A practical reading method
Separate Reconstructed Dialogue From Documented Quotation
Record the quoted scene page and check the author's note on methods or sources. Classify the dialogue as documented, remembered, reconstructed, composite, or unstated. When discussing it, describe the evidence level separately from the scene's literary effect.
Use this when spoken lines appear verbatim even though the events happened long before the book was written. Quotation marks do not reveal whether words came from a recording, document, memory, or narrative reconstruction.
Use case
When this method helps
Use this when spoken lines appear verbatim even though the events happened long before the book was written.
Quotation marks do not reveal whether words came from a recording, document, memory, or narrative reconstruction.
Method
Build the note
1. Record the quoted scene page and check the author's note on methods or sources.
2. Classify the dialogue as documented, remembered, reconstructed, composite, or unstated.
3. When discussing it, describe the evidence level separately from the scene's literary effect.
Example
See the boundary in practice
A childhood conversation is vivid but the author's note says dialogue was reconstructed from memory, so the group does not call it a transcript.
Quality check
Before you trust the note
The label should reflect the author's disclosed method and remain unknown when no method is supplied.