On with the next three
rules of romantic fiction!
#5:
They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
Oh, baby. Let’s break that one down...
“[T]he talk shall sound like human talk,”Ever read dialogue that was utterly unconvincing, and you came away thinking, “Nobody talks like that!” Just listening to a range of actual people speaking-- students, academics, lawyers, priests, tradesmen, ballplayers-- helps immensely with this. For period pieces, recourse to period documents (not just letters and diaries, but snippets of transcribed conversations) is helpful. Yes, some people talked with flowery flourishes in, say, 1862. But colloquial speech back from back then sounds remarkably familiar. And just because we may hear Jacobean English as grand Bible language doesn’t mean that there wasn’t Jacobean gutter speech. We just don’t always recognize it.
“and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances”Another important point-- compare the public addresses of Abraham Lincoln with the “lowbrow” stories he liked to tell in private... or
Churchill’s public statements versus his private witticisms. Or the phrases of the Declaration of Independence with what Jefferson liked to say about his enemies... no, wait, the Declaration is full of well-phrased pot shots. The same character can have very different modes of expressing himself/herself, depending on whether the scene is a courtroom floor, a battlefield, or a bedroom.
“and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader”All good points-- unless a character is meant to be irritating as hell, digressions are not welcome. Example: a mystery novel I picked up out of
boredom at my grandmother’s house. It was set in a tea shop in Charleston, SC. The shop assistant would, at no apparent cue, go off on info-dumps about tea varieties. I love tea, and I neither learned anything of substance from these digressions, nor did I enjoy them.
As for “interesting to the reader,” I suppose this is where the recommendation for a beta reader comes into play... but I am an author-offender
who throws ‘fic unbeta-ed into the world. Sorry.
“and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.”Word.
#6:
They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.OK. Few things aggravate me more in a story than when a character depicted as “brilliant” is, well, not brilliant. I don’t mean geniuses with no street sense, I mean master plotters who can’t plot their way out of a paper bag, eloquent diplomats would couldn’t resolve an argument over pizza toppings, FBI agents who apparently never took basic training, and physical scientists who confuse silicon with silicone.
No. No. NO.
And I don’t mean a fanfiction G-man or physicist or diplomat needs to be vetted by an actual G-man, physicist, or diplomat to pass. But some degree of real-world familiarity helps with this, far more so than just, well, reading other works of fanfiction. Knowledge of how people actually operate in real life is one of the best tools in a writer’s toolbox. It’ll help keep your prodigies brilliant, your seducers seductive, and your madmen certifiable.
#7:
They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it.[
Friendship’s Offering was an illustrated literary magazine of the day. And seven dollars was a fair amount of money back then!]
Wait. Didn’t we just agree that a character might express themselves differently under different circumstances? Not quite the same thing-- note emphasis on switching
in the middle of a paragraph! A character ought to have a distinctive mode of speech, based on their background/upbringing/class/etc. Queen Victoria is not going to be lapsing into Cockney flower-seller speech... not unless she’s trying to be funny. A Cockney flower-seller might learn “proper” speech then lapse out of it at times, but context is what makes this convincing. If characters are doing a conversational about-face, there ought to be a reason, implied or explicit, for it. There’s code-switching, and there’s just plain sloppy writing.
You can, OTOH, make good dramatic devices out of these sorts of inconsistencies-- in
The Alienist, Caleb Carr’s team of detectives analyze a letter written by their target and determine that he’s an educated individual who is pretending to be unschooled. They figure this out through the target’s own sloppy mistakes. Again, a lot of it comes down to learning how people actually operate. You don’t need a natural “ear for dialogue”-- get out a notebook and pen and jot down what the funny, brilliant, crazy, or dull people around you actually say.
Rules eight and nine tomorrow...