Historical Fiction/Poetry

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Historical Fiction

Although I write mostly nonfiction and flash fiction, I have a historical novel on the back burner. One of the problems I wrestle with in that book is dialogue.

I don’t want to use contractions, at least not as often as we do today, and I certainly avoid modern slang, but when I try to write the way people spoke in 1910, the dialogue seems stilted. Instead of adding to the feel I want for my book, the dialogue distracts. I sought advice from other writers who gave me two ways of solving this.

One advised having your main character speak in a more natural (to us) sounding voice, but have supporting characters use speech of the period. After experimenting with that approach, I felt the different styles of speech coming from characters who shared the same time period would jolt the reader. Not that I wanted all my characters to sound alike, but they should be believable as contemporaries of each other instead of one sounding like a time traveler from the future.

Another writer gave me an approach that worked better: instead of trying to mimic the speech of the time, create a sense of the past. Convince yourself and the reader that you are in the time period through other means such as clothing, customs, and standard of living, and your characters will fit right in.

THE PEDESTAL MAGAZINE is open for poetry submissions until December 13. You may submit up to six poems. Pays $40/poem.