Now, having said that, I now have to add that if a British author is trying to write in American colloquialisms, someone should read just for that sort of thing.
I'm giving Fifty-Shades a chance because I feel there is something you can learn from anything, and while I've been reading it, I noticed a lot of Briticisms. It's not usual for Americans to use phrases like bedside table and keen... other things stick out as well, but then I found out the author was from England and thought perhaps she should have based it there rather than choosing America, where we are sometimes literally speaking different languages. Certain classes have a much more formal register than the chavs and other classes. It's been interesting to see so much has crpet through when Harry Potter had been gone through with such a finel-toothed comb.
It makes me wonder - and he's very much on my list of authors to read more of his works - if Neil Gaiman still writes in BrE or AmE, licing in the states.
Yes, i have my own pet-peeves, and yes, often edit as I read. I recognise that there is a big thing for brevity; however, sometimes you can't say something and stirr emotions without taking an exra step sometimes. Or perhaps that's just me, being that I only feel what I'm writing once, then it's gone. I feel it during the writing process itself - picture Joan Wilder in Roamncing the Stone, I reckon, for reference. LOL Sad but funny example.
I wish translation wasn't needed. If it's that big of an issue, tack a bloody appendix or glossary or whatever with the book. I'm sure that has to be easier than changing EVERY spelling element that differents from ours. It seems disingenuine and I wish that we were allowed the choice. If it's British and takes place in England, I want to read motorways, petrol stations, colloquial phrases - especially with places like Yorkshire and Cornwall (where it's practically another language, I'm told).
The difference in punctuation differences are mild, but it's not like half the kids coming out of high school know actual english grammar any more. In the girls' home I work at, I read the paper she had been working on about Estonia and was appalled at how poorly constructed it was. Not just the word choice and redundant syntax, but for lack of any imagination or effort on her part. I was deducted so many points on things in classes that were English in college for using passive voice. So I learned. I studied grammar and punctuation with a massive obsession and it's what led me beta reading in the first place. The desire to know when I'm making a mess of it and why. Also how best to use those bits that are taken for granted to get my point across without being unable to understand why I'd done it. I probably couldn't do it now, but at least in that course, I had to parse sentences and break down every single underlying layer and explain it. It gave me a new appreciation for *why* we have those structures.
I have impossibly high standards as a reader, and as a writer. I think that the former gets me into more trouble than the latter. LOL I end up wishing I could forget all I know and just write sometimes. It takes me three times as long to write as it used to - I think so much about what the words are and how the sentence reads. It's a strange feeling.
I'm very glad to hear that you are branching out and thinking of going the original fiction route. I've always felt you were a talented author and have been moved and inspired not just by your stories but by the way you present them.
thank you for that extra effort, as it were. :) You're one of the writers who I always coe back to, the familiarity, the ease and flow and depth. I love it. Those are things which lack in modern publishing.
no subject
I'm giving Fifty-Shades a chance because I feel there is something you can learn from anything, and while I've been reading it, I noticed a lot of Briticisms. It's not usual for Americans to use phrases like bedside table and keen... other things stick out as well, but then I found out the author was from England and thought perhaps she should have based it there rather than choosing America, where we are sometimes literally speaking different languages. Certain classes have a much more formal register than the chavs and other classes. It's been interesting to see so much has crpet through when Harry Potter had been gone through with such a finel-toothed comb.
It makes me wonder - and he's very much on my list of authors to read more of his works - if Neil Gaiman still writes in BrE or AmE, licing in the states.
Yes, i have my own pet-peeves, and yes, often edit as I read. I recognise that there is a big thing for brevity; however, sometimes you can't say something and stirr emotions without taking an exra step sometimes. Or perhaps that's just me, being that I only feel what I'm writing once, then it's gone. I feel it during the writing process itself - picture Joan Wilder in Roamncing the Stone, I reckon, for reference. LOL Sad but funny example.
I wish translation wasn't needed. If it's that big of an issue, tack a bloody appendix or glossary or whatever with the book. I'm sure that has to be easier than changing EVERY spelling element that differents from ours. It seems disingenuine and I wish that we were allowed the choice. If it's British and takes place in England, I want to read motorways, petrol stations, colloquial phrases - especially with places like Yorkshire and Cornwall (where it's practically another language, I'm told).
The difference in punctuation differences are mild, but it's not like half the kids coming out of high school know actual english grammar any more. In the girls' home I work at, I read the paper she had been working on about Estonia and was appalled at how poorly constructed it was. Not just the word choice and redundant syntax, but for lack of any imagination or effort on her part. I was deducted so many points on things in classes that were English in college for using passive voice. So I learned. I studied grammar and punctuation with a massive obsession and it's what led me beta reading in the first place. The desire to know when I'm making a mess of it and why. Also how best to use those bits that are taken for granted to get my point across without being unable to understand why I'd done it. I probably couldn't do it now, but at least in that course, I had to parse sentences and break down every single underlying layer and explain it. It gave me a new appreciation for *why* we have those structures.
I have impossibly high standards as a reader, and as a writer. I think that the former gets me into more trouble than the latter. LOL I end up wishing I could forget all I know and just write sometimes. It takes me three times as long to write as it used to - I think so much about what the words are and how the sentence reads. It's a strange feeling.
I'm very glad to hear that you are branching out and thinking of going the original fiction route. I've always felt you were a talented author and have been moved and inspired not just by your stories but by the way you present them.
thank you for that extra effort, as it were. :) You're one of the writers who I always coe back to, the familiarity, the ease and flow and depth. I love it. Those are things which lack in modern publishing.