Welcome to the Historical Fiction Online forums: a friendly place to discuss, review and discover historical fiction.
If this is your first visit, please be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You will have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing posts, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Language

Got a question/comment about the creative process of writing? Post it here!
User avatar
Justin Swanton
Reader
Posts: 173
Joined: February 2012
Location: Durban, South Africa
Contact:

Post by Justin Swanton » Fri February 15th, 2013, 5:28 am

[quote=""Rowan""]Thanks for your responses. I think I'm of a mind with all of you, but yesterday I discovered a writer who has, up to now, written non-fiction and he's decided to venture into historical fiction. I read about him on medievalists.net and if you saw my other thread on Unbound books, that's where he's publishing.

This is a quote from the story about his book:




I interpreted this to mean something similar to what everyone has stated here, however when I followed the link provided to his listing on Unbound, I found an excerpt that was totally not what I expected. It's written as though the author was alive in 1066-69, or at least imagines himself to have been there. I was interested in the possibilities of this book until I read the excerpt.

If you want to read an excerpt, you can find it
here.[/quote]

All I can say is I hope the author is doing it for love because he sure ain't going to be doing it for money!
Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus.

Author of Centurion's Daughter

Come visit my blog

User avatar
Margaret
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 2440
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: I can't answer this in 100 characters. Sorry.
Favourite HF book: Checkmate, the final novel in the Lymond series
Preferred HF: Literary novels. Late medieval and Renaissance.
Location: Catskill, New York, USA
Contact:

Post by Margaret » Fri February 15th, 2013, 8:13 am

It really depends, I think, on the effect and the readership the author is going for. There's room for a variety of styles in the world, and I'm glad of it. It enriches my appreciation of language and time and the strangeness of history to read something like the Kingsnorth excerpt, when it's done really well, and I think that one is - it has a rhythm and is comprehensible enough to me for the most part that I can understand the general sense of it (even if not every specific word), and it gives me a certain appreciation for the difference between my mind and the mind of the character Kingsnorth is writing about. Obviously, the readership of a novel like that will be quite limited, but I don't expect Kingsnorth is hoping for a spot on the bestseller list.

Some historical novelists want to emphasize how greatly like us the people of the past were, in spite of the changes wrought by time, and these novelists will likely go for a language that is as contemporary as they can get away with - down to borrowing a lot of contemporary slang. Lindsey Davis's Falco mysteries are like this, and they work quite well for me (her more serious historical novels do this too, and they don't work so well for me). Other historical novelists (Kingsnorth is an extreme example) want to emphasize the differences between us and the people of the past. In her Regency romances, Georgette Heyer used loads of period slang, and the dialogue emphasizes not only the difference between her readers and her characters, but between her "rakes" who sling slang around to emphasize their rakish disrespect for the proprieties and her sheltered young misses who speak a demure and proper King's English.

Literature would be much the poorer, I think, if writers either uniformly all wrote to be comprehensible to readers who struggle with unconventional language or uniformly all wrote for readers comfortable with everything from Chaucer and Shakespeare to James-Joyce-style stream-of-consciousness. Or, for that matter, uniformly all wrote to please readers somewhere in between.
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at www.HistoricalNovels.info

User avatar
Lisa
Bibliophile
Posts: 1153
Joined: August 2012
Favourite HF book: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
Preferred HF: Any time period/location. Timeslip, usually prefer female POV. Also love Gothic melodrama.
Location: Northeast Scotland

Post by Lisa » Fri February 15th, 2013, 9:46 am

Well I passed on the link to the excerpt to a friend who speaks 10+ languages fluently and just lives for anything language-related. He says it was easy enough to read, but it would bug him because being half-half, it's still not "authentic". Although it would be incomprehensible if it was any more 'authentic'! He did agree with me though in that it is more 'atmospheric'.

It does serve the author's purpose well, I think, from the excerpt, but it certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea.

Helen_Davis

Post by Helen_Davis » Fri February 15th, 2013, 4:03 pm

I write about non English speaking countries. When I write I try to be careful not to use modern language but not alienate the reader too much with words from the era. I like having glossaries and things, but some glossaries I feel are too long. (Michelle Moran's come to mind.) Am I making sense? I worry I will bore readers too much with my afterwards about why I made the changes I did in my spec fic so I feel a glossary would be too much and I try not to use too many Latin or Egyptian words because while I'm smart enough to figure them out, I know the average reader might not be.

annis
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 4585
Joined: August 2008

Post by annis » Fri February 15th, 2013, 7:22 pm

Glossaries are useful, but the best thing is to make the meaning of the foreign word clear within the context of the story so that readers don't have to keep dodging backwards and forwards to the glossary to work it out - tends to throw you out of the story.

Btw, hope you won't take it amiss if I point out that it's "Foreword" and "Afterword" (singular) i.e. the words that come before and after the main body of the text.
Last edited by annis on Fri February 15th, 2013, 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Helen_Davis

Post by Helen_Davis » Sat February 16th, 2013, 1:55 am

[quote=""annis""]Glossaries are useful, but the best thing is to make the meaning of the foreign word clear within the context of the story so that readers don't have to keep dodging backwards and forwards to the glossary to work it out - tends to throw you out of the story.

Btw, hope you won't take it amiss if I point out that it's "Foreword" and "Afterword" (singular) i.e. the words that come before and after the main body of the text.[/quote]

I know what you mean. Thanks for the heads up about my grammar, I was incredibly exhausted when I wrote that post.

User avatar
Rowan
Bibliophile
Posts: 1462
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: I love history, but it's boring in school. Historical fiction brings it alive for me.
Preferred HF: Iron-Age Britain, Roman Britain, Medieval Britain
Location: New Orleans
Contact:

Post by Rowan » Mon February 18th, 2013, 6:17 pm

I don't mind reading something set in a country whose primary language is not English and an author decides to throw in a few words or phrases that are in the native language. But as Annis said, the meaning should be clear in the context of the story not just tossed in a glossary.

Helen_Davis

Post by Helen_Davis » Fri February 22nd, 2013, 3:47 pm

[quote=""Rowan""]I don't mind reading something set in a country whose primary language is not English and an author decides to throw in a few words or phrases that are in the native language. But as Annis said, the meaning should be clear in the context of the story not just tossed in a glossary.[/quote]

Good point.

499BC
Scribbler
Posts: 14
Joined: October 2013
Location: Otley, Yorkshire
Contact:

Post by 499BC » Thu October 31st, 2013, 7:25 am

One or two people have said the language in my book is too modern. As its set 2,500yrs ago and no-one really knows what ancient 'celtic' sounded like it's a bit of a moot point.
I think there is an argument for giving a sense of being somewhere/sometime other than the present though.
The argument about clarity and ease of reading (without constantly referring to a glossary) is valid too.
So its down to style and taste I suppose.

User avatar
lauragill
Avid Reader
Posts: 352
Joined: July 2011
Location: Southern California
Contact:

Post by lauragill » Fri November 1st, 2013, 6:10 am

Yikes. Having to read a whole novel of that would be impossible. That excerpt alone had my eyes bleeding, and I'm familiar with Middle English.

[quote=""Rowan""]Thanks for your responses. I think I'm of a mind with all of you, but yesterday I discovered a writer who has, up to now, written non-fiction and he's decided to venture into historical fiction. I read about him on medievalists.net and if you saw my other thread on Unbound books, that's where he's publishing.

This is a quote from the story about his book:




I interpreted this to mean something similar to what everyone has stated here, however when I followed the link provided to his listing on Unbound, I found an excerpt that was totally not what I expected. It's written as though the author was alive in 1066-69, or at least imagines himself to have been there. I was interested in the possibilities of this book until I read the excerpt.

If you want to read an excerpt, you can find it
here.[/quote]

Post Reply

Return to “The Craft of Writing”