Dialogue 'too modern'

Dragonlady

Dragonlady

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I've been given some feedback this week that my dialogue feels modern. It's set in a fantasy world, which has similarities to both Ancient Rome and Mediaeval Europe. How do you treat dialogue in situations like this? Do you try to approximate mediaeval styles of speaking (even though it was basically a different language then)? Any tips or resources for research would be welcome.
 
The advice I was given was to try and make the language neutral and avoid modern inflections, both in terms of word choice and grammar. And it really does work. If you read some of the big classics in epic fantasy (GRRM, Feist, even Tolkien) and historical fiction (McCullough, Renault, Follet), you'll see this is exactly what they do. The only deviation from this is to modify speech to show class, not least working or upper - which, of course, presumes the main characters are middle class and therefore speak reasonably properly. :)

A few examples:

Dated:
"Golly gosh! The Dark Lord has risen!" the elf shouted.
"Gee, whiz. Now ain't that a setback for us," the dwarf said.
The human rubbed his chin in thought. "Jeepers, that's some good timing. As we're here, we can show him what's what."

Modern:
"Hey! The Dark Lord's risen!" the elf shouted.
"That's a setback," the dwarf said.
The human rubbed his chin in thought. "Not a problem. We can kick his ass."

Neutral:
"Look! The Dark Lord is risen!" the elf shouted.
"That works against us," the dwarf said.
The human rubbed his chin in thought. "While we are here we may yet defeat him."

The examples are quick and rough, but the point should be clear - the more you utilize modern speech idioms, the quicker your writing will date. Even worse, modern usage can make the setting feel modern - which is fine when writing YA fiction (I've read books that do that) but the more neutral use won't clash with the setting, and can help your writing remain palatable for longer.

Hope that helps. :)
 
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Basically what Brian said. Also, have a look at some good historical fiction set in Rome etc, and see how they handle it. I've recently read Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth, written in the 1950s, but the characters' speech feels pretty much the same as any good historical or fantasy novel written in the last hundred years. That said, you have to put in a bit of effort to make them distinguishable (so they don't all appear to be the same middle-class careful speaker), with slang, idiom etc that doesn't belong to any recognisable modern period.

If you have any specific examples of what your reader thought too modern, it might be useful to post them here.
 
I'd echo both Brian and HB -- watch the words you're using, and read a lot of good historical fiction. One of my bug-bears is reading something supposedly set in the past where everyone talks like (and thinks/acts like) a modern-day teenager.

An important thing to remember is that word use arises from culture. A free and easy culture tends to be free and easy with words, ignoring or subverting rules; a stiff and dignified one uses a much different vocabulary and maintains strict rules. Slang has always been with us, in all cultures and all social groups -- think of thieves' cant from the C18th and C19th, or the way in which Bertie Wooster talks in the early C20th -- but using real-life examples in one's work is incredibly dating because every generation has its own.

As for social differences, think about how Norman French came into use after 1066 and how it stays with us still. Words for food eaten by the invaders (and therefore an elite in terms of power if not lineage) reflect their language, so we have "beef" newly appearing which comes from the Old French, or much later "sirloin" which is French in origin, but even today the lesser scraps of cow-meat use words coming from the conquered, eg oxtail or ox-tongue, "ox" coming from the Old English.

A resource I've found invaluable is the Online Etymology Dictionary. There's no way you could write something that completely excluded words which have developed over the last 400 years or so, but looking to see when a word originated and how/why gives some insight into the thoughts of those of the time and might prompt you into finding alternatives. For instance, if you look up "beef" it shows that the present day alternative definition of "to complain" arose in America in the late C19th -- a medieval peasant wouldn't have used the word because beef was still a luxury, not an everyday commodity one would complain about.
 
Thanks! I guess it's easy to be blind to the language you use all the time. I'll have a look at that dictionary of etymology
 
HareBrain said:
That said, you have to put in a bit of effort to make them distinguishable (so they don't all appear to be the same middle-class careful speaker), with slang, idiom etc that doesn't belong to any recognisable modern period.
Click to expand...

Yep, this is the problem I find I'm currently having - not only having to work on distinct voices within the dialogue, but keeping it consistent throughout. I find the second or third pass over what I've already written is where I pick this up and fix it.
 
I agree. My own rules are something like this:
  • No real-world references. So a man can look like a bear, provided that there are bears in this world. Three words I deliberately avoid are “nice” (as in “good” rather than “exact”), which is quite a late usage, “thug”, which entered English through the Raj and hence isn’t not much use in 1550s pseudo-Europe and “sod” as in a coarse way of referring to a man, which sounds Biblical, even if it relates to turf (I’m not sure which it is). But I’m sure there are things that sneak through – the important thing is that they don’t jar the reader too much.
  • No anachronisms. “Teenager” is a modern concept: there have always been young people, but the idea of them having that role is very recent (and may rely on 20th century schooling, social mores etc). There really isn’t an equivalent: “youth”, “adolescent” or sometimes “apprentice” are similar, but not quite the same. Likewise, most people have no concept of school in the Harry Potter Victorian boarding school sense in a medieval-style fantasy novel. This can be tricky: I’ve had to use “city watch” for “police” and “thief-taker” for “private eye”, which aren’t really accurate but just about work.
  • No Americanisms. There’s a point in a Scott Lynch novel where the hero calls the villain “Mother****er”, which just felt completely wrong in the setting. Likewise “yeah”, “sure” and “okay”.
What hopefully you end up with is, as Harebrain says, a pretty neutral form of English that’s flexible enough to cover the complexities of speech. I think there’s a risk that fantasy speech becomes stilted and false-sounding, even if it is genuinely like older speech.
 
Sir Terry does it (from Lords and Ladies) with his footnotes:-

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice.

He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: "Yo,**my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear?" And the correct answer is: "Hey, whatever I select."

**Cool, but not necessarily up to date.
 
@Stephen Palmer how do you handle dialect in a fantasy world? I have a foreign character so it a could work quite well. Incidentally my characters seem to have distinct voices - he is the one with the modern slang...
 
Brian G Turner said:
"Golly gosh! The Dark Lord has risen!" the elf shouted.
"Gee, whiz. Now ain't that a setback for us," the dwarf said.
The human rubbed his chin in thought. "Jeepers, that's some good timing. As we're here, we can show him what's what."
Click to expand...
Wow! Enid Blyton's Five Confront The Dark Lord. I really want to read that :)
 
If we wrote something in a tongue authentic to the time period it wouldn't be easily readable. People struggle with Shakespeare.

However, it's worth looking at the way modern English dialects are spoken. There is a lot of middle English in Doric/Scots and the way sentences are constructed and people hold themselves as they speak often has a timeless feel as well. It's worth looking it up on YouTube. Often the actual words in the dialogue is only part of the issue, the other part is thinking about how characters move, act and react to the dialogue.
 
Dragonlady said:
@Stephen Palmer how do you handle dialect in a fantasy world? I have a foreign character so it a could work quite well. Incidentally my characters seem to have distinct voices - he is the one with the modern slang...
Click to expand...

In a fantasy world you can do what you like, but...
Be consistent.
Don't overdo it.
Remember dialect is a route to character, which is all-important.
 
If one is writing a fiction set in a medieval-type world, one could read the Penguin Classics translations of Icelandic sagas for some sense of dialogue. These will tend to confirm what Brian said in #2 above.

Good, non-anachronistic dialogue is important, for some readers at least. Just before seeing this thread, I was thinking (who knows why?) how, if I were to start reading a fantasy novel and the expression "reach out to" (in the sense of "seek to communicate with") were used that would just kill that story. It would be impossible for me to read on. I don't know why people these days have started using that expression, but all of a sudden they do, e.g. someone in a public service organization saying "We need to reach out to them [let's say university students] better," etc.

Ursula Le Guin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" is essential reading on this kind of topic.
 
I'd consider that both an anachronism and an Americanism - and "reach out to" has a meaning or a subtext that feels extremely modern, like the police phrase "carry out inquiries". I think it's the implication that nothing might actually happen, although an attempt will be made. I would use "talk to" or "speak with" instead, or maybe "try to talk to".
 
I was trying so hard not to use 'lady' in the sense of respectable woman- I think someone was being patronising to the character- I just couldn't think of an alternative phrase! @Extollager thanks for the reading recommendations
 
Toby Frost said:
and "reach out to" has a meaning or a subtext that feels extremely modern,
Click to expand...

And is ghastly... I hear it on Question Time often and I cringe. It tries to impart an effort that’s not there. ‘Talked to’ etc as Toby says, is perfect.

(Sorry for the OT but the points given have been comprehensive and I couldn’t add to them. )

pH
 
I don't mind "lady" in a fantasy novel (presumably roughly medieval?). Maybe it's got more of a technical meaning - would it mean the social class equivalent to "knight", which would presumably require you to be knighted? But I don't find it jarring and for me that's the test.

Part of the problem is that words change their meaning and get used in different ways. Apparently, "Dame" was used as a word meaning "woman" in medieval times, especially in the way that we'd use "Mrs", but it now sounds either like a British term of honour ("Dame Judi Dench") or 1940s private eye slang. So if you had pseudo-medieval characters saying "Dame", it might be technically "right" but would sound wrong.
 
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