TetsuyaHikari said:
Ah, well..most of the stuff you addressed makes sense. I'll share my input on your points if you don't mind.
Absolutely. It would hardly be fair to critique your script and then be offended if you critique my critique!
1. Yeah, I can certainly understand changing up the length of the lines for variety. Personally, I find the way that long lines play out in the game is kind of unwieldy, but I'm certainly not saying there's anything
wrong with having longer lines.
2. Sorry if my choice of the word "valid" wasn't entirely clear. I didn't mean to indicate that your punctuation couldn't serve any useful purpose, and I'm definitely glad to hear that the VA you're working with found it helpful. All I meant was that
according to the formal rules of English punctuation, including writing dialogue, using two periods for a shorter pause is not... technically correct. "En-dash", "Em-dash", and ellipsis are used to indicate shorter pause, longer pause, and trailing off. I know it's picky, but I found it slightly distracting, and I thought that other people who are used to reading a lot might, too.
3. Don't get me wrong, I think "mister" is great and actually do use it when playing with this script. I was just reasoning that since the introduction story from the girl wandering the streets 'cause she can't go home up to the point where she's on her knees in front of a cock all happens off-screen, there's no reason why he might not have mentioned his name during that time, before the script picks up.
4. I don't think it's a big deal whether the gasping effects in the lines are there or not, really. I did find using the game's interrupts and coughs came out... timed better for what's going on at the time. Also, having it go from cough to interrupt to a line that starts with a gasp to another cough, for example, gets to be a bit cluttered. Again, I imagine that's personal taste and I don't presume to tell you that the way you chose to do it is
wrong or anything.
TetsuyaHikari said:
As for the interruptions, I don't have anything against Kona's. However, I believe there is only a limited amount of ways you can be interrupted when talking and I personally feel as though my interruptions covered all of those bases (basically anything ending with, "mmmm" would suffice). The cough on the other hand, I will disagree with you on. I've had to explain this to many people already.
A cough is an onomonopia. What does that mean? That means a cough is written out exactly as it sounds, "cough". Aside from the "ack" sound as if you've got something hung up in your throat, there's really no other way to do it. So, adding many cough variations doesn't really work because, well..they don't exist. All this stuff like, "achf" or whatever is incorrect.
That sort of sound never happens. We need to keep the cough simple because that's all it is. It's just a, "*cough*". Nothing more, nothing less. I don't know why people feel the need to add so many lines for a cough. Anyway, moving on.
Well, just for the record, it's "onomatopoeia", not "onomonopia". And for both cough sounds and the sounds of being interrupted by a cock jammed in your mouth while you're talking, there really is quite a variety of possibilities. Just because there's one word that represents the sound of the cough and has come to be dominant enough that it's the dictionary term for a cough, doesn't mean that all coughs sound alike and are adequately conveyed by the single onomatopoeia "cough". In linguistics, there's a whole list of terms like "aspirated", "voiced", "nasal", "explosive", "fricative" etc to describe the subtle differences in sounds produced by different combinations of breath, voice, tongue position, throat open vs closed, and so on.
To look at interruption, if the girl's talking and has a cock stuffed in her mouth (not throat) and she immediately stops trying to form syllables so she doesn't mumble around it at all, then yes, "mmm" is pretty much the sound you get. But, if she keeps trying to talk around it, then the sound is a lot more like "mmbl"... as you can see in some hardcore videos when the girl is told to say something like "my favorite website is gagonmycock.com" while having a cock shoved in her mouth. ;D But, if the cock is shoved in her throat, the resulting sound will be very different. If she succeeds in swallowing it, the sound will be a lot like a "gulp". If she retches on it then it's more of a harsh sound like Kona's "-ghch!"
Likewise with coughs... there's quite a difference between the sound of a deep, chest-racking lung-infection cough and the brief, shallow sound of coughing up a little bit of goo from the back of your throat. Some coughs sound more like a sneeze or a retch rather than the archetypal "cough".
I think if there's any doubt in your mind that there can be a whole lot of different onomatopoeias for something like a cough, there are two points I'd like to make. One is that different languages use different onomatopoeias for the same sound, such as Japanese using "doki doki" for the sound of a racing heartbeat, where English uses "thump thump". The other is comic books. There's a long, rich tradition of script-writers using an enormous variety of SFX to represent noises that are way simpler and more consistent than coughing/choking/gagging/retching etc.
5. Oh, I certainly think that the smell reference is clever and it's realistic that the guy would be kinda rank in the context of the scene you set. The only reason I don't like it is it seems a little uppity for her to be commenting basically "man, you stink" to a guy whose hospitality she's so desperately dependent on that she'll let him throat-fuck her. Also, I just plain don't like the tone. ;) Like I said, personal tastes.
Sure, I think that just listing my variation in your post makes sense.
Also, I'm sorry if it comes across like I'm picking apart your script. I think the lines are great, and I consider all my changes to be nothing more than fine-tuning a script that's good enough to deserve a little polishing. I can't wait to hear the audio for this one.
