Writing Is Hard.

[misslj_author]

No, really, it is. And I say this as someone who can churn out 500-1500 words a day without any problem if I put my mind to it.

But churning it out isn't the issue. Making it good is what makes it hard. You write and then reread to fix up errors and find yourself thinking, 'Hm, how many times have I used this word in this sentence... and I've run out of similies!' Or my other personal favourite, which runs along the lines of 'Holy run-on sentence, Batman!'

I admit I'm the queen of the run-on sentence. I love my sentences and I love words, but I really need to learn to use the full-stop more. I should make an inspirational poster saying 'Be not afraid of the full-stop! The full-stop is your friend.' And for every full-stop I don't use, oh, I abuse the comma. The comma and I have a love/hate relationship, as Rian commented to me a little while ago, it's either a feast or a famine.

I've been to university, I went to one of the top three high schools in my state. I have had an excellent (and varied) education. But part of the education system in Australia in the 70s and 80s was that grammar and basic English were taught specifically in primary school as a framework for further learning. (Primary school, for non-Aussies, is for children between ages 5 and 12.)

Because my primary education was in years pre-internet there was no way that parents could research options for schooling. They had to place their trust in the school their children were going to and hope that the education was satisfactory. Luckily, I got into an excellent high school - by pure accident, I sometimes think - and so I have no doubt that eased my parents minds quite a bit. However, the education I recieved prior to that was sub-par by anyone's standards.

Never have I felt so out of my depth as I did in year 8, the first year of high school. Because what we were taught in primary school was woefully inadequate to any high school education system, I did appallingly in the maths and sciences because I'd had absolutely no prior education in those fields at all - except for multiplication tables, basic adding and subtracting. Science was based on watching a show made for children once a week, which was boring because we didn't understand it. English wasn't much better - spelling and reading comprehension were taught but that was about it. Grammar? Touched on lightly, perhaps once. An old friend from primary school once remarked that "It was more of a glorified daycare center than a school," and he's right.

What saved me from failing English forever was no doubt my love of reading and of writing. I might not be able to tell you what, exactly, an adverb is, but I do know how to form a sentence!

Which brings me back to the original statement: writing is hard.

I'm still in research mode for Broken Wings, a novel with the Archangel Gabriel as the main character. Research mode is lasting longer in this case because of who he is - I don't want to be defending lack of knowledge of a certain point of obscure Orthodoxy theory, for example. Not that this material would go into the story, but I want to be able to have Gabriel sound like an Archangel and not just like a bad tempered, egomaniacal, immortal brat with wings.

My main problem at this point, in preliminary writings, has been his dialogue. Should I write his accent phonetically? Should I just mention that yes, he does sound like a dockworker from London in the 60s living in the present day? Should I do a combination of both? And when I do use certain phonetics, such as 'y' know' or 'an'' or 'this is that and there, right,' etc, should I use the full word or the slang spelling?

Writing is hard. And Gabe's dialogue structure is going to confound me for weeks.

Comments

[rian219.livejournal.com]

In my opinion:

Should I write his accent phonetically?
I would say not. It's too much for a whole book.

Should I just mention that yes, he does sound like a dockworker from London in the 60s living in the present day?

If you can do it in a way that isn't awkward, but most ways are going to be, because doing it that way is essentially info dumping.

And when I do use certain phonetics, such as 'y' know' or 'an'' or 'this is that and there, right,' etc, should I use the full word or the slang spelling?

I was going to say the full word, but then I have used "darlin'" when I wanted to get across that the character dropped the g. But that was one word, and again we're talking about a whole book.

If I were you I'd concentrate on sentence structure and slang - people from each non-English speaking country have a certain way of constructing their sentences that's different from the way an English speaker would say them, and the same goes for people from different regions of the same country. If I were you I'd get a whole load of recordings from the region you want his accent to be from and listen to how the sentences are structured, and mimic that. That will get the accent across without annoying people with phonetics.

Also, funny that you've done this because I've also made myself up an author LJ, I just haven't gotten around to do anything with it yet. Great minds think alike! :)

[misslj-author.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I could probably throw in a throw-away sentence in the initial observation about him from his co-character in the early parts of the narrative and that would do it. The audios are an *excellent* idea, I'll hunt up YouTube and see what's available there. Good call, Gungadin.

Also, funny that you've done this because I've also made myself up an author LJ, I just haven't gotten around to do anything with it yet. Great minds think alike! :)

Ha, I had a feeling you might! XD What's yours?

[rian219.livejournal.com]

Yeah, an initial observation would be OK, but then you can only do that once, which is the problem. I don't know what a London dockworker from the 60s sounds like, but if you made him from the nroth of England you could just listen to interviews of Sean Bean and Richard Armitage all day, and that would be no hardship at all, hahaha.

Ha, I had a feeling you might! XD What's yours?

Yes. I read with interest the discussion of websites on meta_writer, but then it was this blog post that finally decided me on going with an LJ for now - scroll down until she talks about the PaperbackWriter blog. She's right, there's nothing you can do on a website that you can't do on a well-organised blog, so I decided to go with that for now. Mine is meredith_shayne. There's nothing there yet, but there will be. I was planning on taking the approach you've taken, i.e. posting different things than what you'd post elsewhere. Of course, I need to get back into the habit of posting at all, haha, but it's all about baby steps!

[misslj-author.livejournal.com]

Yeah exactly. I could dig out the undubbed original version of Mojo which is set in the rock n roll clubs near the docks of London and listen to that. Oh. No. Quelle horreur, I'd have to listen carefully to Hans. *clutches pearls* *has no pearls* *oops*

Snap. That was exactly the post and comments that led me to set this one up. A LJ works just as well as a site and the plus accounts have image hosting and all that, so that's even better than buying a domain, then paying for web space, etc, etc.

[rian219.livejournal.com]

I did a price comparison of webspace vs. LJ, and buying a domain plus webspace would cost ~$120NZ a year, whereas LJ costs ~$37NZ a year. And with a webspace there's design issues, keeping it updated, bandwidth issues, etc, which are not problems with LJ. You can post snippets on LJ, short stories, maintain a static post with the links to your books, organise everything with tags...there's nothing that should suffer for not being on a webpage.

[misslj-author.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And LJ takes out the coding nightmare which is a big ease of the workload. (I haven't updated Anarchisma for ages b.c of that). Some authors have put wordpress onto their own space, but that just seems a bit counterproductive to me, when you can buy a domain name and point it at a wordpress and it's essentially the same thing. But LJ is easier to manage and we know it now, so yay for LJ.

[captlychee.livejournal.com]

Well, thank God for this post—I've finally worked out who you are!

[misslj-author.livejournal.com]

LOL, sorry Hippy!

[corellian-sugar.livejournal.com]

Indeed, do not fear the full-stop. Recognizing your foibles as a writer is the first step to conquering them. On the other hand, I don't any writer cranks out perfect prose. History is riddled with those who had a love of the run-on sentence. Hemingway comes immediately to mind, and he didn't care much for punctuation, either.

Rian had lovely suggestions for Gabriel's voice and dialogue structure. I would have given the same advice.

Personally, I can't wait to read this book. Because I know you're going to rock it hardcore.

[misslj-author.livejournal.com]

The full-stop is a fearsome beast! I keep thinking of the author whose name escapes me who wrote 'Less Than Zero'. Holy run-on sentences of DOOM, Batman. That was a damn headache to read because of it.

I think YouTube will be my next port of call in the research gig. I can listen to the vids while doing other things, so that'll work.

Heh, I hope so. I'm getting awfully fond of Gabriel. He's taking over my brain meats!

[corellian-sugar.livejournal.com]

You just need to make friends with the full stop. He's not such a bastard when you get to know him. :::smirks:::

[misslj-author.livejournal.com]

But he's funny looking and he's got a black aura!

[corellian-sugar.livejournal.com]

:::rolls:::

[captlychee.livejournal.com]

Brett Easton Ellis wrote Less Than Zero and that was apparently ver heavily edited befoe publication. When that was successful they did almost no editing on American Psycho and that's apparently just sphincter-cruahingly hard to read, or at least to concentrate on.

Using the full stop too much. It leads to sentences that are easily read. The problem with that is the sound of each sentence. The staccato rhythm doesn't suit elegant prose.

Your readers have long attention spans and can cope with a sentence that, because of the elegance of the words and because of the subject that's being discussed in the course of the sentence, by which I mean those things that arevealed not only by what is being discussed but also by how the emotional and psychological strength of the sentence is affected by the choice and order of the words, can coney what you're trying to say.

I will say that if you can't read back what yoy're writing as you write it, these run on sentences become a dangerous thing to mess with :(

Lastly, dialogue is reported speech and so if it's between the quote marks, represent it with slang and contractions all the way. It's not so badly removed from English (sytandard Egnlish) that it would sound some of the phoneticattempts of the 19th century to reproduce dialects.

There's also a good book called The Atlast of English Dialects which might be helpful.

And really lastly, o you still have my Office 2007? :)

[misslj-author.livejournal.com]

Him! Yes! I don't know why that slipped my mind. I read Less Than Zero when I was 16 - I enjoyed Iain Banks' more existential stuff than his to be honest.

Ah yes, good point. I'll check out that book too, thanks!

I do, yus. I'm hip-deep in bills atm, I'll post it back when they're paid is that okay? Thanks heaps for that, muchly appreciated.

[captlychee.livejournal.com]

There's a simlar American book on dialects, but I haven't checked it out yet. Somewhere around there's a site where a Professor of some type isattempting a world English dialect atlas. . .but I don't remember the URL at all.

No hurry for the Office. I just wanted to keep an eye on where it was.