Language & “Slang”

I would just title this section “slang,” but the word is so loaded by now, that it really wouldn’t communicate the meaning I want it to. The idea of slang, as beaten into us by teachers and parents, is that it is, for some reason, fundamentally wrong. It implies that there is a correct “proper” language and then slang words which we should ignore, because if we ignore them, they will just go away. This attitude towards slang is really an attitude against change. We want our language to remain the same, but the fact of the matter is that language is constantly changing, and slang is the form these changes take.

Slang is best contrasted with dialect. While dialects are very old, and often unchanging, slang is very new, and constantly shifting as we adapt to the ever changing world around us. This, in many ways, is the most important thing to remember about slang—a change in slang, means that there was some change in the way individuals who use that new slang see the world. While dialects and slang might, on the surface, look similar (they both change the way our characters use language) they actually communicate very different things about them. While dialects tell us where characters are from, slang tells us what has happened to them, and how they perceive the future.

Dialect

Dialect is used often in writing, and often used badly. This is because dialects are often poorly executed, and poorly utilized. I myself am hardly an expert on them, and am not a subtle enough author to use them well. That said, I still want to offer a few cautionary points to think about if you do want to use a dialect in a story.

First, it is important to consider why you want to use a dialect. Often, authors use it because they want their character to have a distinctive voice. This is a bad reason to use dialect, because it is often poorly executed and disconnected from the character. Besides, there are much better ways to give a character a distinct voice without using something as heavy handed as a dialect. Dialects actually affect a character’s history. It tells us much more about our character’s family, their childhood, their education, and where they live and work, then just “how they sound.” If the dialect is disconnected from the rest of the character’s history, it no longer makes any sense for it to be there.

Voice

How do you make a character’s voice distinct? The not very helpful answer to this question which I often give is that a character’s voice is distinct when a new reader can sit down and identify that character’s lines of dialogue without needing dialogue tags. This isn’t very helpful, because it does not say how we get to that point of recognition. Of course, when we’re listening to people speak, its relatively easy for us to pick out speakers without looking at them. However, we have access to many more facts when we’re listening, like vocal pitch, vocal inflection, and tone quality. The key to creating a recognizable voice is finding audible keys which can then be written down.

Perhaps the most recognizable vocal tag is dialect. This is a crutch, which I’ve seen plenty of authors use to make a character more “memorable.” I advise people to use dialect for good reasons, namely to demonstrate particular facts about a character, but I’ll discuss this particular point more in depth later. For the moment, let’s examine a few ways we can make a character’s voice recognizable without changing the way their language looks. What we are really more interested in is how it sounds to the reader.

Dialogue Tags

It is a rite of passage for all writers, that stage of writing where a character can’t say anything unless they say it vehemently, boisterously, or hesitantly. Some writers never break out of this habit, and they are the ones who put up web pages titled “500 alternatives for the word ‘said’”. They think ‘said’ is boring, worn out from overuse, and that writers should spice up their writing with some exciting news ways of speaking. Why say something when you can exclaim it? Or voice it?

Well, as it turns out, there are good reasons why characters shouldn’t voice or exclaim things. First of all, adverbs and active tags make dialogue much harder to read, because the reader has to spend more time trying to understand how the writer wants their dialogue to be heard, than on what the characters are actually saying.

Style

Style is an elusive topic, mostly because there isn’t really a good way to define it, or good ways to develop it. Put simply, a writer’s style is just the way she writes. But that doesn’t really tell us much. In fact, I think style can be broken down a little more, into two broad categories.

The first category is content. Some authors are just famous or well known because of what they write about. In this category I would place authors such as Kurt Vonnegut and J.R.R Tolkien. I mention this first because often it is underappreciated. However, many authors are known more for what they write about that how the write, and this isn’t something which can be tossed by the way side. I will be covering this side of style in more detail as I continue discussing different genres of writing.

The second category is voice. There are many writers who are famous for their voice, and two that come to mind right now are James Joyce and Ernest Hemmingway, though their voices, in some ways, couldn’t be more different. This is often the category which most people think of when they think of style, and for the most part, this is what I will discuss when I talk about style.

There is no easy way to find a voice. That said, there are two tools that can help refine a voice, and improve it. The first is to practice literary devices. Often, famous voices are famous because of how they use imagery, foreshadowing, magical realism, and the like, and so understanding how those devices work is crucial for developing a voice of your own.

The second tool is the pastiche, a literary exercise which I believe is incredibly helpful, but which few writers use. The essential objective is to take an excerpt written by an author whose voice you enjoy, and try to mimic it as best you can. This often takes three steps. First, you must select a passage and do a close reading of it, identifying what aspects make the author’s voice notable. Second, try to recreate the writer’s style in a story of your own. Finally, go back and compare the two, figure out what you liked about that style and what you didn’t, and then try to incorporate the things you enjoyed into your own writing.

 

Exercise: Every once in a while, I will give my opinion on a famous style in a post, and provide a passage for a pastiche exercise. For now, try writing a pastiche in the style of your favorite author, following the process I outlined above.