Feedback Wanted
Online messages in fiction are awkwardly useful. Keep them too neat and nobody believes a teenager wrote them. Leave every typo, half-start and delayed reply in place and you’ve got a transcript of a bad afternoon.
The trick seems to be deciding what the scene needs more of: mess or clarity. Real texting habits are full of noise, but not all of that noise earns its keep on the page. A cut message can say more than a perfect one. So can a badly timed reply.
How much ugliness do you leave in before it stops feeling natural and starts feeling edited for authenticity, which is its own little fraud?
The trick seems to be deciding what the scene needs more of: mess or clarity. Real texting habits are full of noise, but not all of that noise earns its keep on the page. A cut message can say more than a perfect one. So can a badly timed reply.
How much ugliness do you leave in before it stops feeling natural and starts feeling edited for authenticity, which is its own little fraud?
The bigger risk is the wrong kind of mess. A text thread can drown a scene if every hesitation is left on the page. I’d rather see one sharp, ugly detail that tells me who’s speaking and what they’re avoiding. Most people don’t text like literature, they text like they’re trying not to look stupid. That’s usually enough.