Reply to comments: British children's drama, Socrates, Plato, and language in historical fiction and
Feb. 1st, 2010 07:41 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
duskpetersonHey, you guys know that you can reply to any of my Reply to Comments, don't you? One of the reasons I place my replies in a separate post is so that people won't miss seeing the conversations sparked by past posts.
How I reply to comments at this blog.
Reply to this comment by![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lusiology:
"I've always thought it's a shame the [Riddle-Master] series isn't better known here in the UK."
Well, we often don't get your good stuff either. I'm still frustrated beyond words that, during my entire childhood, really terrific children's dramas - mainly adaptations of wonderful novels - were being shown on British television, and none of them were shown in the U.S.. This, despite the fact that PBS had no less than three series that regularly broadcast British adult dramas.
Recently, I had a chance to watch again the ITV teen drama Press Gang, which I hadn't seen for twenty years, and my god, it was just as good as back when I watched it at age 27. I mean, it has nasty darkfic mixed in with stuff like this (from the episode I'd remembered, which was called "The Rest of My Life"; the characters are worried that one of the staff members, Spike, might have been the victim of a bomb blast):
o--o--o
Kenny: "Look, I am not going to let you fall to pieces while there's nothing to fall to pieces about."
Lynda (heatedly): "So what are you saying? I should go in there and edit a newspaper?"
Kenny: "Put it this way - what would Spike want you to do?"
Lynda: "The usual. Wear tighter clothes and show more cleavage."
o--o--o
Or this scene, where two of the characters are fighting over a girl:
o--o--o
Colin: "I'm warning you, Spike, just keep away from her."
Spike: "I'm trying to! And what are you going to do if I don't?"
Colin: "Spike, I don't want to get violent--"
Spike (shoving him): "Violent?"
Colin: "Well, rude."
Spike (shoving him): "Rude?"
Colin: "Well, a bit off-hand, certainly." (Spike grabs him around the collar.) "Well, more kind of reserved, you know - distantly polite."
Spike (incredulously): "So if I don't stay away from Ruby, you're going to get polite with me?"
Colin: "Yeah! And that's just for starters!"
o--o--o
The main protagonist was fetchingly familiar; turned out she was Julia Sawalha, the same actress who later played Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous (and played the same sort of character; poor kid was obviously being typecast).
And oh man, the scripts for Press Gang. My Muse took one look at the way the scriptwriter had interwoven parallel plots in "The Rest of My Life" and "Monday/Tuesday," and he promptly screamed, "It's mine! Gimme!" Then he dashed off to rewrite a story in Prison City.
He'd probably have been doing a lot more of that over the years if I'd had more access to British children's dramas.
So, now: Who's going to write me some Spike fanfic? Because he's a leather-jacketed, wise-cracking James Dean. Can't get better than that.
Reply to this comment by an anonymous poster at LiveJournal:
"It's said that Socrates never made any definitive statements about his beliefs or ideas"
Yes, Socrates was the one who claimed that. Over and over and over. Usually in the same dialogues where his argument would fall to pieces if it turned out that one of his axioms was wrong.
I'm a bit cynical about Socrates' self-assessment, if you can't tell. :)
As for Plato . . . oh, dear, here I show the deficiencies of my education. At St. John's, we didn't speculate about which parts of the dialogues and which were fictional; we simply treated Socrates the same way we treated fictional characters. That sort of thing always gave my father the literary historian a headache. (He's to blame; he was the first one to recommend St. John's to me as a college to attend.)
Reply to this comment (with mild spoilers for The Eternal Dungeon) bycatana1:
Language is something I've struggled with, actually, and for the same reason that a lot of other historical writers do: because, until recently, I wasn't reading enough primary sources. Fortunately, now that I am, I find that I wasn't terribly far off the mark; language patterns didn't change terribly much between the turn of the century and the 1960s-1970s, when I was growing up. The slang was different, of course, but I think the stories that best survive the test of time are the ones that minimize the use of slang. I tend to use slang only for comic effect or when I'm writing about a particular community that uses its own vocabulary or when I'm writing dialect.
I'd still like to improve my use of language in historical fantasy - but in the meantime, here's two tips I absorbed long ago.
"Victorian writers, and even those of a somewhat later date . . . saw nothing ludicrous in 'Alas! fair youth, it grieves me to see thee in this plight. Would that I had the power to strike these fetters from thy tender limbs.' Josephine Tey, whose death I shall never cease to lament, called this 'Writing forsoothly.' A slightly different variant is known in the trade as 'Gadzookery.' Nowadays this is out of fashion; and some writers go to the other extreme and make the people of Classical Greece or Mediaeval England speak modern colloquial English. This is perhaps nearer to the truth of the spirit, since the people in question would have spoken the modern colloquial tongue of their place and time. But, personally, I find it destroys the atmophere when a young Norman Knight says to his Squire, 'Shut ip, Dickie, you're getting too big for your boots.' Myself, I try for a middle course, avoiding both Gadzookery and modern colloquialism; a frankly 'made-up' form that has the right sound to it, as Kipling did also. I try to catch the rhythm of a tongue, the tune that it plays on the ear, Welsh or Gaelic as opposed to Anglo-Saxon, the sensible workmanlike language which one feels the Latin of the oridnary Roman citizen would have translated into. It is extraordinary what can be done by the changing or transposing of a single word, or using perfectly usual one in a slightly unusual way: 'I beg your pardon' changed into 'I ask your pardon.'"
--Rosemary Sutcliff: "History is People" (1971), published in Virginia Haviland's Children and Literature: Views and Reviews.
That final sentence is one I've paid a lot of attention to, particularly in terms of metaphors, similes, and what would be cliches if I didn't take the trouble to change them a bit. When I reach the point of having to end a simile such as "His body looked as relaxed as . . ." it's an opportunity for me to offer some insight into the culture . . . or in this particular case in Rebirth, to offer a foreshadow.
Also, I tend to alter words slightly, such as documentwork rather than paperwork, which has caused half a dozen beta readers to inform me that documentwork isn't a word. :)
"In the third passage [she has just quoted Tolkien as an example of good language in fantasy], the speakers are quieter, and use a less extraordinary English, or rather an English extraordinary for its simple timelessness. . . . It has sobriety, wit, and force. It is the language of men of character. . . .
"Tolkien writes a plain, clear English. Its outstanding virtue is its flexibility, its variety. It ranges easily from the commonplace to the stately, and can slide into metrical poetry, as in the Tom Bombadil episode, without the careless reader's even noticing. Tolkien's vocabulary is not striking; he has no ichor; everything is direct, concrete, and simple."
--Ursula K. Le Guin: "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" (1973), an essay I heartily recommend to all writers of fantasy and historical fiction. It appears in her essay collection The Language of the Night.
Tolkien's approach (which I only know secondhand from Ms. Le Guin, but which I've seen successfully used by other writers) is the one I aspire to. I want the sort of language that can go from this--
"'You don't think I work for those bloodletters, do you? I work for the Codifier – not that that's much of an improvement, I'll admit. But at least I can prevent the Seekers from torturing prisoners whose health won't stand for that sort of treatment. When those deaf-and-dumb Seekers listen to me, that is.'"
--to this--
"What followed then he could not have expected; nor did he ever know what took place. But the immortals who watched him knew, and they saw how his blood gathered itself and was transformed in the world into new life. As a tree falls in the forest, and is covered in earth, and then changes its form to bring forth new vegetation, so too had this dying immortal learned the secret to rebirth."
--and then to this--
"He bought it, of course. I got to listen to him give another flowery speech about my rights as a prisoner – I didn't pay much attention to it, except for the part about how the guards could only punish me upon his orders. Then we got down to serious business."
--without the reader blinking an eye.
o--o--o
. . . and thank you to MightyMaeve, Clare London, sa_tsl, and slashbluegreen for your kind comments about "The Unanswered Question."
How I reply to comments at this blog.
Reply to this comment by
lusiology:"I've always thought it's a shame the [Riddle-Master] series isn't better known here in the UK."
Well, we often don't get your good stuff either. I'm still frustrated beyond words that, during my entire childhood, really terrific children's dramas - mainly adaptations of wonderful novels - were being shown on British television, and none of them were shown in the U.S.. This, despite the fact that PBS had no less than three series that regularly broadcast British adult dramas.
Recently, I had a chance to watch again the ITV teen drama Press Gang, which I hadn't seen for twenty years, and my god, it was just as good as back when I watched it at age 27. I mean, it has nasty darkfic mixed in with stuff like this (from the episode I'd remembered, which was called "The Rest of My Life"; the characters are worried that one of the staff members, Spike, might have been the victim of a bomb blast):
Kenny: "Look, I am not going to let you fall to pieces while there's nothing to fall to pieces about."
Lynda (heatedly): "So what are you saying? I should go in there and edit a newspaper?"
Kenny: "Put it this way - what would Spike want you to do?"
Lynda: "The usual. Wear tighter clothes and show more cleavage."
Or this scene, where two of the characters are fighting over a girl:
Colin: "I'm warning you, Spike, just keep away from her."
Spike: "I'm trying to! And what are you going to do if I don't?"
Colin: "Spike, I don't want to get violent--"
Spike (shoving him): "Violent?"
Colin: "Well, rude."
Spike (shoving him): "Rude?"
Colin: "Well, a bit off-hand, certainly." (Spike grabs him around the collar.) "Well, more kind of reserved, you know - distantly polite."
Spike (incredulously): "So if I don't stay away from Ruby, you're going to get polite with me?"
Colin: "Yeah! And that's just for starters!"
The main protagonist was fetchingly familiar; turned out she was Julia Sawalha, the same actress who later played Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous (and played the same sort of character; poor kid was obviously being typecast).
And oh man, the scripts for Press Gang. My Muse took one look at the way the scriptwriter had interwoven parallel plots in "The Rest of My Life" and "Monday/Tuesday," and he promptly screamed, "It's mine! Gimme!" Then he dashed off to rewrite a story in Prison City.
He'd probably have been doing a lot more of that over the years if I'd had more access to British children's dramas.
So, now: Who's going to write me some Spike fanfic? Because he's a leather-jacketed, wise-cracking James Dean. Can't get better than that.
Reply to this comment by an anonymous poster at LiveJournal:
"It's said that Socrates never made any definitive statements about his beliefs or ideas"
Yes, Socrates was the one who claimed that. Over and over and over. Usually in the same dialogues where his argument would fall to pieces if it turned out that one of his axioms was wrong.
I'm a bit cynical about Socrates' self-assessment, if you can't tell. :)
As for Plato . . . oh, dear, here I show the deficiencies of my education. At St. John's, we didn't speculate about which parts of the dialogues and which were fictional; we simply treated Socrates the same way we treated fictional characters. That sort of thing always gave my father the literary historian a headache. (He's to blame; he was the first one to recommend St. John's to me as a college to attend.)
Reply to this comment (with mild spoilers for The Eternal Dungeon) by
catana1:Language is something I've struggled with, actually, and for the same reason that a lot of other historical writers do: because, until recently, I wasn't reading enough primary sources. Fortunately, now that I am, I find that I wasn't terribly far off the mark; language patterns didn't change terribly much between the turn of the century and the 1960s-1970s, when I was growing up. The slang was different, of course, but I think the stories that best survive the test of time are the ones that minimize the use of slang. I tend to use slang only for comic effect or when I'm writing about a particular community that uses its own vocabulary or when I'm writing dialect.
I'd still like to improve my use of language in historical fantasy - but in the meantime, here's two tips I absorbed long ago.
"Victorian writers, and even those of a somewhat later date . . . saw nothing ludicrous in 'Alas! fair youth, it grieves me to see thee in this plight. Would that I had the power to strike these fetters from thy tender limbs.' Josephine Tey, whose death I shall never cease to lament, called this 'Writing forsoothly.' A slightly different variant is known in the trade as 'Gadzookery.' Nowadays this is out of fashion; and some writers go to the other extreme and make the people of Classical Greece or Mediaeval England speak modern colloquial English. This is perhaps nearer to the truth of the spirit, since the people in question would have spoken the modern colloquial tongue of their place and time. But, personally, I find it destroys the atmophere when a young Norman Knight says to his Squire, 'Shut ip, Dickie, you're getting too big for your boots.' Myself, I try for a middle course, avoiding both Gadzookery and modern colloquialism; a frankly 'made-up' form that has the right sound to it, as Kipling did also. I try to catch the rhythm of a tongue, the tune that it plays on the ear, Welsh or Gaelic as opposed to Anglo-Saxon, the sensible workmanlike language which one feels the Latin of the oridnary Roman citizen would have translated into. It is extraordinary what can be done by the changing or transposing of a single word, or using perfectly usual one in a slightly unusual way: 'I beg your pardon' changed into 'I ask your pardon.'"
--Rosemary Sutcliff: "History is People" (1971), published in Virginia Haviland's Children and Literature: Views and Reviews.
That final sentence is one I've paid a lot of attention to, particularly in terms of metaphors, similes, and what would be cliches if I didn't take the trouble to change them a bit. When I reach the point of having to end a simile such as "His body looked as relaxed as . . ." it's an opportunity for me to offer some insight into the culture . . . or in this particular case in Rebirth, to offer a foreshadow.
Also, I tend to alter words slightly, such as documentwork rather than paperwork, which has caused half a dozen beta readers to inform me that documentwork isn't a word. :)
"In the third passage [she has just quoted Tolkien as an example of good language in fantasy], the speakers are quieter, and use a less extraordinary English, or rather an English extraordinary for its simple timelessness. . . . It has sobriety, wit, and force. It is the language of men of character. . . .
"Tolkien writes a plain, clear English. Its outstanding virtue is its flexibility, its variety. It ranges easily from the commonplace to the stately, and can slide into metrical poetry, as in the Tom Bombadil episode, without the careless reader's even noticing. Tolkien's vocabulary is not striking; he has no ichor; everything is direct, concrete, and simple."
--Ursula K. Le Guin: "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" (1973), an essay I heartily recommend to all writers of fantasy and historical fiction. It appears in her essay collection The Language of the Night.
Tolkien's approach (which I only know secondhand from Ms. Le Guin, but which I've seen successfully used by other writers) is the one I aspire to. I want the sort of language that can go from this--
"'You don't think I work for those bloodletters, do you? I work for the Codifier – not that that's much of an improvement, I'll admit. But at least I can prevent the Seekers from torturing prisoners whose health won't stand for that sort of treatment. When those deaf-and-dumb Seekers listen to me, that is.'"
--to this--
"What followed then he could not have expected; nor did he ever know what took place. But the immortals who watched him knew, and they saw how his blood gathered itself and was transformed in the world into new life. As a tree falls in the forest, and is covered in earth, and then changes its form to bring forth new vegetation, so too had this dying immortal learned the secret to rebirth."
--and then to this--
"He bought it, of course. I got to listen to him give another flowery speech about my rights as a prisoner – I didn't pay much attention to it, except for the part about how the guards could only punish me upon his orders. Then we got down to serious business."
--without the reader blinking an eye.
. . . and thank you to MightyMaeve, Clare London, sa_tsl, and slashbluegreen for your kind comments about "The Unanswered Question."
