When time period influences your writing style or voice

[Phyrebrat]

After a mini epiphany earlier this week I managed to break the stall my full length WIP has been in since 2011.

This has me excited but has brought up a few bigger issues and I wonder if any other writers here have had to deal with this, how you went about it, and any other advice you might have.

My main narrative takes place in the present but there are six other stories that dovetail with the narrative that occur from historic periods.

The one causing me concern is set in a time when early English (could possibly tweak to Middle English) would be spoken.

The thing I don't want to do is write it as a distant omniscient Peter-and-Jane format but to have dialogue and a certain degree of accuracy.

It's a short segment about a Mutual Farmer's Assox (loosely inspired by the much-later Tolpuddle Martyrs event) and contains a couple of Anglo-Saxon words: fhielde and gyldan.

Bearing in mind the need to include those two words and my desire to steer clear of turning into Chaucer - can you think of any suggestions on how I write this in the most accessible form?

Thanks

pH

 

[Hex]

I'd lean to making it easily comprehensible to a modern readership but use neutral English so that no one is too horribly jarred by modern speech. If you wanted, you could make it a little dialect-like to give a flavour of how people might have spoken and make it clear that it's different. I mean word use and sentence structure rather than people going "eeee oop th' feeeldh".

Dark Eden, though it's nothing to do with the period you're writing about, was a good example of introducing unfamiliar vocabulary/ concepts without overloading the reader. For me, though I love most of Russell Hoban's other work, Riddley Walker was an example of making it too difficult (though I know others disagree with me).

There are various translations of Beowulf, aren't there. Maybe something that reads like translated older English? (she said, knowing nothing)

 

[Phyrebrat]

Thanks Hex.

I like your ideas, I'm going to have to have a look at those titles you mention and see the difference. I'd love to do the dialect as you've suggested but I'm scared it'll be too arbitrary and subjective to my own ignorance ...

However, the translation idea... That's got me thinking. I wonder if I can go that route.

Thanks again

pH

 

[HareBrain]

Riddley Walker was an example of making it too difficult (though I know others disagree with me).

No one listen to her! (Well, you can listen to her about other stuff -- that's probably a good idea -- but not about this.)

 

[chrispenycate]

If folk may follow, and not wander lost it seemeth little weight that words may run a little strange. Not truly ancient, as that would fog the senses, lose the meaning in uncustomed use of phrase or symbol, but enough antiquity that none would doubt that language has evolvèd since.

 

[Phyrebrat]

If folk may follow, and not wander lost it seemeth little weight that words may run a little strange. Not truly ancient, as that would fog the senses, lose the meaning in uncustomed use of phrase or symbol, but enough antiquity that none would doubt that language has evolvèd since.

Hahah Chrispy, you're meant to be encouraging me not intimidating me . Please don't say I have to attempt iambic pentameter or owt like that

Maybe I could outsource this section to somewhere... Say... Sussex, perhaps?

pH

 

[Ray McCarthy]

You could use Irish / Ulster / Scottish sentence construction and associated more archaic phrasing, but with ordinary English words, no dialect like "dinny ken"

Don't you know?
vs
Do you not know?

In the West of Ireland, English, even by people with no Gaelic, tends to use Irish style of grammar. Some Ulster / Scottish speech patterns even with ordinary English words are more 17th Century or earlier in style than 20th C. England.

Download plain text and ebook versions of Gods and Fighting men.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14465

It's English, but not as anyone in England today speaks, yet not like the King James Bible (the Thees and Thous were weird even when it was new!). It's called Killtarten dialect. Use that construction with only modern words, and you'll get quite the flavour. There are people in Ireland today that oddly don't know Irish and actually really talk much like in "Gods and Fighting men".

I only lived in Belfast for 6 years and didn't have much contact with the "working class", so I can't remember (near 35 years ago) to reproduce it. But the sentence structure can be quite archaic. The use of Historic Present in repeating of an event was common and more than a little weird to my ear.

 

[Nick B]

What Ray says sounds a good approach to me. It sounds like a tough project pb, good luck mate.
One thing please, don't use the ( in my humble opinion) appalling tactic of using ordinary english and italicizing ye olde words. I hate it when people do that, either to sound old/ foreign/ alien or mysterious.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

I know not what ye meaneth, goode sir.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Writing in English before Dictionaries were invented seems like linguistic equivalent of DIY Homes from Hell.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Thanks Ray - I'm from a huge Geordie/Mackam family and am no stranger to the northern dialects. Having said that the site is in Daarzet so it's the wrong end of the country. I'm going to have a look at the links though as I like the idea of using an existing syntax to inform my dialogue sections.

One thing please, don't use the ( in my humble opinion) appalling tactic of using ordinary english and italicizing ye olde words. I hate it when people do that, either to sound old/ foreign/ alien or mysterious.

For some reason this really tickled me. It's the writing equivalent of mugging to camera after you've made a joke or something like that

Thanks for the help, all. C-3PO is always rattling on about his fluency in over six million forms of communication but where is he when you need him?

pH