Language Barriers

As a writer of historical fiction, one of the more important areas to 'get right' is that of language. How the characters speak and what they say is vital to transporting the reader to the time and place.

I love this portion of the process, but it makes for slow going in many cases. My current protagonist uses a great deal of underworld slang of his day. Those around him use different language of the day, depending on their place in society. And it needs to be right or it rings untrue to the reader's mental ear. Too much dialect can be tricky to read, too little and you have no real sense of the characters. It's a slippery slope to traverse.

So, I tend to write the dialog as close as I can to the time period, and then go back and replace it with the appropriate wording and cadence for the character and the time. The wrong word can create a barrier to belief for the reader. Too many wrong ones and the reader's lost interest, at best.

Of course, getting it right requires research. As I've said before, I love the research portion, too. But, my goodness, the time it takes. One page can and does take me what many days seems like hours to get completed. And this is just for the first draft.

Ah well. If I wasn't doing this, what would I be doing with my time?

I'll tell you. I'd be reading books and cruising websites looking for interesting facts, that's what I'd be doing. It's an addiction, this love of language and writing, it really is.

J.M. Grant

A Tissick, A Tassick

I have a tissick. And I dearly hope it doesn't kill me.

The other day my handy calendar (that my wonderful husband already wishes he hadn't bought for me) shared that a tissick is a faint, tickling cough. It also shared that it was a cause of death in the olden days, and by "olden" we're talking the mid-1600's.

Apparently in London in 1665, at least 3 people died from tissick. I'll spare you the rest of the death roll -- it's very interesting from a historical research standpoint, and I'm certain it will work itself into my writing, but truly, some of these diseases shouldn't be discussed in polite company.

I read the entry and though, "how quaint". Until this afternoon, when a faint, tickling cough began to plague me. Hours ago, now. Liquids don't seem to be working, food certainly doesn't, neither does lying down, standing up, walking swiftly, walking slowly, sitting, nor whining. Though due to the whining my wonderful husband suggested a hot toddy. I'm hoping it does the trick.

If not, at least I shall go secure in the knowledge that it's better to die from a tissick than to die from a griping in the guts. Though my wonderful husband said that he might die of such if my tissick and my related griping don't cease soon.

J.M. Grant

Welcome, All Who Enter Here

Greetings. I'm an author of historical fiction. While I can and do delve into the far past, I tend to prefer the mid-1700's through to the early 1900's, prior to WWI.

Unlike many historical writers I know, I wouldn't actually have wanted to live in these times. However, growing up I always wanted to visit them, to be able to see 'what it was like'. Movies and books provided that, but not always enough, and not always what I wanted to see. Or, many times, not how I saw it in my own mind. Hence, I write what my mind sees now.

I spend a great deal of time on research -- my shelves are filled with books covering different time periods, including college textbooks. Research can be a trap -- it's so fascinating to read and ingest it becomes easy to ignore that I only need one fact to keep on writing.

But keep on writing I do. I hope to share some of that process with you, as well as research tips (which I hope you will also share with me), and perhaps some historical tidbits along the way.

As we stand less than a week away from the new year, I raise my glass to years past. Some were better than others, some were less exciting than the ones before or after, but each year has at least one fascinating instance within it. My job is to find and share those stories in some way.

J.M. Grant