Recently I've read a couple of fiction works, whose names I won't mention, in which I could "feel the research." Perhaps you've run across something like this - a piece of prose with a historical or foreign setting in which you could do a tally of details and everything checked out correct, but somehow it felt effortful. Or though the setting was all present, the characters seemed to float on top of it rather than moving through it.
I could call this a problem of anachronism, but that usually implies something glaring that stands out and doesn't belong in its time period. This isn't something glaring. When I'm in my anthropological mood I'll call a piece like that "not culturally situated."
Very often, it's a problem of attitude. The author's research has given them the architecture, the physical details of rooms and everyday objects - but it hasn't had as big an influence on the way the characters think and speak. Small turns of phrase will stand out as wrong. Or it will be difficult for me to imagine how a person with the upbringing that this protagonist must have had (given the era/location) would reach a state of mind like the one the author wants us to accept. Straining against the status quo - a common phenomenon in a piece like this - is not the problem. It's the assumptions that underlie the WAY this person wants to challenge the status quo that make it successful, or unsuccessful.
Here are a few thoughts on how to avoid having a story that feels full of research, rather than seamlessly melting into the period intended.
1. Don't create an extensive checklist of "stuff." Have a key object or building here or there, and make sure to use of details that aren't obvious or easy - but don't overload the reader.
2. Move beyond Wikipedia. While it can be a wonderful and convenient source, Wikipedia will typically only give you one angle on your location or time period. Look for others, such as...
3. Look to literature or primary sources for inspiration. Literature written in the time period will give you a sense of the language used in your setting, and will also reflect the philosophies and attitudes of the time/location. Primary sources like personal accounts etc. can give you even more of this, if you can find them.
4. Watch your dialogue, judgments and internalization. Check expressions against the Oxford English Dictionary, if necessary, to know when they came into use. Check your characters' moods and the moods of your scenes, and how your characters define them. What words to they use internally to describe their own mental states? Do they reflect how people of that time and location would have described them? Or have any expressions crept in that are inconsistent with the culture or time period?
Even if you can only find one primary source or piece of literature to go on, it will make an enormous difference. In the Heian period in Japan people used to describe the shedding of tears as causing their sleeves to become wet, generally in a very gentle and pensive way. In another period, frantic weeping might have been attributed to hysteria. Nowadays we would describe such things entirely differently.
The setting you choose for your story is far more extensive than just a collection of objects, fashions, and architectural trends. It goes deep into the psyche and language of the people who populate it. When you capture that in your writing, the sense of reality you achieve will be far more powerful, and any departures from it will become far more striking.
It's something to think about.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
My Cover is Out!
I haven't seen the paper version in my mailbox yet, but HERE IT IS!!! The cover for this month's issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact:
I have one thing to say.
SQUEEEEEEE!
I have one thing to say.
SQUEEEEEEE!
Interesting link about the noun "madre"
Here's an interesting article from the Economist about a book that has been written about the many meanings of the word "Madre" in Spanish. The article has some examples to pique your interest.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Fascinating link about agent/editor negotiations
I found this link thanks to Angela Ackerman's blog, The Bookshelf Muse. It's from the blog of Ingrid Sundberg, and gives you a step by step model of how an agent and an editor might execute a negotiation for a book sale. Check out the blow-by-blow!
Similes, cliché, and added information
Here's a hilarious post from Nicola Morgan about similes. If you aren't sure what a simile is, it's that thing you do where you say something is like something else. "He moved like a cat." "Her eyes were like sapphires." You've seen them before; they're everywhere, and a lot of them are clichéd.
So how do you avoid clichés and keep your similes under control? Nicola Morgan suggests that the simile must add meaning to the writing in order to be worthwhile, and points out that the entire content and connotation of the simile will be added (so be careful).
Question: what does that mean? What kind of meaning does a simile add?
My answer: two kinds.
First, a simile provides a comparison of a story event, character or object, with something else. As it does so, it lends all the qualities of that something else to the object (etc.) it describes. Here's an example, from my story "Smoke and Feathers":
What's happening here is that a boy, Ryuuji, is having water poured over him from a bucket. However, the effect of the water is far more than him getting wet. (I'll save that for those who read the story.) The simile compares the water to a hand reaching out, which gives the impression that the water could either grip Ryuuji, or maybe even cast a spell on him - things that hands, not water, can do. Thus when strange things start to happen afterward, we've already had a warning of it in the form of this simile.
Depending on the kind of word we choose to compare, the simile can bring along more connotations or evoke a more complete scene to go along with the thing that's being described. This is all included in the first kind of information that a simile imparts, through drawing a comparison.
The second kind of information that a simile can give us is character (and world) information. By this I mean, not comparing a character to something using a simile, but having the comparison itself reflect upon the person making it. If you are using point of view in your narrative, any simile you use will suggest things about the kind of person who would draw such a comparison. Here's an example that Nicola Morgan provided as being a bad example of a simile:
The information that similes (and metaphors) give us about the point of view character is in fact extremely valuable, and I highly recommend you take advantage in it as you write. Think about what kinds of comparisons your character would make, and why. The comparisons they make will show readers how they judge a situation, and will reflect on their sense of themselves and their own world. Similes give us an enormous opportunity to add dimension and life to our stories.
It's something to think about.
So how do you avoid clichés and keep your similes under control? Nicola Morgan suggests that the simile must add meaning to the writing in order to be worthwhile, and points out that the entire content and connotation of the simile will be added (so be careful).
Question: what does that mean? What kind of meaning does a simile add?
My answer: two kinds.
First, a simile provides a comparison of a story event, character or object, with something else. As it does so, it lends all the qualities of that something else to the object (etc.) it describes. Here's an example, from my story "Smoke and Feathers":
...water reaches out over Ryuuji like a hand of glass.
What's happening here is that a boy, Ryuuji, is having water poured over him from a bucket. However, the effect of the water is far more than him getting wet. (I'll save that for those who read the story.) The simile compares the water to a hand reaching out, which gives the impression that the water could either grip Ryuuji, or maybe even cast a spell on him - things that hands, not water, can do. Thus when strange things start to happen afterward, we've already had a warning of it in the form of this simile.
Depending on the kind of word we choose to compare, the simile can bring along more connotations or evoke a more complete scene to go along with the thing that's being described. This is all included in the first kind of information that a simile imparts, through drawing a comparison.
The second kind of information that a simile can give us is character (and world) information. By this I mean, not comparing a character to something using a simile, but having the comparison itself reflect upon the person making it. If you are using point of view in your narrative, any simile you use will suggest things about the kind of person who would draw such a comparison. Here's an example that Nicola Morgan provided as being a bad example of a simile:
His words paralysed me. I was like a deer that's been transfixed by an arrow, right in its spine, so that it was alive but could not move. [The first sentence says it all. The simile simply adds some wholly unhelpful and, frankly, bizarre, extra images. We learn nothing extra and yet are bombarded with extraneous images of a dying Bambi.]She says that the first sentence says all it needs to and we don't learn anything extra. I'm not sure about that, though - I personally think the simile suggests something unexpected and unwanted about the character making it. The original writer probably didn't have it in mind to suggest that this POV character was sadistic, or obsessed with death, or anything of that nature. Yet somehow they did. There's added information here, certainly, but information which can only confuse readers about the point of view character.
The information that similes (and metaphors) give us about the point of view character is in fact extremely valuable, and I highly recommend you take advantage in it as you write. Think about what kinds of comparisons your character would make, and why. The comparisons they make will show readers how they judge a situation, and will reflect on their sense of themselves and their own world. Similes give us an enormous opportunity to add dimension and life to our stories.
It's something to think about.
Monday, October 25, 2010
A marvelous analogy...
I ran across this post today on agent Scott Eagan's blog. It's about three reasons why agents will consider rejecting a manuscript after only a few pages. The one that really got me, though, was number three - where he compares seeing the conflict start too early with hearing a bad rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Honestly. Cracked me up, and insightful too.
Learning from the reconstruction of Shakespeare's English
This could actually be an enormous topic, but I'm going to stick to small details here. I got this idea from the article I posted yesterday (here) about University of Kansas and their upcoming production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that will be executed in all original Shakespearean pronunciation.
First of all, I think it's really cool that linguists are able to reconstruct the pronunciation of the time, and even cooler that this can be used for theatrical purposes. When you listen to the snippets provided in the article, you really get the sense that this dialect is related to Cockney and to Australian (which it is, as a sort of distant parent). Another interesting point made in the article is that this language was not what we'd consider refined-sounding, unlike the more recent British renditions of it. I could totally see Shakespeare's ribald jokes coming through hilariously in the accent as it was rendered by the young actors at KU.
The other thing this shows me is how pronunciation and delivery style are lost when the language is written down. I'd been told that Shakespeare's plays were best seen on the stage rather than read silently, and I've always agreed with this - it only becomes more evident when we see how it used to be pronounced. It was real fun, for example, to see that the rhymes Shakespeare used were not nearly as approximate in his time as they appear to be in ours. Word really DID rhyme with sword.
This disconnect between the pronunciation/delivery and the written word is something we all run up against when we write stories. It's a challenge whether we are dealing with dialects of English or alien and fantasy languages. We can spend lots of time designing a language, or we can imagine the English pronunciation and delivery that a person has, and imagine that as conveying part of their character. However, that information is much harder to render in written form. Do we alter spellings in dialogue to suggest pronunciation? Do we provide reactions from surrounding people to give evidence of this person's dialect? Do we alter dialogue tags? All of the above?
In this instance I think that the example of Shakespearean English gives us some good hints for what to do. Not one of us would ever pick up a Shakespeare play and say, "I can't tell that these people are speaking differently from us." It's in the words - the vocabulary, the pronouns. It's in the turns of phrase. It's in the way that the people in the plays talk about the world around them. These are the very same tools that we can use for our own characters.
In linguistics it's typical to think of linguistic objects as having features. For example, for vowels, there are the features of height, front/back, and roundness. I think the idea of features is a good one for the portrayal of dialects and speech styles in writing as well. Sit down and think about the speech of your character, and write down its most salient characteristics. "This person always uses contracted phrases like gonna," might be one example. Since a habit of speech like this is typically going to be used throughout a book (unless it's My Fair Lady), it's a very good thing to include in a book/world bible or a guide to the characters in a series. Wherever you keep your notes on characters' appearance and their habits of dress or nervous tics, include a list of the major features of their language use. That way when you need to write dialogue for them, now or in the future, you'll have a reference to go back to.
First of all, I think it's really cool that linguists are able to reconstruct the pronunciation of the time, and even cooler that this can be used for theatrical purposes. When you listen to the snippets provided in the article, you really get the sense that this dialect is related to Cockney and to Australian (which it is, as a sort of distant parent). Another interesting point made in the article is that this language was not what we'd consider refined-sounding, unlike the more recent British renditions of it. I could totally see Shakespeare's ribald jokes coming through hilariously in the accent as it was rendered by the young actors at KU.
The other thing this shows me is how pronunciation and delivery style are lost when the language is written down. I'd been told that Shakespeare's plays were best seen on the stage rather than read silently, and I've always agreed with this - it only becomes more evident when we see how it used to be pronounced. It was real fun, for example, to see that the rhymes Shakespeare used were not nearly as approximate in his time as they appear to be in ours. Word really DID rhyme with sword.
This disconnect between the pronunciation/delivery and the written word is something we all run up against when we write stories. It's a challenge whether we are dealing with dialects of English or alien and fantasy languages. We can spend lots of time designing a language, or we can imagine the English pronunciation and delivery that a person has, and imagine that as conveying part of their character. However, that information is much harder to render in written form. Do we alter spellings in dialogue to suggest pronunciation? Do we provide reactions from surrounding people to give evidence of this person's dialect? Do we alter dialogue tags? All of the above?
In this instance I think that the example of Shakespearean English gives us some good hints for what to do. Not one of us would ever pick up a Shakespeare play and say, "I can't tell that these people are speaking differently from us." It's in the words - the vocabulary, the pronouns. It's in the turns of phrase. It's in the way that the people in the plays talk about the world around them. These are the very same tools that we can use for our own characters.
In linguistics it's typical to think of linguistic objects as having features. For example, for vowels, there are the features of height, front/back, and roundness. I think the idea of features is a good one for the portrayal of dialects and speech styles in writing as well. Sit down and think about the speech of your character, and write down its most salient characteristics. "This person always uses contracted phrases like gonna," might be one example. Since a habit of speech like this is typically going to be used throughout a book (unless it's My Fair Lady), it's a very good thing to include in a book/world bible or a guide to the characters in a series. Wherever you keep your notes on characters' appearance and their habits of dress or nervous tics, include a list of the major features of their language use. That way when you need to write dialogue for them, now or in the future, you'll have a reference to go back to.
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