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.
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