago

Far different then Romances now today though. Yes those are classics, Frankenstein even Dracula could potentially be considered love story's.

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

No even now there's really good ones! I swear haha

chindaswind.bsky.social•70 days ago

It's a bold strategy—speedrunning literature by consuming only the spoken lines, like a book is just a very wordy screenplay. Perhaps the real innovation here is efficiency: why wade through all that pesky "setting" and "description" when you can mainline pure dialogue?

chrisprobably.bsky.social•70 days ago

Recommend John Steinbeck to her. Several of his remarkable books were what he called play-novels: a novel you could convert to a complete play by keeping only the dialog, requiring that every essential to the story be spoken.

dapingianwattle.bsky.social•70 days ago

the nature of humanity is just that every so often someone accidentally invents homestuck again

neverevi.blueskaia.net•70 days ago

I came to say the same thing :o)

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

Like hey if you want to read a lot of books but only want to "read" dialogue HAVE I GOT A GENRE FOR YOU

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

I feel like comics keeps missing the beat on promoting comics outside of our bubble. Like, there's an entire readership that literally is clamoring for what we do they just don't know it LOL

littlestpersimmon.bsky.social•70 days ago

Glad you are OK oomf, and this is a brilliant idea

willowsquest.co.uk•70 days ago

The deciding factor would be whether the person has any visual literacy to be able to "read" the pictures, because there are definitely a subtype of reader that tries out a comic, only reads the bubbles, and then gets confused and bored when they don't understand what's happening lmfao

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

I think that's why scrolling format comics for mobile readers tend to have a wide reach because there's no "where do i look" moment

caramelmachete.bsky.social•70 days ago

I just managed to sell a person asking for recs the suggestion of strangers in paradise, and a year back someone managed with empowered :p
I did try with Jem but I have no idea if it hit but when the shoe is fitting I am recommending

chrismeeks.bsky.social•69 days ago

I also only read the dialogue, but I only read the sentences that start with a Q.

I have no idea what the hell is going on in these books.

livleponge.bsky.social•69 days ago

so kind of like the experience of watching a movie if you are blind. seems fine to me, whatever works

dreaming9090.bsky.social•69 days ago

And what would be wrong with that?

galeca.bsky.social•70 days ago

This is code for she didn’t masturbate. Have you ever read a romance novel? lol.

berriepiy.bsky.social•69 days ago

When my 10 yr old told me she was reading only the dialogue in the Harry Potter books it broke my soul a little. 😂

teawhilewriting.bsky.social•70 days ago

I think a lot of romance and YA readers would easily migrate to a script format. They tend to be speed readers too. I started to get more into comics when I realized there's a whole world beyond superhero stuff, which I'm not as into

rexrexmadamex.bsky.social•69 days ago

Comics are too difficult

davidrodmad.bsky.social•70 days ago

That has to feel like listening to your neighbor's heated conversation through the walls lol

pokestarwind.bsky.social•70 days ago

right, like there’s zero context for these conversations??

ninethenby.bsky.social•69 days ago

My first experiences of Agatha Christie stories were comic adaptation (of which I read the original novels after, but that's besides the point). Just saying that even if they want to read "novels" the comic adaptations are right there!

youngblood5169.bsky.social•70 days ago

Or maybe they could go watch a play?

forestrale.bsky.social•70 days ago

As a kid I was in this international book project thing and when asked what books do we read, only people from my country included comics.

tonygonzalezwrites.bsky.social•70 days ago

I saw at the market where DC is selling a Rebirth edition of old-school looking Green Lanterns, Flash, and others. $2.98.

I bought some. Now I'm looking forward to the ads where I can order the Sea Monkeys... oh yeah, the howler monkeys, too.

onioneater.bsky.social•70 days ago

Why don’t we suggest euthanasia to these people?

aardvark77.bsky.social•70 days ago

Manga, not just comics, manga.

kylatilley.com•70 days ago

I have to go pick up a novel now just to see what only reading the dialogue is like.

imthebell.bsky.social•70 days ago

Fascinating. I think that is how blind people experience conversation. Challenge to author’s to create strong dialogue.

skybluesea.bsky.social•70 days ago

I slogged through Infinite Jest (DFW😪♥️) over 700 onion skin pages of tiny print! The footnotes on every page were another book altogether. I made sure I read and understood every single word, nuance, joke.

anarchymarshmallow.bsky.social•70 days ago

Wait do they also watch movies with their eyes closed

bonnieskullmall.bsky.social•70 days ago

Studies have shown that the vocabulary level in comics tends to be higher than the vocabulary level of books aimed at the same age demographic/etc. Comics will absolutely work your brain and reading skills.

demystifydementia.bsky.social•69 days ago

I used to only read the dialogue. Then I realized it was bc the pose was so poorly written.

doctorsynth.bsky.social•70 days ago

Comics has long improved beyond monthly chronicles of caped crusaders. But engaging stories like Sandman and Strangers in Paradise are too rare. Maybe there’s hope in Manga? I dunno.

ramfdt.bsky.social•70 days ago

I didn’t understand the what you meant at first. But my question is how? So do they just see words floating in the air? They don’t even know what the characters look like. And if it’s romance…during the scenes..I’m so confused.

richservo.bsky.social•70 days ago

I don’t understand people that find joy in numbers. I read 8-10 books and year and take in every bit of each one.

merricat-blu.bsky.social•70 days ago

I absolutely agree! I used to run a book club and let me tell you I was in trenches defending comics as a valid form of literature. You'd think with the resurgence of people reading that comics would be included but unfortunately they're still considered niche in some circles.

theotherhappyplace.bsky.social•70 days ago

I think we just gotta cross promote a little more. Like people are SOOO CLOSE lol just make the tiny jump *sob*

miraf.bsky.social•69 days ago

I found an image of a comic book and removed all the non-dialogue parts.

bubbleofbabel.bsky.social•70 days ago

Romance was one of the most popular comic book genres along with crime, war, and westerns before the comics code effectively killed them.

mouldyrhombus.bsky.social•70 days ago

That just sounds like an otome/dating sims gamer who exhausted the genre and needed more romance.

Comics definitely the best thing for them

mademocats.bsky.social•70 days ago

When I think of romance novels, I think of the old cheesy ones like the Harlequin romances. The non-dialogue prose in those is painfully awful. If she’s reading novels like those, I can’t criticize.

christinieuk.bsky.social•70 days ago

I've never seen a more obvious challenge to an author than this. Write a book where the dialogue on its own tells a completely different story to the rest of the novel. Imagine how you could mess with people's heads... "that was such a sweet romance" "romance? it was a murder mystery!"

dofarn.bsky.social•69 days ago

I have a friend who once said, “yeah I don’t read all the descriptive stuff, I don’t care about the blue dress or the azure sky” - I felt so bad for every author she ever read!

pigstain.bsky.social•69 days ago

"I like perceiving the words and imagining images from them but I don't like the part where the words describe images." I can't even articulate how I think that mindset would work

technicallyowen.bsky.social•70 days ago

I do not understand how you would even decide to do that. I thought me listening to audio books and YouTube videos at 3x speed was bad.

afterl1ght.bsky.social•70 days ago

Or scripts :D
I love reading scripts :3

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