3 August 2007
Writing wrongs

In the last column I posted here in the Outpost (For art's sake), I criticised comic book artists for pandering to their own artistic egos at the expense of the readers’ enjoyment. Specifically, I criticised them for using eye-catching but personal and heavily stylised forms of art rather than the more traditional approach popularised by Jack Kirby and practised to this day (in an evolved form) by the likes of Jim Lee. There’s nothing wrong with being original, as long as what the artist is doing is also appropriate. Otherwise it’s just a self-indulgent distraction.

To be even-handed, this week I’m going to criticise today’s batch of writers and – for once – I’m not going to bang on about their inability to structure a decent story. As with the artists, I’m going to have a gripe about the specific techniques they use.

So, where to start? The sins of today’s crop of writers are manifold and, sadly, I’m talking about both professional and would-be writers here. Writers’ sins, like any other sins can be easily divided into sins of commission (things they do) and sins of omission (things they don’t). Sins of omission will have to wait until next week. For now, let’s just look at what they do.

Back in the day

A writer’s main job may be to create a decent story and interesting characters but what the reader sees of the writer’s work is the dialogue given to the characters. We all understand what dialogue is. We hear it every day. So what can a writer possibly get wrong?

Well, for a start, he can try to write period English. This seems to be a particular problem for writers in the fantasy genre but it’s not exactly unknown in other genres. Please take note ... Characters living in the Middle Ages or even in the Renaissance did not speak in a cod-Shakespearean dialect. Similarly, characters living in the 19th Century, did not speak in a bastardised version of Dickensian English. So, since we know that characters did not speak in this way, why do writers insist on writing lines for them as if they did?

No 21st Century (or even late 20th Century) writer knows how these characters spoke. We know how Dickens wrote and we know how Shakespeare wrote. Going back even further, we know how Chaucer wrote. But that’s not how people spoke and – even if it was – very few people outside of a few learned academics really understand the grammar and syntax of those times. For a modern writer to blithely throw in a handful of “thees and thous” punctuated with the occasional “verily” and assume that this creates an authentic evocation of times past is ludicrous. Apart from the fact that the modern-day writer will invariably get the language wrong, all it does is create a feeling of artificiality. It creates a barrier between the reader and the story.

Past mistakes

Not convinced? Think of almost any period drama from TV or the cinema. Adaptations of famous novels are the best examples. In their religious zeal to remain faithful to the source material, producers and script-writers repeatedly fall into the trap of simply lifting lines of dialogue straight from the book. More often than not, the result is an expensive cast, waltzing around in sumptuous costumes and struggling to recite dialogue that even Olivier and Gielgud would have had trouble delivering with any conviction.

The truth is that when one 13th Century peasant spoke to another, they would both have heard someone speaking in a way which was natural to them. And anyone eavesdropping on their conversation would have heard something natural too. Now, as readers of comics (or as the audience for a TV or movie production), we are those eavesdroppers. We are listening in on the characters’ conversations and we should, therefore, read or hear something which sounds natural, not something stilted and archaic.

When Shakespeare wrote his Roman plays, he didn’t try to mimic the speech of antiquity. He may have written (in accordance with the conventions of the day) in verse but the language he used was 17th Century English. That was correct for the time. It was the language of his audience. But today’s audiences don’t speak in 17th Century English so why should modern writers try to mimic it when writing for fantasy? Or for historical dramas? If they want their characters to seem like real people, modern writers should be writing in modern English – the language of their readers.

Where you from, boy?

But even this, of course, is a simplification. Even in the modern day world, people don’t actually speak a single form of modern English any more than people in the past spoke Dickensian or Shakespearean English. Most people speak a kind of national and/or local and/or ethnic dialect and, increasingly, people use expletives which would have been considered obscene twenty years ago and impolite even ten years ago. Should a writer try to emulate that? Well, only to a point.

Let’s start with regional variations in accent and pronunciation. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to use “realistic” language patterns. It tells the reader something about the character’s background. But there’s no point in a writer capturing a character’s speech to perfection if the result is an endless string of phonetic symbols which the reader can barely understand.

We know how the Irish speak. And the Scots. And, as far as US regional peculiarities are concerned, even on my side of the Atlantic, we can distinguish between the bullish if slightly paranoid staccato of a New Yorker, the laid back airiness of the West coast and the lazy drawl of the South. A writer only needs to hint at these mannerisms in order to establish his character’s origins. He doesn’t need to transcribe every strangulated vowel and abbreviate every word with a dropped consonant. No matter how high its aspirations, reading a comic shouldn’t be hard work.

Deleting expletives

And often it is hard work. Often, it’s enough to make a Saint swear. Or at least a comic book character. Except, of course, they don’t, do they? Well, these days, some do. Or at least they try to. I’m sure Garth Ennis thought he was being very modern and that he was taking the comic book format in a whole new direction when he decided his “Preacher” series should be splattered with viscera and that his characters’ dialogue should be peppered with four-letter expletives. He was creating comics for grown-ups, right? Wrong. He was creating comics for kids. He was and is feigning a lack of vocabulary so that kids with an even more limited one can snigger about it after class. He may be the big man on campus but he’s still stuck on the campus, nonetheless.

Now, before you think I’m some sort of linguistic Puritan, let me just add I have nothing against comic book characters who use expletives when the occasion calls for it. I’m just saying that – as a writer – how poor must you be if you are reduced to using the same word as your most frequently used verb, noun, adjective and adverb?

As far as expletives are concerned, there’s only one thing worse than using them indiscriminately. And that’s being afraid to use them at all. I’ve lost count of the number of lame proxies which are used in place of the good old fashioned (or should that be newly discovered?) Anglo-Saxon expletive, even when one is quite clearly called for. Why use weak-kneed substitutes like “smegging” (Red Dwarf), “frelling” (Farscape) or “freaking” (pretty much everywhere), when the entire audience knows exactly what you mean anyway? It’s poor writing.

If the context calls for an expletive and nothing else will do, then the writer should use it. If the context doesn’t absolutely require it then he should use a real word rather than some artificial construct he’s created just because he’s too lazy to find a word that actually means something.

To be continued …

So there you have it. A few of my pet hates about what writers do. In the next article, I’ll have another gripe at writers but this time about the things they don’t. And oh, forsooth! Methinks yon varlets doe verily deserve a goodly slapping for those smegging heinous misdemeanours! Begorrah and bejayzus.

[The substance of this article first appeared in a slightly different form at Comic Avalanche on 30 March 2005 and is reproduced by kind permission of Mr Avalanche. The views and opinions expressed in this column are entirely those of the author. If you wish to agree or disagree with any of the views expressed in this column, please leave your comments in the Forum].