Language

[destinie21]

Okay people my question is this:
What do you find to be the "language" you're most comfortable with? By language I mean the use of words not actual tongue or dialect.

For me try as I might I can't seem to break away from my poetic roots. I don't know if that's good or bad at this point. I'm growing as an authour but my use of language remains dauntingly steadfast.

The second part of this question is

Has your use of language changed as you've become more experienced or is it something that has and should remain constant?

 

[oggbashan]

My language has become much simpler and more direct as I continue to write.

You can see something of what I used to be like in my 450 word sentence in the thread on Reading Ease. I wrote that just for fun but when I first started to write fiction I wrote like that but used the finest and most polysyllabic words I could find. My sentence structure was complex, the imagery was esoteric, the references classical, and I threw in quotations from Latin, French, German and English Literature almost at random.

It was and is unreadable.

Og

 

[destinie21]

My language has become much simpler and more direct as I continue to write.

You can see something of what I used to be like in my 450 word sentence in the thread on Reading Ease. I wrote that just for fun but when I first started to write fiction I wrote like that but used the finest and most polysyllabic words I could find. My sentence structure was complex, the imagery was esoteric, the references classical, and I threw in quotations from Latin, French, German and English Literature almost at random.

It was and is unreadable.

Og

So what you're saying is you dumbed it down for the masses

 

[oggbashan]

So what you're saying is you dumbed it down for the masses

Who's being judgemental?

No. My first attempts were so bad as writing because I was trying to demonstrate how much I knew and not how to tell a story. The story was lost in all the intellectual rubbish.

Now I write better than I did then. I still have a long way to go but Literotica and the Authors' Hangout has helped me much more than any number of "How To" books or a mass of reading "good" authors.

I am surprised just how much my writing has changed as a result of feedback and the discussions in the AH. I'd like to rewrite last year's stories but there are so many more waiting to be written that I'm not sure I'll ever get back to them.

My language has changed because the readers on Literotica do not share a common culture. What is the point of a clever phrase or reference if half the audience hasn't a clue about the phrase?

As an example take just one word "concord".

To a US citizen it is spelt with a capital c and has echoes of the Revolution. To anyone connected with aviation it has an e on the end and is a supersonic passenger jet. To some Catholics it should end in "at" and means something particular. To European citizens it has associations with the setting up of the European Community. "The Concord of Rome".

So what do I expect it to mean when I write "concord"? I mean an agreement but if I use "concord" instead I bring in a host of contradictory images depending on the nationality and education of the reader.

"Dumbing down" the language is NOT easy. Using short simple words and still creating complex images is very difficult but if you use simpler words the story becomes more accessible to a wider audience, particularly if for some of the readers English is a second language.

Not so simplistic Og

 

[destinie21]

Who's being judgemental?


Not so simplistic Og

I guess I should have prefaced my statement with the story that goes along with it . While I take my writing seriously In this forum I tend to shy away from the more intellectual bits after all this is an erotic site. political references like "This is Iran in '79 and you're Jimmy Carter. " get left out even the things like in a story involving boating when one of the character's would say "I think we're going to need a bigger boat."get the axe during editing. (BTW that pharse is from the movie jaws) but one would sort of have to know that to get the whole "joke" so I wasn't assuming anything just sort of joking around.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Using local lingo, such as usages, nicknames, and expressions is a challenge, especially in short stories. Of course, some "literary" novels, such as "Angela's Ashes" and "God of Small Things" treat the reader as if they were a life long resident of Ireland or India or whereever.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Colleen Thomas]

My biggest problem in language is finding a voice for my characters when I draw them from different backgrounds.

My southern roots tell me:

"Y'all want sumtin to eat," is good english.

up here in NY it's

"Yowse guys, wanna grab some food?"

That's a regional difference among people of my own socicoeconomic background and ethnicity. How would the child of a second generation hispanic immagrant family in south Texas speak or the daughter of an Ivy league graduate and his old money wife? How much difference do I need to add to display the character's differing speech patterns and how much can I type in plain english? Does throwing in a line in french throw the reader or help build the character if she's originally from Paris. Can I pick up enough street english from pop culture mediums to write an inner city youth or am I better off having him speak like the rest of the characters and hoping the readers don't notice or that it dosen't bother them enough to disrupt the flow of a story?

Those are the places where the language causes me the most problems.

-Colly

 

[raphy]

Ah, now this is the other half of the thread I started about characters' voices.

I don't tend to write in dialect, unless I'm trying to make a specific point. Occasionally, I'll drop a g and add an apostrophe, but mostly, I leave it up to the reader to 'hear' the correct voice in his or her head as he or she is reading.

 

[Alex De Kok]

I'm with Raphy

Let the reader 'hear' the voices. Most of my stories are fairly neutral in language. I did write one dialect piece, but the distortions I had to use to convey the sounds rather tortured the written English. It was fun, but I doubt I'll repeat it.

I tend not to use polysyllabic words either, finding it easier to maintain the flow if I don't try to be clever. The fact that I don't really know very many polysyllabic words helps too, of course.

Alex

 

[Stefan_J]

I'm with Alex and Ralphy on this one, i don't think it's essential to have a character's exact dialect, most authors of fiction don't necessarily paint it that way, like their characters, i try to let the reader picture the character in their heads intstead of describing every single attribute...the reader has to have some sort of input and use of their own imagination, that's what makes it so fun to read.

 

[Guest]

Has your use of language changed as you've become more experienced or is it something that has and should remain constant?

At first I thought this too simple a question, i.e., of course one's language changes with experience, vocabulary naturally expands, etc. But thinking about it w/re. to writing has more depth.

My 'language' has evolved (vs. developed which has more to do with consciousness) in that I've learned to understand how 'language itself' works and given myself to it rather than tried to conquer or use it (as in taking advantage of it). Even as I write this post I am acutely aware of its (language's) workings.

One might look at Joyce for a very monumental example. Look at his language in Dubliners, the clear prosody of paragraphs in his short stories (the ending of "The Dead"!), then wander on through the Portrait, jump into Ulysses, and skydive into the Wake. This helps me better understand the difference between language and voice. I can read/hear Joyce's voice from beginning to end of his works and read and hear how his 'language' evolved. Amazing.

Perdita