The Craft Of Storytelling

One of the (very few) advantages of 'getting on in years,' as I am, is that I know the era of half a century ago. I lived it. It is still real and alive in my mind, as much or more so than the present day.

I know the patois, the idioms, all of it, from that time and the region where I grew up. I've written stories set in that era, with dialogue, as Goodgulf says, that is grammatically incorrect but appropriate.

Here is what I find ironic: the writer of dialogue that is regional, or from another era, must always 'tone it down.' If I used the pronunciations and phrases of that bygone era exactly as I hear it in my head, the dialogue would be nearly unreadable. The trick seems to be to use just enough realistic dialogue to give the reader a flavor of the era or the locale, yet still have it flow and be easily readable.

Finally, I actually enjoy the research that goes into writing a realistic story set in another time, especially of course the Victorian Era. I've bought books on Victorian clothing and customs, and sought out websites devoted to those times. I learn much that I didn't know, and can use it in a story.

When it comes to Victorian Era, I usually end up writing in the style of those old Blue Moon Books novels. Those books were wildly inaccurate when it came to the justice system, but that's what made them fun to read. That said, there's always places like http://www.mostly-victorian.com/ (reading those articles from The Girl's One was treat).

Goodgulf

Goodgulf,
Thanks for the tip on Mostly-Victorian. I had not seen that website. What makes it so valuable, even for an American, is that the articles tell us how people at the time saw things. Nothing is slanted or distorted by modern day attitudes towards the Victorians.

Quote: So a Scottish comprehensive school boy might realistically say, "Gie's a daud o' yer chuggie, pal." However, he is unlikely to say, "I say, old bean, may I have a piece of your chewing gum, please?"
Actually, some Scots, including kids, are quite versatile enough to say the latter thing satirically or sarcastically, especially when characterising what they see as English speech! I agree accuracy is crucial, especially in major things (I was challenged for using the word "chit" in one of my two spanking English Civil War stories whereas it entered English in I think the 19th century from India. Mea culpa, but more annoying was a published historical novel of the slightly mushy sort which featured a major battle at Turnham Green on the edge of London, whereas in fact the king saw unexpectedly strong Parliamentary forces gathered and retreated without a fight. Just as bad are attitudes totally out of historical context.

Just a snippet for Americans and others fancying writing English girls' boarding school drama. I have, naturally, no direct experience of such, but a work colleague has and still remembered, with giggles, panty raids on dormitories. So they really happen.

You might see if you can find any A Boy's Own or Chum's collections. They were periodicals for boys that (each year) would be collected into bound volumes. They were stories for boys and often had great slices of life. I've read through some of them (my grandfather passed them along to me) and they had wonderful stories - including the original Tom, Dick, and Harry stories.

They also had corporal punishment at schools treated very matter-of-factly. The details were abstract but the stories were worth reading...

I can still remember one where one of the older boys at school was offering caning insurance. You paid in so much a week and if you were caned, why then your day wasn't all bad because they paid out enough for you to get something at the tuck shop. Only thing is the system only worked when everyone paid in so a new boy who wouldn't pay was set up for canings until he did - call it protection money that paid out a bit here and there as boys got into trouble and the boy running the scheme made a huge profit. Once he joined the system the new boy introduced the concept of insurance fraud and bankrupted the boy running the scheme - almost every boy in that school making sure that he got six of the best just so he could get a pay out.

Of course the boy running the scheme had to pay out - fair's fair. And the mental attitudes they had back then are some of the hardest things to capture in a story.

Goodgulf

While I agree that the capitalisation within the spoken words can be effective, I would point out that the speech tag (the 'she said' part of the sentence should never be capitalised unless it comes at the beginning of the sentence, or is a proper noun.

She said, "Come here!" Correct.

"Come here!" she said. Correct.

*Come here!" She said. Incorrect.

Rather than use capitals to give the 'clipped' tone, I think I would do this:

"Sally, I said for you to come - here - right - this - minute!" she said crossly.

I do agree, though, that it can be difficult to write realistic conversation, and convey the tone you want the reader to 'hear'.

I think we were taught from a different style guide.

The way I was taught, when the quoted sentence ended you started a new one for the attribution. I was also taught that you used " " for speech and ' ' for thoughts - which seems to an uncommon usage.

Sometimes I wish that there was only one version of English, with all of us using the same style guide, but then I think about how French is a codified language (i.e. there is an official version) and because of that they still have 'thee' and 'thou' and shrinking number of people who use French. English grows because it's unregulated and anyone can make a new word, nouns become verbs, verbs become nouns, and so on.

Whether you use capitals or dashes (or periods - I've seen "Sally, I said for you to come. Here. Right. This. Minute!" work as well) it's all a trying to hit on that tone. The best writers I've read don't need to use those tricks - when they write a conflict you can feel the anger rising from the page - but the rest of us poor sods need every trick we can find.

And it can be terrible if a tone doesn't come through. There were some letters in a series of books (the Clan Novels) I read that were either:
A) love letters, or
B) dripping with sarcasm as the writers buried threats in their words.
When the novels were reissued the writer added a passage clarifying which they were, but until he did they were very open to debate because the tone just wasn't clear.

Goodgulf

Yes, I was taught that too, though nowadays, I tend to use italics for thoughts - but I was taught before computers!


Open any novel at a passage with conversation, and you'll find the speech tags (attribution) are not capitalised, unless they are proper nouns or are at the start of the sentence.

I was taught then too - and taught to leave more room after a period than other punctuation to call attention to the fact that the sentence was ended. Now I double hit the space bar after every full stop.

I opened a book - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Midnight Harvest happened to be near the computer. Opening to a random page I found three different ways of things on the right of a close quote mark. Capitalised proper names (of course - you never expect to see a proper name without it being capitalised) , capitalised pronouns (I had to look a bit for an unknown speak to be He said), and lower case letters after a comma.
E.g.
"I'm glad you did," said Saint-Germain. "It is not in your interest to..."
Which is odd, because I know I've seen books where the start of dialogue after the previous sentence ended in a comma started with a lower case - treating the attribution similarly to parentheses.

Different publishing groups use different style guides.

Goodgulf

Now that we're getting down to the finest of abstruse details ... personally, I'd find the above strange, in fact 'incorrect', and I'm not sure it's about different style guides.
The pronoun 'I' will always be capitalised of course, but not 'He said' if used as a speech tag/attribution after the relevant bit of speech. Every novel I look in has lower case used for all after-speech tags (except proper nouns or 'I'). Even after question- or exclamation-marks (which normally behave like full-stops), lower case is used, as in:
"How many did you get?" asked Rachel.
"What!" exclaimed Susie.