You write funny – Part One

[rolanni]

So, a while back I promised two blog entries — one having to do with a…reader complaint of the Crystal books, in which science and technology inconsistent with the “future,” bad grammar, and an inadequate understanding of principles of advanced math and physics are cited as reasons why the books are “bad” — and another question buried in a blog thread I can’t put my hands on at the moment, asking, in essence, “How did we learn to write like that?” (In which “like that” was not necessarily a bad thing.)

For this blog post, I’m going to focus on the questions “bad grammar” and “how did you learn to write like that?” — along with a dollop of genre history.

This may get long, so bear with me.

* * *

History first:  Steve and I started writing together in 1979.  Our first collaborative short story was “The Naming of Kinzel:  The Innocent,” written, it says here on the card, in June 1980.  Our first collaborative novel was Kinzel the Wanderer, sold to Donning in 1981.  It looks like it was planned as an illustrated novel — there are prelim sketches from Colleen Doran in the recently unearthed file.  At this point, I no longer remember what exactly happened, that the project never went forth.  I’m assuming an editor-scramble at Donning, or maybe a lack of money to follow through, either or both being possible, given the dates.

I’ve been saying for years that Agent of Change was our first completed novel (there having also been the first…20 grand of a romance novel also written in the early ’80s, which convinced us that we weren’t romance novelists) — but apparently I’ve been saying wrong.  It looks like the Kinzel novel was complete at least in first draft.

The things we forget.

Anyhow, we’ve been writing together for a long time.  The first Kinzel stories, having some passing kinship with High Fantasy, were written in the language of fantasy.

You of course know that writers use. . .techniques. . .in order to signal readers, gently letting them know what sort of experience they should expect.   A prominent technique is the use of genre-appropriate language — High Fantasy reads differently than Hard SF, which reads differently than Urban Fantasy, all of which reads differently than Mystery.

Back a few years ago, some writers decided to step over the lines, and started doing genre mash-ups.  Part of the fun of that, besides the obvious fun of, say, making your hard-boiled private eye a magic-user on the outs with the White Council, is that writers of mash-ups get to mash-up the genre language(s), too.

I’ve mentioned before in this journal that writers are weird, right?

Related to this, and pertinent to this particular writer, is the fact that spoken English is my second language.  I really didn’t get the whole talking out loud thing until very late in life, and when I did start speaking, in more-or-less complete, but almost utterly randomized sentences, people couldn’t easily understand me.

Because I had this. . .difficulty, I studied, and one of the things my study revealed to me is that even mono-lingual folk routinely speak different languages, depending on the situation in which they find themselves.

So it was that, by the time I graduated high school and took my first job as a secretary, I spoke three distinct languages:  Business English, Street, and House/Familiar.

I read many more:  High Fantasy, Folk Tale, Romance, Mystery, Regency, Scientific, Business Report, Business Courtesy, Literary, Technical, Fairy Tale. . .

. . .you get the idea.

Fast-forwarding to the present — for the last — what? quarter-century? — Steve and I have mostly been writing space opera.  Our particular flavor of space opera is cross-cultural, multilingual, and character-driven.

One of the challenges — and I mean one of the biggest challenges — in writing a story in which some characters speak Language A — let’s call it “Liaden” — and some characters speak Language B — let’s call this one “Terran” — and still other characters speak Language C — let’s call that one “Clutch” — is portraying the different languages.

Think about this:  We have to write in English!  This is the only option we have, because our (primary) audience are English-speakers and English-readers.  How on earth are we going to cue the reader which language the character is speaking?

You might — as some have done — ask, Why does it matter?

That’s a good question, and the answer is — it matters because language reflects culture.  It also illuminates, to some degree, the sophistication of thought that may be available to a particular character.  Language does present some interesting boundaries to thought.  The Liaden language(s), for instance, encourages its native speakers in subtlety, and offers a framework for very complex ideas, such as melant’i.  Terran — at least, port Terran — is a lot more straightforward; an action language in which subtle thought is possible, but not top-level.

So, in order to cue the reader, and place them correctly within language and culture, the languages need to read differently.

Yes, Miri speaks “ungrammatically,” when she speaks Terran.  Yes, Cantra’s sentences have an. . .odd cadence.  Yes, Liaden is quite formal, and prone to rolling periods.

Yes, yes, yes!  When Miri is speaking Liaden, her sentences are quite formal, and prone to rolling periods!  Yes!  You noticed!  We meant to do that!  It’s a feature, not a bug.

The other thing we do, deliberately, is that we play with the narrative voice.  Since we’re head-hoppers — yet another of our bad habits — we need to let the reader know which character is describing the action/scenery/bold plan of attack.

This means that scenes told from Val Con’s viewpoint (for instance), and scenes told from Miri’s viewpoint (for instance), will read differently.  More! They notice different things, and, because of that, they may draw different conclusions.

This approach does mean that yes, you will get “bad” grammar, not just in dialogue, where the conventions of genre fiction allow it, but in the narrative.  I’m not an English teacher; I’m a storyteller; grammar is just going to have to take a back seat to the story’s proper telling.

So, to recap:  “Bad” grammar — yes, fair cop.  “Where did we learn to write like that?” — by reading, and by listening.  “Why do we write like that?” — for you, our readers, so you’ll know whose head you’re in, and what language they’re thinking in.

* * *

So ends Part One.  Part Two will address the notion that science fiction is the fiction of “the” future.  That will be, I suspect, some days down the road.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[reedrover]

Thank you for writing this explanation out. I knew from the beginning that unique character idiom was important to your storytelling - especially with the contrast of Miri to Val Con - but that is different from knowing the origins of your conceptual constructions. And reading this was, well, just plain fun. I like word-works. I shared it with a fellow fantasy reader and English major, and her response was basically "Yes. This."

[berneynator.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. The thing I always mention first, when recommending your books and the Liaden books in particular, is your command of language. I love the noticeable phrasing differences between speakers, languages, and cultures. The point that different people will notice different things and draw different conclusions is also an interesting one. Thank you for taking so much care in your writing! I, for one, like it very much.

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

Ooh, this was lovely. Thanks so much for sharing process thoughts. Very interesting on many levels.

[queenmaggie.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry... my only response has to be "Well, DUH"

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

Ayup! Language serving the story. I also appreciate that distinctive voices allow the loss of extraneous overhead text ("Val Con said"...) since the voice tells you who is speaking!

This was all perfectly clear to me as I started reading your novels...but I've never been a lazy reader.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

Yep. One of the many things that put you two on my favorites shelf.

I'm now rereading to try to spot exactly when Val Con started using the Conrad alias and where it came from. Unless it came out of thin air, or that the tale has not made it into the cannon yet.

Conrad

[star-horse3.livejournal.com]

Isn't it Pat Rin who is called "Conrad" as in "Boss Conrad" by the good people of Surebleak? (In "I Dare") I'm not sure how it came about either, just that after he took over as Boss, Pat Rin was called Conrad. I think it was because of the young boy who was killed, but I'm not sure.

Re: Conrad

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Yep, he acquired the surname when poor jory was killed and, based on his reaction, the folk of Surebleak decided that ...'jory had been his true-son, and the boy's late mother his wife, from whom he had been long separated by unhappy circumstance ....' or some such

Re: Conrad

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

Pat Rin - right. But he was using Conrad when he bought the Sinners Rug at Bazaar - have just been rereading that chapbook.

Re: Conrad

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

He started using it when he decided to go to ground—right after he was accosted by the DoI agents with the fake ring, and before he visited the bazaar to obtain inventory for his store. He had to call himself something that wasn't Pat Rin yos'Phelium.

(As for the original source of the name, it's been mentioned before that it's an homage to Roger Zelazny's "…And Call Me Conrad". How Pat Rin came up with it in-story is never said as far as I know. However, he did grow up with a Terran, Anne Davis, in his extended family, not to mention a robotic butler who had read a lot of old-Terran fiction, so maybe it came from the name of some person they mentioned.)

Grammar

[chris hempel (from livejournal.com)]

While trying to authenticate a quote for something entirely unrelated, I ran across a wonderful quote that this post reminds me of. I'm going to quote far more than I normally would (my apologies), because the simple sentence or two usually quoted, while pithy, really fails to convey properly what's being said.

Joan Didion, from "Why I Write":
Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know of grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object being photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in you mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture. Nota bene:

It tells you.

You don’t tell it.


Personally speaking, that's one of the reason I love the Liaden novels - attention to texture and detail. A good dictionary or English teacher can tell you the proper way to structure every sentence - only a (very talented) author can create multiple distinct languages that are never shown but influence the structure of every sentence spoken.

Re: Grammar

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that quote, Chris.

Re: Grammar

[katmoonshaker.livejournal.com]

My mother and my late grandmother are/were both English majors. They insisted on proper grammar, except in fiction. Fiction is not required to use proper grammar because sometimes improper grammar is needed to make the point or set the scene or develop the character that the author(s) is making.

I hope that makes sense, my fibro/CFS is flaring today.

[otterb.livejournal.com]

I also love the way you manage the different languages, and the way characters move between languages. There's a point at which Pat Rin doubts his command of Terran because the madam (whose name escapes me at the moment) doesn't understand what he means by "bank," and a place where Val Con says that the Yxtrang seems abrupt/harsh when he's saying something to Nelirikk. (Going by fuzzy memory here, no books to hand.)

I expect this is hard, as you say, and you manage it well enough for it to be a source of delight rather than a stumbling block for this reader.

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

The mark of a good writer is that they can write in dialect to portray the scene the way they want it to be experienced.

The mark of a good reader is that they can read such scenes and know that's what the author intended to happen. Poor readers complain about the bad grammar.

which convinced us that we weren’t romance novelists

[bookmobiler.livejournal.com]

I think you might get an argument from your readers about that!

Re: which convinced us that we weren’t romance novelists

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

We are romantic writers -- the true love, the over-the-top interactions, and the stakes -- all the things that are nowadays dignified as "cheesy." We are, however, not romance writers, which. . .how to say this?

. . .

Romance writers are more stringently constrained by genre rule than are writers of romantic space opera.

Re: which convinced us that we weren’t romance novelists

[katmoonshaker.livejournal.com]

THIS! You write about romance but you do not write romance novels. You write about characters that are full and complete. How can they be such if they do not love? And given the way the Liaden® universe works, there must be True Love and all of the attending scenarios.

[bridget a wheeler-gehrling (from livejournal.com)]

Thank you for that insight. I had not previously considered the subtle differences in American English as distinct languages.

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Erm, they didn't get the dialect thing? Odd ....
*dreams of a Kinzel book from Donning Starblaze*

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Some folks are Ruled by Grammar, I fear. And we all bring to the story that which Life has given us.

It was forcefully brought in to me that not everyone had Street among their available languages when an editor rejected "Gonna Boogie with Granny Time" with the plaintive question, "But what happened to this BOOK they were after?"

Over on Facebook, Lauretta notes that some readers to whom she's recommended Agent of Change are...discomfited by Miri 'talking like an inner city Black person,' when what Miri speaks is a fairly mild -- and reasonably clean --iteration of Street.

And then there was the guy, when Conflict of Honors had just come out from Del Rey, who said to me, rather nervously, "Shan, he's. . .ummm. . .pretty. . .ummm. . .feminine, isn't he?"

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

?*is puzzled*
Weird of him ...

[otterb.livejournal.com]

Miri's speaking Street? I've always heard her in Texan, myself.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Really? That's interesting. Another case of "we bring to the story that which Life gives us"?

[otterb.livejournal.com]

Quite possibly what I bring to the story. Certainly my youth had lots of Texan and no personal acquaintance with Street.

[doushkasmum.livejournal.com]

My inner pedant feels the need to point out that such variations as Business English, Street, and House/Familiar are dialects of English and not seperate languages.

Otherwise, your point is well made and the fact that your characters each have their own voice is one of the many delightful features of your writing. 8->

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

My inner pedant feels the need to point out that such variations as Business English, Street, and House/Familiar are dialects of English and not seperate languages.

But that insight wouldn't have helped me at all. :)

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

*snerk* but for the italics, your reply struck me as quite Liaden-like. :>

[drammar.livejournal.com]

The command that you (collectively) have of dialogue has always been the pull for me in all of your stories.

In fact, I remember a discussion some months ago in this space about how people read stories, and I said at that time that I read the whole thing and then go back and pick up nuance. But I realize, upon further reflection, that I tend to read with more emphasis on the dialogue first, and then the other details during the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 12th reading.

To me, characters come alive through dialogue. I have stopped reading stories where I feel as though there is so little dialogue and so little of the people in the story coming through that I feel as though the author is simply reciting a series of facts about these people. There is a very popular author whose books I no longer buy specifically because her characters are wooden and have no soul.

Grammar has it's place. I edit for part of my living. I appreciate grammar. But GOOD fiction is not business writing nor scholarly writing. And grammar be hanged -- tell me the story so I feel it. And you and Steve never fail to do just that.

PS: Vincent says the early part of next week, please.

[deor.livejournal.com]

It's not the dialect that throws me - I actually have noticed the difference when characters are using different languages, and think that's cool. It's when a description uses poor grammar (lay instead of lie, for instance) - or when everyone is suddenly using the same dialect, even if they weren't before.

In the most recent book, everyone and their sister is suddenly using 'bidness' for 'business'. Even in their heads. Even characters who have been perfectly grammatical in previous books. A little dialect is nice; every character suddenly and constantly using the same dialect term is something I find distracting and annoying. It catches my attention and throws me out of the story.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

In the most recent book, everyone and their sister is suddenly using 'bidness' for 'business'.

Really? I'm only remembering Miri and Clarence using "bidness" -- which they would, if they were speaking Terran. Has Val Con picked up Miri's infelicitous speech patterns?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Assuming we are talking about Dragon Ship, a quick search indicates that Miri and Clarence use bidness, while everyone else uses business. Val Con, et al, seemed untouched by such verbal twitches.

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

It's a little startling sometimes when a description uses "poor grammar", but these books tend to be written from a third-person-limited perspective—so descriptive passages carry the flavor of the thoughts of the person thinking about them, including the language that's the person's own. So if Miri's thinking about something, she's thinking in the wrong pronouns. :)

[katmoonshaker.livejournal.com]

Wait, there are people who didn't 'get' that? Maybe it's just because I've always been multilingual (home, social etcetera with a small mix of my father's German) as well as having been reading various genres since I was... well, since I learned to read. I also grew up with people who read books with different voices for the various characters and read the narrative as though it was being spoken by someone even when it was in the third person. Likewise, changing it appropriately when it was written slightly differently to account for a change of view to denote the perspective of various characters. Or as my late grandmother (a 2nd & 4th grade teacher) used to say, "What are they teaching in schools these days?!"

[queenmaggie.livejournal.com]

;D isn't that a quote from C SLewis, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"?

[katmoonshaker.livejournal.com]

While it is in that most wondrous book it is said by every decent teacher starting with the early Greco-Romans*. ::sigh:: Alack and alas, 'tis sad but true.

*My spell-check suggested "Greece-Romans". ::shudder::

[hapaxnym.livejournal.com]

Add me to the chorus who love the Liaden universe precisely because of the deft command of dialect-switching. (And other little details ... I love the subtle way that Liadens always get hot and bothered by a naughty glimpse of ears, or repelled by a dirty face)

One of my favorite comments about what different characters "notice" came by way of Lois Bujold. She once mentioned that when writing A CIVIL CAMPAIGN, she actually had a professional design a wedding outfit for Laisa; but since the only viewpoint character she had who could have possibly gotten close enough for a good look was Miles, the description in the book was only a vague impression of "white" and "lacy stuff."

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

Though it approaches things from the other direction, this kind of reminds me of Jo Walton's post on Tor.com about SF reading protocols (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/01/sf-reading-protocols), ways that SF readers are trained to process the books they read that often puzzle "mainstream" readers not used to that genre.

I've long recognized the different uses of grammar and phrasing in the books to signify different languages—especially the way that, when one speaks Liaden, one rarely seems to use specific pronouns. I've always thought that was rather clever, as it gives the reader the "flavor" of what's being said while still letting him understand it. And I certainly wouldn't cavil at Miri's delightful grab-bag approach to pronouns when speaking English. In the argot of TVTropes, that's a "Translation Convention" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention), rather like how they have foreign-language-speaking characters talk in a British accent in some movies.