Posted in Writing, tagged believable characters, Characters, creative writing, novel writing, short story writing, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 28 Aug 2013| 4 Comments »
When I went to sleep, I was thinking about the story I’m working on.
When I woke up, I was thinking about the story I’m working on.
This is exactly what I hoped would happen, when I decided to put off working on my new novel and pick up a short story instead. The novel was too big a project, what with all the other drama in our lives. The short story was more manageable, more…realistic…given my current state of mind.
So, what have I done on this old story? (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged accents, Characters, creative writing, dialect, distinct accent, novel writing, secondary character, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 23 Aug 2013| 4 Comments »
Accent. Dialect. Patois.
How much is too much?
My wife’s grandmother was from Kennett, Missouri. Though soft-spoken, her words were sharp, focused, and colored by a distinct accent. It was that peculiar mixture of Midwestern and Southern that her family called “Okie,” and though hers had faded with age, it was still audible when she chose to speak.
Receiving a letter from Grandma Ilene, though…that was a special joy in our house. In her letters, she spoke as if young again, her accent strong and pronounced. She only had a 4th grade education, and she spelled everything phonetically. When we read her words, we could hear her unique voice.
“I taken down to Seeyurs and boughten me a par a paints.”
It was authentic. It was true.
…And I would never have my characters speak like that.
Why? Because it would be too much. It was not too much for a letter from Grandma Ilene–no, it was absolutely perfect for that–but it would be too much for a character in a novel. Even for a small, cameo role it’s too much. In the above example, the use of “taken” and “boughten” would be enough to convey the accent; the inclusion of “Seeyurs” for Sears, and “par a paints” for “pair of pants” is too much. As a letter from the woman we knew, informed by the context of her personality and her Dust Bowl history, it was a thing of folk beauty, but tossed it into a novel, put it in the mouth of a secondary character, and it steps over the line and becomes caricature or, worse, ridicule.
Plus, it will annoy the reader.
While I want to build characters that are full of realism and detail, I don’t want to slow the reader down or have my prose get in the way. Too much dialect will distract more than it will embellish.
Two examples from the printed page:
In recent research, I came across a “dramatization” of a scene in early Seattle history. The author puts this sentence into the mouth of one of Seattle’s founding fathers.
“‘Pears t’me we’ve settled in the wrong spot, boys.”
This sentence forced a double-take. It initial apostrophe gets lost in the double quote mark, and so I read “pears” instead of a contracted version of “appears.” The book was (unfortunately) full of such ersatz cowboy/pioneer dialect, and it came across as hokey, corny, forced, and inauthentic.
Then there’s what I consider the worst example of dialect in a novel: the character of Joseph, the vinegar-faced serving man from Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I’ve read a lot about how Joseph’s speech, tough as day-old Yorkshire pudding, was ground-breaking for its day. Maybe so, but about two-thirds of anything Joseph says is completely incomprehensible.
“‘Is there nobody inside to open the door?” I hallooed, responsively.
“There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ’t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght.”
Um…hunh? Oh, I can parse it out…with effort. “There’s no one about but the missus, and she’ll not open it even if you make your fearsome noises until nightfall.” But really, do I want my readers to stop and head-scratch their way through every line spoken by my serving man?
How, then, to apply a dialect or accent to a character without going over the top?
One technique that I have used to good effect is to let the accent or dialect run a little heavy when I first introduce a character, and then to back it off. I did this with Vincent D’Avignon, the scoundrel from my Fallen Cloud Saga. Vincent is Québécois, and when we first meet him, his English speech is peppered with French and patois. Quickly, though, the “sound” of Vincent’s voice is established in the reader’s mind, and all I have to do is throw in an occasional mais oui or similar phrase to reinforce it.
Another technique is to merely modify syntax. A lot of dialects and accents have distinctive rhythms and word use. As in the example from Grandma Ilene, above, the sentence “I taken down to Sears and boughten me a pair of pants” can be read easily while still invoking the music of the Okie accent.
Accents are so often caricatured in American culture–take the French accents of Pepe Le Pew or Inspector Clouseau, for example–that one must tread lightly so as not to unwittingly ring any bells in a reader’s memory. However, they are also quite familiar, and this can be used to our advantage. Sometimes all that is needed is a descriptive phrase to introduce it to the readers ear.
So tread lightly.
When it comes to accents, dialects, and patois, less is definitely more.
k
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged agile methodology, brainstorming, coding war games, creative writing, Creativity, open office, Writing, writing tips on 20 Aug 2013| Leave a Comment »
My life has two major occupations: developing computer software and writing books. Both of them require creativity, discipline, and concentrated effort and thought. They require freedom from interruption and a quiet atmosphere.
Yeah…ain’t gonna happen.
Corporate America and the Agile revolution that has swept up nearly every IT shop in the nation are both completely enamored with the concepts of brainstorming, groupthink, and open office layouts. “Fewer walls! More ideas!” they proclaim.
The problem is, these ideas don’t work. Study after study, we’ve seen these bastions of corporate culture debunked.
The studies disproving these long-established myths are decades old, but still Corporate Culture marches toward an ever-more open and generic work environment.
I can’t control what my company does regarding the floorplan for my office. Who am I, after all? I’m just the worker who knows how to do the job, not the suit with the MBA. So, I make do, and find ways to block out the noise and chatter and limit the interruptions.
When I write, I also need solitude. I need my quiet time. I need isolation. I get all Greta Garbo when I’m writing.
Franz Kafka explained it well when he said,
“That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.”
With writing, I have a little more control over my environment, but even in a household of two, it’s sometimes difficult to be “alone enough.”
Thankfully, some of the techniques I use at the office also help at home.
I don’t find quiet time to write. I have to make quiet time.
k
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, nanowrimo, novel writing, Writing, writing fast, writing techniques, writing tips on 19 Aug 2013| 8 Comments »
The glorification of “speed writing” baffles me.
I know several writers who can write very fast. An old colleague (a swooper by habit) could tap out 30,000 words in a weekend. One author of my acquaintance has ghost-written a book in ten days, and blogged about it while he was doing it.
In the Clarion writer workshops, you pretty much have to write a story a day during the two-week “boot camp” experience.
Then there’s NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month (aka November). If you’re a writer, you’ve heard about it. Perhaps you’ve even tried your hand at it. NaNoWriMo has chapters across the world, and has inspired a handful of imitators that encourage others by asking “Why wait until November? Write your novel this month!” (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, fear of failure, novel writing, short story writing, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 16 Aug 2013| 8 Comments »
I want to write. I want to start writing my new novel. But I can’t. Not right now.
This is not procrastination. This is not the usual fear of failure that stymies me at the beginning of new projects.
This is fallout.
Life has gone all Tennessee Williams on our asses, and it steals a lot of energy–psychic, emotional, physical, spiritual. I’m just not up to starting a massive project like a new novel.
But I want to write.
So I’m going to take another tack. I’m going to sidestep this emotional turmoil. Like one of the fiddler crabs on the shore where I grew up, I’m going to crab-walk to the side, and hit my opponent’s flank. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 13 Aug 2013| 4 Comments »
Clutch!Clutch!Clutch!
Nearly all my adult life, I’ve driven stick. I know how to shift gears.
My wife brought the first manual transmission into my life–a Mercury Capri, which we called “the Crappy.” It was It was a pop-eyed old beater with one headlight bigger than the other so it always looked like it was giving you the stink-eye. It had a fender fashioned of aluminum held on with sheet metal screws, the hood was held down with wing nuts, and the silver paint job had been destroyed by repeated malathion dousings during the med-fly outbreak. Her engine was a powerhouse, though, and despite the fact that it drank a quart of oil a week it leapt off the line like a panther. The engine also had the unfortunate tendency to shear off its mounting bolts and have a lie-down on the rack-and-pinion. We kept her smoking hulk running for an age, finally selling her for junk when we moved up to Seattle.
We also had a Triumph Spitfire (named Cricket), and I adored that car. I worked diligently to keep her in running trim, but eventually her ’70s era British workmanship got the better of me and we sold her to a younger, more able man. After Cricket, there was Jezebel, the Ford Pinto whose body was made of New York Lace held together by a dozen daily prayers. She lived up to her name and we traded her in for a Chevy Nova saloon car that we named “Nova,” which should tell you how emotionally invested we were in owning her. The fact that she also drove like Grandpa’s cabin cruiser didn’t make her any more attractive.
Soon, though, Nova began to falter, and she was replaced by Eva, a 1993 Geo Storm. After driving in Nova’s Automatic Transmission Desert, I was back in a stick-shift car, and loved it. We’ve had that car for 20 years, and she’s still great (though a new paint job wouldn’t hurt.)
So, like I said, I know how to shift gears. In cars, anyway.
Shifting gears in writing…I sometimes have trouble. (more…)
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged Beneath a Wounded Sky, creative writing, editing, Fallen Cloud Saga, novel writing, opening lines, Stephen King, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 08 Aug 2013| 6 Comments »
Stephen King has spoken. Again.
This time, he speaks in an interview in The Atlantic (that reads more like an essay) about a topic not covered in his On Writing memoir: Opening lines.
I hope aspiring writers read all of what he said, instead of picking their favorite sound bite.
It’s not that the first line of a book isn’t important–it is–and King discusses what a good opening line can bring to the party. On the other hand, he admits he’s not always done well with them, and stresses (waaay at the end) that an opening line won’t make or break a novel. If the story sucks, a good opener won’t save it.
The discussion prompted me to go back and look at the opening lines from my novels. How well did I do? I wondered. Let’s see.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 