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I am going to quote from a novel that in my opinion shows many stylistic overlaps of novels and comic books: The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey. I am holding that novel in my hand now.

  1. The use of a lot of dashes
  2. The use of a lot of italics to show internal character monologues.
  3. Single words being all in capitals in a sentence
  4. Using words like "who" and "how" as nouns as in "the who" or "the how."

  5. The most important one: the use of colons in conversation. For instance:

    [page 320]

    The Rowan and Isthia: do NOT permit them to engage.

    The Rowan: We'll need their minds!

After I finished reading The Rowan I called all of this a "comic book" style of novel writing. I don't mean that as anything derogatory; it's a great novel. I haven't seen any current novels that use a comic book style as in my 5 points above. The Rowan was published in 1990. Was it a short lived trend to write novels this way?

What's interesting is if I go to an earlier novel by Anne McCaffrey called The White Dragon and open it, published in 1979, she isn't over 450 pages using that Comic book style there; there are rare examples but nowhere near enough to be doing anything different to other authors.

Snack_Food_Termite
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    Italics are written as *italic text* or _italic text_ which both will render as italic text. – user Jul 02 '19 at 07:26
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    Hello and welcome to the Writing SE. Currently it is unclear what you are asking. The answer to the question in your title is obvious - yes, there are overlaps. It does not seem to be related to the rest of your question, so maybe you could edit it to really clarify what you want to know. – PoorYorick Jul 02 '19 at 07:27
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    The question in the title about stylistic overlap, and the question in the body about writing in a particular way being a short-lived trend, don't seem readily related. Can you [Edit] to clarify either how they relate to each other, or what question you want answered? – user Jul 02 '19 at 07:28
  • By the way, I think the answer here is that lots of comic books, and the novel in question, are pulpy as hell. I wouldn't call it "comic book style", I'd call it "pulp fiction". – PoorYorick Jul 02 '19 at 07:33
  • With all due respect I can not see anything unclear about what I have asked. Yes it's a complex question. I disagree with you that the overlap is obvious; I give an example of a novel where there is NO overlap. The only improvement that I could have made was to give examples from comic books. But to me that is a bit pedantic; we have all read comic books.If you want to answer and disagree that is fine. – Snack_Food_Termite Jul 02 '19 at 07:35
  • I disagree that The Rowan is pulp fiction: that suggests an industrial process where she uses my 5 points all the time. She doesn't. – Snack_Food_Termite Jul 02 '19 at 07:37
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    The question is not complex. It is unclear. Is your question "are there stylistic overlaps between novels and comic books", or is it "was there a time when novels heavily leaned on a comic book style"? And I think the answer to the first question is trivial, because both novels and comic books are free to use the same styles of writing, and frequently do. (My point about pulp fiction was that that is the style you are describing as "comic book style". It is not a style that originates from comic books.) – PoorYorick Jul 02 '19 at 08:01
  • McCaffrey wrote a lot of pulp at the beginning of her career, to make money and get established. It would not at all surprise me that certain habits stayed with her even after she became well-known. – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum Jul 02 '19 at 09:39
  • She not listed under Wikipedia as having been a well known pulp writer. Also you can't say that it was habit; I showed two novels from her. One had a comic book style [or pulp fiction if you are going to argue that and I will disagree with you] and the other did not. – Snack_Food_Termite Jul 02 '19 at 09:49
  • Is she embellishing punctuation to indicate telepathy? (haven't read the books) As in the question here: Indicating Multiple Modes of Speech in Fantasy Language or Telepathy – wetcircuit Jul 02 '19 at 11:17
  • Partly. The plot of the Rowan is that humans have developed enhanced mental technology that can transport you by "thought" across the solar system and tap into other people's thoughts who are in another galaxy. Only certain "talents" can use this technology however and The Rowan is one of them. – Snack_Food_Termite Jul 02 '19 at 11:20
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    This probably isn't an answerable question as framed. The flaw is seeing Comics and Novels existing in their own vacuum bubbles, outside of other persuasive writing like newspaper headlines, advertising, road signage…. The question fits in with a History of Punctuation that starts with the Greeks (needed punctuation) and evolved through musical phrasing (chants, rests pauses)…. A novel written today could use emoji – critics would frown and kids might like it. There might be a Buzzfeed article hailing the stylistic overlaps between novels and text messages. – wetcircuit Jul 02 '19 at 11:26
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    @Snack_Food_Termite I went back to my copy of Get Off the Unicorn to check, and you are right: I was conflating two things, her attempt to cash in on the soft-porn craze of the '60s/'70s and an assignment she was given from a specific magazine to write to a random image (sort of like a Big Bang challenge but without a fandom attached). I recalled that "here's an image, write the story" was a feature of pulp short stories, but I had combined it with a different anecdote about McCaffrey's career. – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum Jul 02 '19 at 13:40
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    Welcome. Please check out our [tour] and [help]. I did a light edit on your question but I didn't add italics because I wasn't sure exactly where you wanted them. If you're on a computer (not sure about a phone) you just highlight the area with your mouse or track pad and chose the "I" from the menu above the text box. If that's not visible to you, simply put an asterisk at the start and finish of the italics area. Then delete your line about not knowing how to do it. The character you want is *. For example: *this is italic* renders as this is italic – Cyn Jul 02 '19 at 15:06

1 Answers1

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Was it a short lived trend to write novels this way?

I don't believe so. I've been reading novels for over fifty years, I have several hundred of them on my home bookshelves. I would have noticed a trend like that if it appeared since about 1965.

As for your title question: Yes, but not so much the items you quote. Those kinds of stylistic things are a product of a lack of space for dialogue in a visual medium, so it is a kind of shorthand for what, in a novel, would be written out in prose.

Dashes indicate interruptions or pauses. All Caps indicate emphasis that can be explained in prose (which the comic has no real room for). Colons take the place of "said" or "asked" or other such words.

Using "who" or "what" as nouns may occur, in normal speech they may be: "The who now?"

And obviously there is the Band "The Who", which I imagine was a joke on this very phenomenon. Or the old skit about "Who's on First". But I see no trend toward that (and I don't read comic books, so I don't know how often it is done there).

As for your second item, using Italics to indicate thought, that has always been a common convention. The thoughts of the POV character are frequently presented in their own paragraph in italics; this is similar to dialogue but without the quotes.

"I really don't think you have anything to worry about, Mary," Angela said.

Richard better be more careful, that idiot is going to ruin everything.

Mary winced, then shook her head. "You're probably right, I'm just paranoid."

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