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Underground > Creation >

Professional Speech in Creative Writing

  
 
All Acting Regiment
19:57 / 26.03.05
This is about creative writing. A lot of times, i read something me or someone else has written, and it features some kind of proffessional talk: be it spies, policemen, lawyers, firemen, soldiers- and one thing I notice is that always, always, this dialogue sounds cheesy, like a rip off of an (american) TV program/film.

You with me so far?

I imagine a lot of people here might feel this too, so what I'm wondering is, does anyone have any resources, or know any tips, for how to realistically present this kind of "speciality language" in the reported speech that appears in their prose?
 
 
TeN
20:04 / 26.03.05
i know what you mean completely, and stuff like that is often a problem for writers. the only advice i can offer is to try talking to the people you're representing. spend some time with them. get an idea of the way they speak, thier slang, their "specialty words," the way the describe certain things they come across on the job. it can be tough work, but i feel it's necesarry if you want to acheive complete realism.
 
 
HCE
15:59 / 28.03.05
I find that the best dialogue comes from eavesdropping on conversations in cafes. It's more natural and conversational than what you'd get by engaging somebody directly. Maybe try hanging out at a diner near a fire station?
 
 
sleazenation
17:21 / 28.03.05
At the risk of sounding needlessly bitchy, (not my intent, honest) and throwing stones from my own fabulously glass pavilion, a good starting point is learning how to spell 'professional' correctly. More basic, and more important, than getting dialogue to sound right is knowing how to spell first.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
21:30 / 28.03.05
It depends on whether you're having a go at said professional group or not. If you are, this is nothing to worry about - slightly stilted dialogue courtesy of say, the police or the fire service if they're giving one of your characters a hard time is fair enough, I think, if that's all they're doing. If you fleshed out and humanised everyone in the novel, you'd be looking at writing War And Peace or Ulysses, and it took those guys a while to work up to it.

Otherwise, you can talk around this stuff. I don't know if you've read American Psycho, but it's pretty much a masterclass in terms of avoiding the issue of what the narrator actually does for a living - On the one hand, it's never in doubt that Bateman's a successful something or other in New York, but on the other, what that actually involves is never made all that clear. I'm fairly sure Brett Easton Ellis has no idea what goes on at a board meeting in a merchant bank/accountants, etc, but it works, nevertheless, because he never goes into too much technical detail.
 
 
astrojax69
22:06 / 28.03.05
getting vernacular right is about the hardest thing in writing [well, i think so!] - done well the reader rarely notices (sob; why do all the hardest bits go unnoticed??) but done poorly can make a passage - or worse, the whole piece/book - entirely unreadable...

the advice proffered above is excellent - go listen to the class of person you want to capture, hear how they speak - but also, read aloud (or better, get someone else to read aloud) what you write first up, then tinker. nothing like a good tinker...

also, read plays. this is writing that is only speech. a good play can teach you much.
 
 
Olulabelle
13:45 / 29.03.05
29/03/05 Moderator note: Thread title amended so that 'professional' is correctly spelt.
 
 
Olulabelle
21:02 / 29.03.05
Sleaze: At the risk of sounding needlessly bitchy, (not my intent, honest) ...a good starting point is learning how to spell 'professional' correctly. More basic, and more important, than getting dialogue to sound right is knowing how to spell first.

I must confess that it's most unlike me to bypass spelling mistakes, but I really think that spelling is the least of anyone's problems when it comes to creative writing and writing dialogue. Spelling is the technical aspect of writing - like the brushes and paper of painting or the perfectly balanced sword of martial arts. Without the tools you can still create delightful things, but if you have no talent even the finest of tools will not help you, and your creation will remain dull.

I know what you're saying Sleaze, but I think it's far more important to focus on talent than whether or not you put one too many 'F's in a word.

Oh, and by the way, you don't need the comma after 'important'. La la la la la la la...
 
 
All Acting Regiment
00:45 / 30.03.05
Wot it were, Sleess and Ulyabl, wos that I wuz tyered when I rote teh powst, vatz why my spelling weren't up two mush.

Ahem.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:17 / 30.03.05
Spelling is the technical aspect of writing - like the brushes and paper of painting or the perfectly balanced sword of martial arts.

Actually, the comma after "important" is clausal - it shows that "and more important" is parallel to "more basic".

It's a general rule that any post correcting spelling or grammar will contain at least one spelling or grammar mistake. However.

To say that brushes and paper are to painting what spelling is to writing is pretty clearly wrong. Paper is to writing what paper is to painting - the stuff on which the writing or painting is done. Pens are to writing what brushes are to painting - the tools by which marks which make up the physical object of the written or drawn thing are applied to the stuff on which marks are made to make up the physical ktl. Spelling, if this comparison is still considered useful, might be considered comparable to line drawing - a skill the first elements of which are acquired early on in the process of learning to practise the broader skill, and which remains relevant, and is improved upon, throughout one's practice of the broader skill.

Correct spelling (or grammar) is in many case not a wildly important part of the experience of writing in the modern age - either it is not expected, or the reader is not competent to know what is right or wrong, or it can be corrected subsequently by means mechanical or human (a spell checker or proofreader). However, there is a difference between "writing" as means of communicating information through text (notes on fridge door, emails, text messages announcing impending lateness) and "writing" as identifier of some form of art. In the latter case, spelling is a skill the absence of which might suggest that the practitioner has not spent enough time on the basics. I get this with "hypocrisy" a lot, my thinking being that hypocrisy is a very big thing to accuse another human being of, and that if you have taken the time to encounter and understand the word you will not likely still think it is spelled "hippocracy".

So, the presence of two "f"s in "professional" is not necessarily a fatal stroke to one's ambitions. However, a more general failure to grasp the basics of spelling, grammar and sentence composition can be pretty damaging to the successful expression of any more nebulous talent. To reapply the painting metaphor, Picasso knew the rules of proportion and knew how to apply them before he started breaking them for his own purposes.
 
 
Olulabelle
08:51 / 30.03.05
But I don't think paper is to writing what paper is to painting in this day and age. You can type, or dictate. It's not the same thing.

What I mean is, paper and brushes are the way you express your painting creativity, just as words and grammar and spelling are how you express your writing creativity.

And if you ask me, clausal comma's are very ungainly!
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:10 / 30.03.05
But I don't think paper is to writing what paper is to painting in this day and age. You can type, or dictate. It's not the same thing.

You can paint on canvas, or paper, or wood, or acrylic. It's quite the same thing.

What I mean is, paper and brushes are the way you express your painting creativity, just as words and grammar and spelling are how you express your writing creativity.

I don't think that works, though. You can't "express your writing creativity" without using words, whether you type or dictate or write longhand, whereas you can do something identifiable as painting without paper or brushes - say, with a piece of canvas and a palette knife. Perhaps a better metaphor would be that words are therefore like paint, grammar like an understanding of what kind of paint you should place with what kind of brush with what level of force on what kind of surface to create a particular effect, and spelling... oh, I don't know - colour sense?

And if you ask me, clausal comma's are very ungainly!

You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?
 
 
sleazenation
12:01 / 30.03.05
Again, I didn’t intend to turn this into a spelling and punctuation war, I was careful to note the glass manufacture of my own house. The only reason I even noticed this thread at all was because it had ‘professional’ spelled wrong in the title and that kind of clawed my eyes out. It was a problem made worse, in my opinion, by the fact it was the title of a thread about writing. I didn’t mean to derail this topic, but I am minded to agree more with Haus that sound spelling is the foundation of any writing endeavour, creative or otherwise. Perhaps there is a need for some kind of spelling and punctuation thread. In any case I think it important that thread titles and abstracts contain correct spelling since they are the tools by which Barbelith users navigate.

In an attempt to offer a more directly useful response to the topic of ‘authentic dialogue’, I’d say I have to agree with the advice offered above…
 
 
HCE
13:27 / 30.03.05
I think Legba's claiming he made a typing rather than spelling error, and I'm willing to give him that. Haus, would it be ALL right put a comma after right ("sound right, is")in sleazenation's first post? If I were to say, "More important than A is B," I'd pause a bit after saying A. May a comma reflect speech as well? Does it depend on the circumstance?

I believe this is somewhat on topic since it has to do with conveying speech in writing in a natural style.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:50 / 30.03.05
Ah, well. Thereby hangs a question. To address the easy one:

More basic, and more important, than getting dialogue to sound right is knowing how to spell first.

What if that were:

More basic, and more important, than getting dialogue to sound right, is knowing how to spell first.

Well, I'd say that wouldn't make sense. Because basically Sleaze is saying (x) is (y). Knowing how to spell is more important than getting dialogue to sound right. Tomato is a fruit. Can you say:

Tomato, is a fruit?

Not really - there's no sense break to indicate with a comma. If I read that I would not think that there had been a pause after "tomato", but simply that the writer had lost the thread of the sentence and whacked in a comma as a kind of piton. But more of that later. On the other hand, I wouldn't have written:

More basic, and more important, than getting dialogue to sound right is knowing how to spell first.

in the first place, personally. First up because, for the reasons mentioned, knowing how to spell may not be more basic and more important than getting dialogue to sound right. Also because "first" and "basic" tangle in the rudder. I might avoid the commas altogether:

Correct spelling is a more basic and more important element of writing than convincing dialogue.

But we've wandered off the question. Point being, people on Barbelith often do not devote as much attention to their posts, which are sudden and ephemeral things, as they might to their novel, which is a dedication to the ages.

On commas as pauses: there was once an entire species of notation for this, with commas as pauses, semicolons as longer pauses and so on. I would be very careful about trying to combine this, a device for societies in which one read aloud, either to oneself or to others, with the use of punctuation in text read silently. As you wrote, if you were to say "more important than A is B" you would pause after "A"; it is reasonable to assume that your reader will also.
 
 
Loomis
11:07 / 31.03.05
While I'm thoroughly enjoying the discussion of grammar (particularly because my once-excellent spelling and grammar are no longer so healthy), I do have a small contribution to the topic of this thread.

I think when writing dialogue of any type it's important to remember that most of your characters are normal people. I wouldn't think that fireman spend all day talking about fires (even while at work); likewise with other occupations. I would be wary of shoehorning in too much jargon. The aim is to sound convincing enough with a scattering of reality but not to derail your story.

In my writing I tend to follow the advice given above of avoiding situations where you need to be too technical. I'm quite happy to have a fireman drinking in the pub with an accountant thus not need to know any jargon but I wouldn't write a novel set in a fire station. I must confess to something of an impatience with novels that are obviously heavily researched. If I want an acurate portrayal of life as an [insert occupation or historical period here], then I'll read a non-fictional account or a history book rather than a novel.
 
  
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