Life in progress

Tag Archives: dialogue


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V is for … Vocabulary

Vocabulary is a topic that is close to my heart. From a very early age, speech and its nuances have been a major point of interest: although I was born and have lived in Canada my entire life, I was (I used to say) born with a British accent. My parents came to Canada eight years before my birth with their best friends another couple with whom they chose to emigrate from London. I was taught to speak by the four of them, and so even when I started school I sounded like I’d just gotten off the boat. I was teased relentlessly. To this day I retain some of my accent.

Through my school years, I paid particular attention to the English language. Grammar, even in speech, is a big deal for me. You won’t catch me saying ‘anyways’ or ‘ain’t’ unless I mean to, and never shall a double negative be uttered when I mean ‘no.’ And so the problem I encounter when writing dialogue is having to pay attention not only to what my characters say, but also to how they speak.  Speech patterns vary from background to background, depend on education (sometimes) as well as geography, not only taking into consideration the setting of the story but where their parents lived even before they were born.

It dawned on me while I listened to a cashier in a store that though we come from the same province, ‘she don’t care what her grammar’s like.’ And I have no example of this in my novel. Vocabulary isn’t just the use of big or small words. It’s not even just about accents. Grammar is a huge part of who we all are.

I must study speech patterns more.

 

The jig is almost up on my fiction blog. Head on over to read the next part of the gripping saga of Jupiter and Xavier: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/v-is-for-vision/


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Nature vs Nurture in Fiction

Twins. Part of the plot in my NaNoWriMo project required a case of mistaken identity, so instead of having one protagonist, I’m writing one and a half. I call the twins “one and a half” protagonists because I’m writing in the first person – so I’m getting all of what one of them thinks and only half of what the other does. They’re both good guys, Marcel and Max are. Decent men from a good family – very much the same in many ways.

As usual, something happened in real life which made me contemplate the differences between siblings. In this case it was a  conversation with the lady who manages the dry cleaner on my paper route.  She has two granddaughters who she loves to talk about. She was telling me how unalike they are, even though they’re very close in age. This is a subject (among many) that has always fascinated me, being an only child. My own children didn’t grow up as siblings usually do, since they all have such physical differences,  so it’s something I must study from a distance.

The difficulty I’m experiencing in my novel is that the twins, Marcel and Max, sound the same when they speak. It makes sense to me that they should, but they end up coming out like these guys:

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Not all that polite mind you, but they speak exactly alike.

Once NaNo is done and I can put some thought into it, I’ll work on finding something unique about the two, which will come out in their speech. But in the meantime, I’m wondering what about their natures, and not their nurture, can help my readers to tell them apart.

Have you ever written siblings and come across this problem? Let’s learn from each other!


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Scintillating Dialogue – writing assignment

“So,” Alice asked, looking down at her shoe as she prodded it into the sun-warmed sand, “what do you do for a living?” She kept her hands in her back pockets, knowing that if she took them out she would want to touch him. Anywhere.

Daniel lowered his sunglasses and gazed at her over the top with deep blue eyes. “I build houses. How about you?” he asked. “No wait.” As his eyebrows went up so did his finger, the bicep of the same arm bulging in response to the movement. “You must be… a model,” Daniel smiled.

“Funny you should say that,” Alice blushed, swiveling her shoulders. “I thought I saw you in a firefighter’s calender the other day. But no, I’m just a lowly shop girl.”

“In that case lowly shop girl, let me carry you over my shoulder to the bar for a drink.” He flashed a dazzling grin and her hands came out of her pockets as he bent down to take her in a fireman’s carry.

“Hold on there, Tarzan,” she laughed. “What do you say we walk to the bar?”

“Only if you’ll at least take my arm.”

His gaze pierced her like a bullet, traveling from her eyes straight down to her lower belly. She swallowed and opened her mouth to consent but realizing nothing would come out, made do with a nod.