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As Thou Knowest, Bob
Oct. 17th, 2012 02:05 pmThere was a question -- two questions, really, in the interview yesterday: "What's your advice to writers" and "Did you do research for your story?" I woke up with my brain making further comments on the topic of research for fiction: do it, yes, but deploy the information you discover wisely. Awkward info-dumps are bad enough, but worse is characters who keep making clever remarks on aspects of their environment that should be beneath their notice.
The example that always jumps to my mind is Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford, a novel about the life of Christopher Marlowe that just can't get over the crazy lack of standardized spellings in Elizabethan England: every time characters are introduced, they'll spend several paragraphs talking to each other about how there are multiple ways to spell and pronounce their names. Not only did this completely yank me out of the story whenever it happened, it's now the only thing I can recall about the book.
Even if it were had just been Marlowe who did this (he at least has the excuse of being a writer*,) and everyone else rolled their eyes and muttered "he's on about it again," I think I could have accepted it as plausible; but, well, a modern-day equivalent would be a story set in the late 20th/early 21st century in which everyone chats about how the temperature of their tap water can be adjusted by turning the faucet handle; or wonders out loud who decided that chairs should be the height that they are; without this ever becoming an actual plot point.
It occurred to me last night that there's an opposite example in Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town: in which the protagonist's name changes from paragraph to paragraph. He's usually called Alan, but it soon becomes evident he'll answer to any masculine name beginning with A, and when his younger brothers show up (by this time we know Arnold is one of the few members of his family able to pass as human), we realize they weren't actually named -- they were alphabetized.
This works, because none of it is ever directly commented on in the novel -- to Alan it's completely normal, and he's our PoV character. Whether regular humans notice Arthur's shifting nomenclature is left to the reader to judge, though I suspect they simply block out any incongruity. Only one person pointedly addresses him as Abdul shortly after meeting him to let him know she's spotted the phenomenon, but she's not exactly human either, as it turns out, and her perception is probably meant to foreshadow this.
* He also gets really annoyed if anyone addresses him as "thou," but at least he doesn't lecture them about how it's disrespectful to address anyone in the singular unless they're a close personal friend.
The example that always jumps to my mind is Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford, a novel about the life of Christopher Marlowe that just can't get over the crazy lack of standardized spellings in Elizabethan England: every time characters are introduced, they'll spend several paragraphs talking to each other about how there are multiple ways to spell and pronounce their names. Not only did this completely yank me out of the story whenever it happened, it's now the only thing I can recall about the book.
Even if it were had just been Marlowe who did this (he at least has the excuse of being a writer*,) and everyone else rolled their eyes and muttered "he's on about it again," I think I could have accepted it as plausible; but, well, a modern-day equivalent would be a story set in the late 20th/early 21st century in which everyone chats about how the temperature of their tap water can be adjusted by turning the faucet handle; or wonders out loud who decided that chairs should be the height that they are; without this ever becoming an actual plot point.
It occurred to me last night that there's an opposite example in Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town: in which the protagonist's name changes from paragraph to paragraph. He's usually called Alan, but it soon becomes evident he'll answer to any masculine name beginning with A, and when his younger brothers show up (by this time we know Arnold is one of the few members of his family able to pass as human), we realize they weren't actually named -- they were alphabetized.
This works, because none of it is ever directly commented on in the novel -- to Alan it's completely normal, and he's our PoV character. Whether regular humans notice Arthur's shifting nomenclature is left to the reader to judge, though I suspect they simply block out any incongruity. Only one person pointedly addresses him as Abdul shortly after meeting him to let him know she's spotted the phenomenon, but she's not exactly human either, as it turns out, and her perception is probably meant to foreshadow this.
* He also gets really annoyed if anyone addresses him as "thou," but at least he doesn't lecture them about how it's disrespectful to address anyone in the singular unless they're a close personal friend.
