EFHA associate Mary Thornell tagged me in a recent meme. Usually, I'm not all that into these sorts of things, but even I can cut loose now and again. So, here I go then:
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1. “What is the title of your work in progress?”
A Woman of Proper Accomplishments
2. “Where did the idea come from for the book?”
I've always had a long fascination with the English Regency period. At the same time, I'm a bit of a fantasy nerd. A few years back I entertained the idea of injecting a bit of magic into the Regency, but I was under the impression there wouldn't be much interest in such a book outside my own fevered imagination. I stumbled upon several, though, and that convinced me it wasn't such a bad idea after all.
I was heavily influenced by some of the more adventure-driven Georgette Heyer narratives. I want a bit of period romance, with a touch of adventure and magic.
3. “What genre does your book fall under?”
Depends on who you ask. I've been calling it Regency paranormal romance. Some might call it historical fantasy. There's a bit of an alternative history element because of the introduction of magic into the setting (by Benjamin Franklin, no less!), but it's not really about exploring historical divergences is as much as playing around with a romantic narrative that seems plausible in a Regency England that has a bit of magic (even if the people in the story insist, insist, and insist some more that they aren't doing magic).
The only reason I'm not totally set on calling it a paranormal romance is although the center-point is the growing romance between characters, and there is a happy romantic ending with smooching and all that (yes, this is a old-fashioned "sweet" romance; no bodices are ripped), certain elements aren't totally wrapped up by the end. So, arguably, it's not a true "Happily-Ever-After" as much as a "Happy Right Then." Mostly, that's because it's the first part of trilogy with a plot. I'll talk more about that in a bit.
4. “Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?”
Oh, I honestly don't know.
5. “What is the one sentence synopsis for your book?”
Helena Preston, rthe daughter of a rural gentleman of modest means, finds her romantic interest in a gentleman scholar of spiritus, the rare ability to imbue life into objects, complicated by his possible involvement with a criminal.
6. “Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?”
I'm still exploring my options at this time.
7. “How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?”
It took about three months to write the first draft. That was...a while ago. I've gone through many drafts since then.
8. “What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?”
I think if people like books like The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, or Shades and Milk and Honey, they would probably enjoy my book, though there's a bit more of an adventure element in my book than something like Shades.
I was trying to be more "Heyer adventure with magic" and not so much "Austen with magic."
9. “Who or what inspired you to write this book?”
Oh, just my twin interests in Regency England and fantasy, and the various fine examples of the historical Georgian fantasy that I encountered several years back.
10. “What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?”
Despite the inclusion of magic and the alternative history elements (among other things, the Americans lost the Revolution), I've actually strived very hard to make this book accurate to the Regency period. That might seem absurd given the present of magic, but I thought it'd help with versimilitude. I've studied the period extensively, including primary source letters and materials, and try to capture period-appropriate social details, references, et cetera.
I even went so far as to check that almost every word I used in the book, both in the narrative and in the dialog existed at the time of the story (1811) and also did my best to use it appropriate to the context of the time. It's surprising what was around then that meant exactly the same as today and what common words and even greetings weren't around back then.
Initially, I even went so far as to try and closely model my dialog patterns after period dialog, but several beta readers found it more distracting than immersive, so I've admittedly modernized the syntax a bit. I sprinkle in Regency slang here and there, but not so much that it's distracting (I hope).
This is actually the first of a trilogy. Each book will involve a different main lead and be a romantic adventure continuing in the backdrop of an increasingly heating up Napoleonic Wars that are unfolding slightly different than they did in our history due to increasingly sophisticated use of weaponized spiritus.
The second book will focus on the Helena Preston's flightly francophile friend, Cassandra, and the third book will focus on Helena's more uptight younger sister, Sophia.
Showing posts with label a woman of proper accomplishment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a woman of proper accomplishment. Show all posts
Monday, September 24, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Do not misapprehend me, good sir: Modern vs. non-modern dialog
It has been pointed out to me on more than a few occasions that I rarely seem to discuss my own work on my own blog. That's something I hope to somewhat remedy in a somewhat interesting way starting with today's post.
As one might surmise from either my previous statements on the matter or just my general interests, several of the writing projects I'm working on are historical in nature. Now these bring with them some additional complications that haven't plagued with my pure fantasy or contemporary projects. There is the obvious issue of the requisite historical research. The minute you make any aspect of your story historical, people do take notice and it affects verisimilitude.
When I was passing through my upcoming Regency paranormal work, A WOMAN OF PROPER ACCOMPLISHMENTS (AWOPA), through my writer's group, several of the readers were people with a particular interest in the Regency Period. The book is set in an alternate 1811 in Bedfordshire, England. In this alternate timeline, a type of magic (which, of course, the various stuffy members of the Royal Society insist isn't magic) called spiritus has been discovered. Among other things it allows for the animation of objects. The martial applications aren't unappreciated, so many countries bolster their armies with automaton soldiers. In addition, the American Revolution was squashed after the English win at the Battle of Saratoga with the aid of these artificial troops.
What was interesting during the process of having my novel critiqued was that, for the most part, people were able to accept these rather significant diversions from history inserted into what was otherwise a sweet* Regency Romance. Instead, they were far more concerned with elements such as potential period inappropriate social interactions, et cetera. Period fiction, whether it involves magic or not, does have to be rather careful. Atmosphere is everything.
Language is one of the trickiest areas to navigate. To capture the language of 1811 for AWOPA, I spent some time reading some period letters and diaries. When I wrote the first draft, I used etymology resources to ensure that the words I was using were appropriate both in that they existed in the period and they were used in the same manner. There are probably a small handful of slightly out-of-period words I ended up letting slip through.
When I first passed my book along to my writing group, there was a bit of a problem. My desired fidelity to period language had hurt accessibility. No one disputed that the language style was appropriate for the period, but many were having trouble getting into the story because of the same style. On occasion, amusingly enough, I did have a person suggest that I was using a word in a too modern way, a discussion that was quickly ended with, for example, me pointing to a primary source. Sometimes certain words and concepts are far older than we might think.
I split the difference and rewrote the work to end up with something that it is evocative of the period (and still mostly uses only period words), but with a bit more modern syntax. Perhaps overly influenced by the work of Georgette Heyer, I was also initially rather aggressive with the insertion of Regency slang, which, admittedly is rather impenetrable if you aren't otherwise familiar with it. It took me half the first Heyer book I read until I figured out what some of the words she was using almost every page meant. I didn't excise all the slang from my manuscript, but I tried to stick to things that were a bit more easy to figure out in context.
In the end, it was a compromise between accessibility and accuracy. I'm sure upon release some will complain that it's still too stuffy and some will complain that it's not true enough to the period, but I'm pleased with the overall compromise.
A story set in England, even two hundred years in the past, still has the advantage of language that can be parsed by most modern English-speaking readers. I may have compromised for accessibility, but I could have kept my original style. Writing an understandable story with "accurate" language in say, the 11th century, would be a much more difficult affair.
My other major historical project is a straight (that is no paranormal elements) historical thriller set in the Heian period of Japanese history. Writing accurate language for the period would require me to, among other things, write the story in classical Japanese, which would present challenges even for Japanese natives to parse.
During a recent discussion of Hilary Mantel's work by The Economist, there was a discussion about her linguistic choices. She doesn't, for example, trend to perfectly and accurate render the language of 17th-century England. From what I've read of her work, I'd agree with that assessment. It's more about atmosphere than pure accuracy.
I've read several books by J.R. Tomlin, who writes medieval novels focused on the Scottish War for Independence. She uses modern English interspersed with the occasional period Scots, English, or French word, She also makes use of, on occasion, somewhat archaic syntax to communicate the feel of the language. It's certainly not an accurate direct rendering of the language, but it certainly communicates a certain atmosphere.
On the other end of the spectrum is someone like Gordon Doherty. I read one of his books set during the Roman Republic period and another set in the Byzantine Empire. Mr. Doherty, for the most part, uses rather modern syntax and modernish slang. He intersperses in period words, typically, in relation to specific weapons and military terms.
Arguably, these are opposing techniques. J.R. is trying to promote the historicity through atmosphere while maintaining accessibility. Gordon's going straight for near maximum accessibility. Neither technique is "accurate" in the pure linguistic sense, but short of learning new languages (or classical forms of languages one already knows), no one, I think is going to have that much of an issue. Gordon's style is a reflection, I think, of something that we often forget: the commonly used language of the past was the vernacular for those people and so reflecting it in more vernacular modern language form is a way of communicating the spirit of those exchanges even at the potential cost of some atmosphere. What style a person prefers will, I think, just depend on their own reading biases. I seem to have a natural inclination more toward J.R.'s style than Gordon's, but both have their merits.
Sometimes people also have false expectations of what constitutes accuracy in language depictions. I saw a person once complaining that a book focused on 17th-century Canadian Native tribes had the natives using contractions and that their languages didn't have contractions. The book was written in English (with the occasional bit of French). Now, it's a bit odd, I think, to suggest that "translated" dialog, as it were, should mirror the exact syntax and morphology of the original language. Mandarin, for instance, doesn't have true tense in the sense you see in English. Instead, it has aspect, which marks not time of action but rather state of completion. It'd be downright silly to write a book in English involving characters speaking Mandarin and then not use tenses.
As I circle back around to my thoughts on my Heian project, I'm still unsure how I'm going to handle it. At the moment, even though I've a good outline of the plot, I'm still knee-deep in research. Although I have a good high-level understanding of Heian history, that's not the same as having the firm grasp of daily living details that are necessary when writing a work of fiction.
The question of language is one I go back to again and again. How many classical Japanese words (or even modern Japanese words) should be inserted? Is it better to express the concept completely in English if there's an easy equivalent word? Conversely, if the word doesn't have an elegant translation, is it best to leave it in Japanese? There's a certain amount of atmosphere that comes with using Japanese. Kami can be translated as god or spirit, but it's somewhat in-between. Not using the word results in a certain subtle lost of atmosphere and even conceptual understanding. Though, at the same time, if a person doesn't have the conceptual understanding to begin with, it might just confuse things.
There's the question of the best way to handle non-English terms. Some authors just are careful to let their meaning be inferred in context, and some even just present short sections that define the terms before or after the actual main text.
Most of the characters in this novel are highly educated aristocrats, members and family members of a bureaucratic elite obsessed with form over function. In that sense, somewhat old-fashioned English marked by flowery language, the kind that some people tend to often associate with historical speech, accurate or otherwise, may be appropriate. Heian aristocrats, after all, were people who expected each other to produce specific-form poetry quickly in social situations.
In the end, though, no matter what I do, it'll be inaccurate. I mean I'm not even writing the dialog in modern Japanese, let alone classical Japanese. So, with that in mind, does that grant me a sort of freedom that I don't quite have with say my Regency work?
I'm curious what your thoughts are?
-----
*For those unfamiliar with romance novel "temperature" levels, sweet is typically considered the least steamy in terms of sexual content. It used to mean no sex at all, but nowadays it often can mean just "no sex shown." In my case, I use it to mean no sex at all.
As one might surmise from either my previous statements on the matter or just my general interests, several of the writing projects I'm working on are historical in nature. Now these bring with them some additional complications that haven't plagued with my pure fantasy or contemporary projects. There is the obvious issue of the requisite historical research. The minute you make any aspect of your story historical, people do take notice and it affects verisimilitude.
When I was passing through my upcoming Regency paranormal work, A WOMAN OF PROPER ACCOMPLISHMENTS (AWOPA), through my writer's group, several of the readers were people with a particular interest in the Regency Period. The book is set in an alternate 1811 in Bedfordshire, England. In this alternate timeline, a type of magic (which, of course, the various stuffy members of the Royal Society insist isn't magic) called spiritus has been discovered. Among other things it allows for the animation of objects. The martial applications aren't unappreciated, so many countries bolster their armies with automaton soldiers. In addition, the American Revolution was squashed after the English win at the Battle of Saratoga with the aid of these artificial troops.
What was interesting during the process of having my novel critiqued was that, for the most part, people were able to accept these rather significant diversions from history inserted into what was otherwise a sweet* Regency Romance. Instead, they were far more concerned with elements such as potential period inappropriate social interactions, et cetera. Period fiction, whether it involves magic or not, does have to be rather careful. Atmosphere is everything.
Language is one of the trickiest areas to navigate. To capture the language of 1811 for AWOPA, I spent some time reading some period letters and diaries. When I wrote the first draft, I used etymology resources to ensure that the words I was using were appropriate both in that they existed in the period and they were used in the same manner. There are probably a small handful of slightly out-of-period words I ended up letting slip through.
When I first passed my book along to my writing group, there was a bit of a problem. My desired fidelity to period language had hurt accessibility. No one disputed that the language style was appropriate for the period, but many were having trouble getting into the story because of the same style. On occasion, amusingly enough, I did have a person suggest that I was using a word in a too modern way, a discussion that was quickly ended with, for example, me pointing to a primary source. Sometimes certain words and concepts are far older than we might think.
I split the difference and rewrote the work to end up with something that it is evocative of the period (and still mostly uses only period words), but with a bit more modern syntax. Perhaps overly influenced by the work of Georgette Heyer, I was also initially rather aggressive with the insertion of Regency slang, which, admittedly is rather impenetrable if you aren't otherwise familiar with it. It took me half the first Heyer book I read until I figured out what some of the words she was using almost every page meant. I didn't excise all the slang from my manuscript, but I tried to stick to things that were a bit more easy to figure out in context.
In the end, it was a compromise between accessibility and accuracy. I'm sure upon release some will complain that it's still too stuffy and some will complain that it's not true enough to the period, but I'm pleased with the overall compromise.
A story set in England, even two hundred years in the past, still has the advantage of language that can be parsed by most modern English-speaking readers. I may have compromised for accessibility, but I could have kept my original style. Writing an understandable story with "accurate" language in say, the 11th century, would be a much more difficult affair.
My other major historical project is a straight (that is no paranormal elements) historical thriller set in the Heian period of Japanese history. Writing accurate language for the period would require me to, among other things, write the story in classical Japanese, which would present challenges even for Japanese natives to parse.
During a recent discussion of Hilary Mantel's work by The Economist, there was a discussion about her linguistic choices. She doesn't, for example, trend to perfectly and accurate render the language of 17th-century England. From what I've read of her work, I'd agree with that assessment. It's more about atmosphere than pure accuracy.
I've read several books by J.R. Tomlin, who writes medieval novels focused on the Scottish War for Independence. She uses modern English interspersed with the occasional period Scots, English, or French word, She also makes use of, on occasion, somewhat archaic syntax to communicate the feel of the language. It's certainly not an accurate direct rendering of the language, but it certainly communicates a certain atmosphere.
On the other end of the spectrum is someone like Gordon Doherty. I read one of his books set during the Roman Republic period and another set in the Byzantine Empire. Mr. Doherty, for the most part, uses rather modern syntax and modernish slang. He intersperses in period words, typically, in relation to specific weapons and military terms.
Arguably, these are opposing techniques. J.R. is trying to promote the historicity through atmosphere while maintaining accessibility. Gordon's going straight for near maximum accessibility. Neither technique is "accurate" in the pure linguistic sense, but short of learning new languages (or classical forms of languages one already knows), no one, I think is going to have that much of an issue. Gordon's style is a reflection, I think, of something that we often forget: the commonly used language of the past was the vernacular for those people and so reflecting it in more vernacular modern language form is a way of communicating the spirit of those exchanges even at the potential cost of some atmosphere. What style a person prefers will, I think, just depend on their own reading biases. I seem to have a natural inclination more toward J.R.'s style than Gordon's, but both have their merits.
Sometimes people also have false expectations of what constitutes accuracy in language depictions. I saw a person once complaining that a book focused on 17th-century Canadian Native tribes had the natives using contractions and that their languages didn't have contractions. The book was written in English (with the occasional bit of French). Now, it's a bit odd, I think, to suggest that "translated" dialog, as it were, should mirror the exact syntax and morphology of the original language. Mandarin, for instance, doesn't have true tense in the sense you see in English. Instead, it has aspect, which marks not time of action but rather state of completion. It'd be downright silly to write a book in English involving characters speaking Mandarin and then not use tenses.
As I circle back around to my thoughts on my Heian project, I'm still unsure how I'm going to handle it. At the moment, even though I've a good outline of the plot, I'm still knee-deep in research. Although I have a good high-level understanding of Heian history, that's not the same as having the firm grasp of daily living details that are necessary when writing a work of fiction.
The question of language is one I go back to again and again. How many classical Japanese words (or even modern Japanese words) should be inserted? Is it better to express the concept completely in English if there's an easy equivalent word? Conversely, if the word doesn't have an elegant translation, is it best to leave it in Japanese? There's a certain amount of atmosphere that comes with using Japanese. Kami can be translated as god or spirit, but it's somewhat in-between. Not using the word results in a certain subtle lost of atmosphere and even conceptual understanding. Though, at the same time, if a person doesn't have the conceptual understanding to begin with, it might just confuse things.
There's the question of the best way to handle non-English terms. Some authors just are careful to let their meaning be inferred in context, and some even just present short sections that define the terms before or after the actual main text.
Most of the characters in this novel are highly educated aristocrats, members and family members of a bureaucratic elite obsessed with form over function. In that sense, somewhat old-fashioned English marked by flowery language, the kind that some people tend to often associate with historical speech, accurate or otherwise, may be appropriate. Heian aristocrats, after all, were people who expected each other to produce specific-form poetry quickly in social situations.
In the end, though, no matter what I do, it'll be inaccurate. I mean I'm not even writing the dialog in modern Japanese, let alone classical Japanese. So, with that in mind, does that grant me a sort of freedom that I don't quite have with say my Regency work?
I'm curious what your thoughts are?
-----
*For those unfamiliar with romance novel "temperature" levels, sweet is typically considered the least steamy in terms of sexual content. It used to mean no sex at all, but nowadays it often can mean just "no sex shown." In my case, I use it to mean no sex at all.
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