Now that I\u2019ve looked at a rough outline of the English language through the years, I think I\u2019m going for more of an Early Modern English vibe, 1440-1604ish. Fancy, but not so fancy that my MC has a huge learning curve just trying to talk to the other characters.<\/em><\/p>\nThese are great!<\/p>\n
Song4myKing\u2019s nod to the King James version of the Bible is inspired, because, according to Wikipedia, it was translated between 1604 and 1611. And so is Melissa Mead\u2019s Shakespeare suggestion, since he, too, was writing at the end of StorytellerLizzie\u2019s period.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d recommend not going much earlier than the seventeenth century, because both the King James Bible and Shakespeare are challenging enough for a reader\u2013this reader anyway.<\/p>\n
However, despite my recommendation, if you want to do full-throttle post-Chaucerian, go for it. I\u2019d say read a good deal from the period until the reading becomes easy. Work on thinking in period language.\u00a0The reader may have trouble at the beginning, but if your story grabs her, she\u2019ll hang in. Then, once she gets it, she\u2019ll be immersed and will feel proud of herself for getting there. You might also consider using the same notation system that appears in Volume I of The Norton Anthology of English Literature<\/em>, both definitions in the margins and in footnotes at the bottom of the page, which will take a lot of the work out of it for the reader. I tried and failed to find a link to a page online, but I\u2019d bet your local library has a copy. Notations can be done in a lighthearted way, too. If we have fun with them, the reader probably will, too.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve mentioned Twain\u2019s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u2019s Court<\/em> before on the blog. It’s\u00a0also a time-travel story. Twain mines the old-timey language as well as the trappings of a courtly age to great comic effect. The novel is in the public domain, so here\u2019s a sample from early on, before the main character realizes that he has time traveled:<\/p>\n\u201cFair sir, will ye just?\u201d said this fellow.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cWill I which?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cWill ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for\u2014\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cWhat are you giving me?\u201d I said.\u00a0 “Get along back to your circus, or I\u2019ll report you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nNow what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse\u2019s neck and his long spear pointed straight ahead.\u00a0 I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree when he arrived.<\/em><\/p>\nHah!<\/p>\n
Since StorytellerLizzie\u2019s story is also a time-travel tale, Twain\u2019s example is particularly instructive. If it’s told by the contemporary visitor, then the narration will be different from the dialogue, as is the case with Twain, but if the POV is third-person omniscient, we can choose whether to go contemporary or old-fashioned.<\/p>\n
I do not recommend this, but I\u2019m offering it as either an example of the possibilities or a cautionary tale about the crazy lengths writers can go to. When I wrote Stolen Magic<\/em>, I decided to limit my vocabulary to words that entered English no later than 1700, so I checked the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> (OED) for every word I suspected of later origins. (In case some of you don\u2019t know, the OED is a historical dictionary that lists dates with quotations for every usage and nuance of a word. I subscribe to the online service, which isn\u2019t cheap, but, again, I suspect your library subscribes, too. If you haven\u2019t, I\u2019d recommend looking at it at least once to see how it works and what it offers.) This foolishness slowed down my writing considerably\u2013and I doubt it improved the book. However in StorytellerLizzie\u2019s case, it might be worth checking a word every so often to make sure it isn\u2019t an absolute newcomer. You can search phrases, too, as well as words.<\/p>\nAnd here\u2019s another probably insane thought: Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter, either rhyming or blank verse (no rhymes). Pentameter goes out the window with prose, but iambs are still possible. Iambs are ta DUM, ta DUM, ta DUM, in two-syllable units called feet in poetry. Take this line from Richard III, in which I\u2019ve capitalized the stressed syllables: a HORSE, a HORSE! My KINGdom FOR a HORSE! A poetry teacher once told the class I was taking that Fitzgerald wrote chunks of The Great Gatsby<\/em>\u00a0(high school and up) in iambs. I wonder what it would be like to try that, what kind of voice that would create.<\/p>\nAnything can be said in iambs, since to some degree English naturally falls that way, but it takes effort and a thesaurus, and it might slow the writing even more than constantly checking the OED. Still, we can try it with a paragraph and observe the effect. If we like it, we can make the effort with important moments in our story. Or, since the question is about dialogue, we can make a certain character speak in iambs. And there are other kinds of meter as well. I\u2019ve read that Dr. Seuss wrote in anapests (ta ta DUM, ta ta DUM).<\/p>\n
Of course, if we\u2019re going for a Lord of the Rings<\/em> or Game of Thrones<\/em> sort of voice, we should look at those to get some tips. I pulled my Fellowship of the Rings<\/em> off my shelf to see what\u2019s going on. Mostly the language is standard modern English, but I did notice, as Tangye suggests, few contractions\u2013some, but fewer than I use. I also noticed words like shall, befall, aye<\/em>, depending on who’s talking. And the phrasing seemed more formal in the dialogue of some characters, like elves.<\/p>\nAs for colloquialisms, I’ve many times used\u00a0Faugh!<\/em> instead of\u00a0Yuck!<\/em> A source that might be helpful is Louisa May Alcott. If I remember right,\u00a0Little Women<\/em> is full of archaic colloquialisms.<\/p>\nWe got delightfully into the writing weeds in this post. Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n
\u2219 A time warp has brought together legendary King Arthur, Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, a bionic person of the 23rd century, and your 21st century MC. The scene is a forest, so no one is sure what the year is. Some may and some may not want to return to their old lives. Write their dialogue as they struggle to understand what\u2019s happened.<\/p>\n
\u2219 For the fun of it, try putting all of this from Twain into iambs:
\nNow what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse\u2019s neck and his long spear pointed straight ahead.\u00a0 I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree when he arrived.<\/em>
\nSome of it is already done for you, like the end: so I was UP the TREE when HE arRIVED. (Maybe Twain did this on purpose, but probably not. English likes iambs!)<\/p>\n\u2219 Your MC has traveled through so many centuries that her head is spinning, and she\u2019s returned with her mission accomplished. She\u2019s discovered the words to a curse that will rob your villain of power forever. Pull out all the stops and have her issue the curse in language that grabs grandeur from biblical times to the distant future. Write the curse.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Happy new year! May your writing flourish in 2018! On October 14th way back in 2017, StorytellerLizzie wrote, I was wondering if anybody had some reference material for writing dialogue in a Lord of the Rings\/Game of Thrones type universe? I\u2019m playing with an idea of my MC being from a modern time and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,73],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}