A Question of Style--input from fellow authors appreciated

SlickTony

Literotica Guru
Joined
May 25, 2002
Posts
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I am working on a story which is basically an intensive souping up of Genesis 19, written from the POV of Lot's younger daughter, and I am a little at a loss as to how to make it feel right. I don't want the terminology to be too soft-focus and romance-novelly, but at the same time I am kind of trying to avoid Latin or Anglo-Saxon terms as the story is set in a time which very definitely predates both of those cultures. If anyone can give me some pointers on how to make this thing feel real while avoiding anachronisms, I'd surely appreciate it.
 
GOOD question. I wish I had as good an answer.
Obviously, we really can't write dialogue the way they
spoke then. Even if we could write those words, and we
can't, our readers wouldn't understand them.
So, you are stuck with making it sound reasonable.
I had similar problems in writing a story set in medieval
Europe (say Alsace-Lorraine, really a fictional duchy).
I settled for 1) using the thee/thou/thine form of the
singular second person, 2) not using any contractions.
Not particularly close to how people spoke back then, but
(I thought) conveyed a sense of anachronism.
You have to do something like that.
Use writing that isn't quite up-to-the-minute. Still,
you don't want the feel of some particular other time.
 
Go to the King James Bible and read it: you're reading Ancient Hebrew, filtered very accurately into a simple, sincere English style. That's what you want, but with modern English.

Some of the archaic feel of King James English is because that's how English was then. Examples are: (1) thou, thee, thy, and -est on verbs; (2) -eth on verbs; (3) simple inversion of questions and negatives. Update these to modern English: so "whatsoever thou hast in the city" becomes "whatever you have in the city"; and change "gat" and "spake" to "got" and "spoke".

But a lot of the feel of it comes direct from the Hebrew, and you want to preserve that directness: sentences usually begin with w "and"; they may contain hinne "behold" or gam "even".

"He bowed himself with his face toward the ground": that's not the translators being fancy and elegant, that's actually how the Hebrews expressed it. "And Lot went out at the door unto them": likewise.

There are two words "to" in Hebrew, l the normal one, and `al where there is great social distance between them (e.g. humans to angels, or God to humans), and the KJB consistently translates them "to" and "unto" respectively. That's why it keeps saying "unto" all through.

So, in conclusion, drop the 1600s grammar ("thou comest"), but stick to the simple way of phrasing that the King James represents, and you'll be accurately conveying the feel. And as it's so well known it shouldn't sound so strange.

And of course, to get your terminology right, go to the Song of Songs: all hillocks and does and doves' eyes and vineyards: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine." - "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely." -- and so on.
 
Good idea.

My advice is similar to PT's, though nowhere near as erudite. If you read the bible, you should be able to pick up the rhythm of it without having to use language so archaic it's difficult to read. But you could use the archaic stuff for dialogue.
 
Thanks. I'm a bit of a KJV snob, and that was sort of the effect I am aiming for. Now to see how this will go down in the readership we've got here...

At the same time, injecting a bit of modern vernacular into an antique setting can work very well. I just love Lindsey Davis' Marcus Didius Falco detective series. Her English is sort of slangy and British, but you just get the feeling that if you knew Latin as the Romans knew Latin, it would translate just like that.
 
here's a link to a free KJV, i have it downloaded onto my pc. very easy to use and has great tools.

http://www.bibkjv.com/bible.html

i note this is a newer version than mine. let me know what you think and i may upgrade mine.

(how odd, upgrading my bible... - food for thought)
 
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