Thursday 7 August 2008

Curse words

Tea break for Viking soldiers - a picture from my collection taken at Bamburgh. It may strike you that the smaller Viking in pale green looks rather feminine - well, yes. She was indeed of the feminine persuasion, but seemed to be having a great time with the warriors.

It is typical that when I find a Re-enactment taking place near me I'm no longer working on Viking stories - though I may come back to them - I probably will come back to them - but for the moment I am knee deep in Regencies and Victorians. I split my time between them, and so far I haven't come unstuck. All my characters are of the social class that speaks in well constructed English sentences, and the great danger, as one critiquer pointed out to me, is that all my Regency characters sound the same.

Argh!

That made me think. If I took out the dialogue and studied them, would I be able to tell them apart? Perhaps not (apart from content) But...they are from the same station in life, and most dialogue takes place in the drawing room rather than the battlefield, so the gentlemen speak politely (for want of a better word). I tried adding little verbal habits early on in my first draft, but several critiquers smartly told me "repetition, repetition - no, no!"

Silly me that I am, I took the verbal mannerisms OUT! when I should have stuck to my guns. So now I am looking with narrowed eyes at my dialogue. Anybody know any really good Regency curse words? Off to the internet to check!


I finished Run Among Thorns this morning and thoroughly enjoyed it. Since I'm proud to say the author is a member as the same Border Reivers Writers' group as me, I thought I could see glimpses of Anna showing through every now and then. She certainly has that mysterious thing called "voice," and a lovely way with landscape descriptions. Anna, I think I went by those grain silos you mention when I went to Bamburgh last weekend! I loved the proverb that gave her the title: A man does not run among thorns for no reason: either he is chasing a snake, or a snake is chasing him.


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