Should we 'Americanize'?

[Tywin]

I think they poke some money at ESA / Arianespace / European Space port. Arianespace does more launches than everyone else put together. European Space Port construction started 1960. The outfit in Sussex is one of the top builders of space tech.
But the UK is the only Country ever to abandon their own Space program, Bluestreak based in Woomera. The Australians are re-opening Woomera.

I learned something new here. I googled British Astronauts and it redirected me to "English Astronauts" (sorry, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_astronauts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sharman

So far Helen Sharman is the only one who has gone to space without becoming an American first, but perhaps she should be classified as a Cosmonaut instead of an Astronaut as she went up with the old Soviet program.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Michael Foale - he kept his birth nationality?

 

[Tywin]

His Nationality: Texan.

We made him wear the US flag on his uniform though

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

here were no Americans around in Medieval times (don't you dare say the Native Americans. Focus people.)

I am sure you are joking here, but I have seen people make this argument in all seriousness.

We didn't just appear out of nowhere! We, our language, and our spellings are all descended from the same Medieval stock as modern Brits, who do not speak or spell like our Medieval ancestors, either. Yet nobody asks for -- or should! -- Middle English spellings in Medieval or Faux-Medieval settings.

Personally, once I really become absorbed in a book (and if it is a good one that will happen within a very few pages) I don't even notice if the spelling is British or American, but I suppose there are as many Americans who are distracted and annoyed by British spelling as their people in the UK who get snooty and condescending about American spelling.

 

[Denise Tanaka]

Some of us writing close Third Person narrative (the kind that is very close to First Person, in spirit) at least try to match** the narrative voice to the Point of View character. Having the PoV's dialogue in, say, an English accent, but "their" narrative in, say, a New York one -- or vice versa -- would be really odd.


** - In most cases, the dialogue would tend to be less formal than the narrative. However, certain word choices would still be reflected across both dialogue and narrative.

Yes, I see the point. Then my opening statement was too broadly stated! So it's a question of whether or not the narrative voice has an identifiable ethnicity? Wow.... I haven't had my coffee yet this morning. My mind is spinning. That's huge.

I'm thinking of my Lit classes. Hemingway and Fitzgerald have a different style from Dickens or Jane Austen or Henry James. Is it the difference between Americans and Brits or is it because Hemingway was a newspaper correspondent? Sir Walter Scott was a lawyer, and his prose has some of the longest paragraphs I've ever seen, but I don't recall Sir Walter showing his personal accent in the writing. Hmm...

 

[Ursa major]

It may be huge, but I expect most multi-PoV novels have their narration in a single narrative voice that hasn't anything to do with any particular PoV. For example, I don't think the narrative voice alters between PoV characters in A Song of Ice and Fire; I don't recall the vocabulary being as limited as it might be in the chapters where the younger Starks are the PoV characters.

As for ethnicity.... In my PoV's the effect isn't really about ethnicity, but more about the voice of the character (in their own heads). As I said, I see (very) Close Third Person as being very like First Person, in that the personality of the PoV character can come though. There are various degrees in which this can be expressed, all the way up to the PoV character just about becoming the narrator (although care needs to be taken: only some of us naturally talk about ourselves in the third person, and doing so regularly in public would say a lot about us and would equally do so about a PoV character ). One of my characters can be rather irritable and irascible, which comes through in the narrative (which includes rather more swearing than for other PoV characters).

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Actually, one of my reviewers mentioned that the keeping of my style between close 3rd characters threw them off but I'm not sure how to remedy it (or, indeed, if I should...)

 

[Ursa major]

the keeping of my style between close 3rd characters threw them off

The phrase "keeping of my style" suggests to me that they think you have a consistent style across PoVs. Is that what they meant? Or was your "style" that of moulding the narrative to the PoV character?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

The phrase "keeping of my style" suggests to me that they think you have a consistent style across PoVs. Is that what they meant? Or was your "style" that of moulding the narrative to the PoV character?

I think it was that my comma placement (possibly spliced, I think), was the same across all the separate povs so gave a narrator-voice element.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I'm not sure whether to scratch my head or bang it on the desk.

 

[Ursa major]

I think it was that my comma placement (possibly spliced, I think), was the same across all the separate povs so gave a narrator-voice element.

Ah, I see. I've tried to avoid character-specific punctuation That way lies madness: comma splicing; too many plings!!!!!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I don't think I let her have any comma splices. If that wrecked the voices of the characters, I am heartily sorry.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I don't think I let her have any comma splices. If that wrecked the voices of the characters, I am heartily sorry.

Don't think it was anything to do with you, never fear. I seem to remember having to agree everything.

This was what was said (and I want to make it clear I am in no way dissing the review - I think this point is well worth me thinking long and hard about considering how close I write - should they all have a differing punctuation and approach a la Abercrombie*) - nor would I like anyone else to (but this is the chrons, I know you all know that)

'When I looked back through the second read I realized that the author loves long sentences and has a fixation on commas. This is not all bad. I love long sentences and enjoy the ones that are properly punctuated. The problem comes in some of the medium size sentences that almost appear to be long sentences that were shortened to vary the beat. The problem with that is that there is that beat or rhythm of the sentences in a paragraph and the more internal beat of the individual sentences that you start punctuating with commas and semicolons.

In the first paragraph this sentence…-
His captors knew him well enough to use subtle things to torment him: the sound of water, so blessed on the hot, dry, Abendau; the prism on its thin chain catching sunlight from a small window and sending rainbows darting; the slow build of pain in muscles held firm, a pain that went deep, full of despair.

Zebedee, Jo (2015-03-29). Abendau's Heir (The Inheritance Trilogy Book 1) (Kindle Locations 29-31). Tickety Boo Press Ltd. Kindle Edition.

…Begins to highlight both the skill of the author and the beginning of a pattern that threw me off just a bit.

This part--so blessed on the hot, dry, Abendau;--creates a distinct staccato effect separating out Hot- Dry - Abendau; giving it an intended beat and alone it seems quite harmless, but quickly it shows up again and again until it's like a pattern. Often there are separate sentences engineered into incomplete thoughts that get chained by commas while ignoring conjunctions to create the same distinct separation that might just as well have been short separate sentences; though those would once again interfere with the rhythm.

For me though this created a second problem because the narrator often was this shifting close third POV that unfortunately always has the same quirk and that tended to overshadow the character development and I had difficulty separating the characters from one another. The irony is that they are distinct characters once I get past that peculiar distracting consistent beat. The dropping or ignoring of conjunctions to create the beat creates a distinct narrator voice that becomes hard to separate from the close third POV.'

* but it is what has had me put down Abercrombie for the third time - I adored the first chapter but the style change in the second threw me out of it.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Don't think it was anything to do with you, never fear. I seem to remember having to agree everything.

Yes, I should note that my contrition over removing comma splices (which you could have put back) was not sincere.

I'm going to have to study the rest of that to see if I can get my head around the complaint.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I am not referring to the person that wrote that particular review, Jo, because I don't know who they are and I don't know what was going on in their head when they wrote it, but I will say this:

Reviews that analyze every word and comma and semicolon, they sometimes come from people who are so caught up in their own writing style (as they should be when they are writing) that it carries over to their critiques, where they sometimes try to change the style of the other writer to match their own. Or they may be so caught up in analyzing the mechanics of writing that they are no longer able to appreciate the art of the storytelling. Of course, the more we all learn, the more we all grow picky and analytical about what we are reading, but there does come a point where we have to turn it off (easier said than done) or we will never enjoy anything.

Since I am confident that my style of writing is pleasing to many people -- enough people have told me so -- yet know, at the same time, that no one is able to please everyone, when I receive that kind of review I ask myself whether one of those things I mention above may be true (they were trying to impose their own style, or they are too caught up in the mechanics of writing), or, whether I was doing something else completely wrong so that I didn't draw them fully enough into the story that they would no longer notice such things, in such excruciating detail. And if it was something else, then I need to figure out what that something was and how to fix it.

I have no idea if one, or two, or all of the above may be true for the review (or critique, or whatever it was) you have quoted. And one reason I don't know is because I haven't read the rest of it. But you have, and perhaps the rest may help you to decide what is going on, and what -- if anything -- you should do about it in writing the next book. It may be immensely valuable input. Certainly someone has been very kind in taking so much time over your book. But the book is written and the time for changing it is past, and you shouldn't alter the style of of the next book so much that those who liked it in the first book are disappointed. Improve it, yes, because we should all be trying to improve all of the time, but nothing drastic or too suddenly if you discover that readers on the whole are happy with the way you have written your book, and in the long run only make large changes if you find that many people are making the same sort of criticisms.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think it resonated more with the way I write in new stuff as opposed to Abendau and it made me wonder if it's part of why I write fewer povs now than I used to, by and large. But, yes, I agree that a trilogy has to keep the same feel, by and large. And I've had enough betas and people who say my writing works (a way off yours yet!) not to be inclined to make wholesale changes. I just thought it was relevant to how the thread was going....

 

[Brian G Turner]

I expect most multi-PoV novels have their narration in a single narrative voice that hasn't anything to do with any particular PoV. For example, I don't think the narrative voice alters between PoV characters in A Song of Ice and Fire; I don't recall the vocabulary being as limited as it might be in the chapters where the younger Starks are the PoV characters.

Joe Abercrombie sometimes uses character voice to great effect in different POVs. I've read suggestions that Robert Jordan does, perhaps to a lesser degree, in the Wheel of Time series. It's not common, though.