One of the things I have tried to do in the past is to get
into reading literature, the works of authors from the 19th and 20th
centuries. Literature is a word that could refer to works from any era, but the
works that I’ve read are mostly from the last two centuries. I must admit that
sometimes, in the process of reading these works, I get bogged down with the
style and language of the period. This includes authors writing in various
styles and genres.
For instance, at one point this year I set out to read Pride and Prejudice. I am familiar with the story, as my mom has watched a couple renditions of it several times in the past. I enjoy the banter between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth and roll my eyes as Mrs. Bennett at her outbursts.
When I think of Mrs. Bennett, I can still hear her voice in my head wailing “Oh Mr. Bennett!” In the story Mrs. Bennett’s pestering and blustering are set against Mr. Bennett’s patience and it eventually comes to a tipping point. At a critical point Mr. Bennett finally puts his foot down and, rather than weathering the unnecessary storm and taking the underhanded comments from his wife he stands up to her and tells her to quiet down.
However, the way in which Jane Austen (and many other authors of her period, I’m sure) approached their writing was very different than it is today. I remember reading through the book and watching pages of dialogue where, rather than seeing one-line banter going back and forth, one character will stand and speak for pages at a time. Paragraphs and paragraphs of prose as these characters stand and talk about what’s on their minds. If a modern author did that, their manuscript might be thrown out. I say might because once in a long while sometimes going against the grain is just what a book needs to do. I don’t bring up this point to criticize Jane Austen as an author, but to say I found it very difficult to track one line of thought for two straight pages.
If you’re an aspiring writer, don’t take this as a model for how to form a good bit of catching dialogue. Once you have the audience reeled in you could take a chance and have a scene with some extended speech – if your scene calls for it.
But as I read the book, I realize that it is a different style of writing for a different people of a different era. From what I read recently, Jane Austen’s book was not typical for it’s time period and critiqued culture, running as a social commentary of the time. From what I understand an outright critique of society in the way that she did it was nearly unheard of.
For instance, at one point this year I set out to read Pride and Prejudice. I am familiar with the story, as my mom has watched a couple renditions of it several times in the past. I enjoy the banter between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth and roll my eyes as Mrs. Bennett at her outbursts.
When I think of Mrs. Bennett, I can still hear her voice in my head wailing “Oh Mr. Bennett!” In the story Mrs. Bennett’s pestering and blustering are set against Mr. Bennett’s patience and it eventually comes to a tipping point. At a critical point Mr. Bennett finally puts his foot down and, rather than weathering the unnecessary storm and taking the underhanded comments from his wife he stands up to her and tells her to quiet down.
However, the way in which Jane Austen (and many other authors of her period, I’m sure) approached their writing was very different than it is today. I remember reading through the book and watching pages of dialogue where, rather than seeing one-line banter going back and forth, one character will stand and speak for pages at a time. Paragraphs and paragraphs of prose as these characters stand and talk about what’s on their minds. If a modern author did that, their manuscript might be thrown out. I say might because once in a long while sometimes going against the grain is just what a book needs to do. I don’t bring up this point to criticize Jane Austen as an author, but to say I found it very difficult to track one line of thought for two straight pages.
If you’re an aspiring writer, don’t take this as a model for how to form a good bit of catching dialogue. Once you have the audience reeled in you could take a chance and have a scene with some extended speech – if your scene calls for it.
But as I read the book, I realize that it is a different style of writing for a different people of a different era. From what I read recently, Jane Austen’s book was not typical for it’s time period and critiqued culture, running as a social commentary of the time. From what I understand an outright critique of society in the way that she did it was nearly unheard of.
The books I
have been reading lately are The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a
fantastic series and I highly recommend it. I don’t read much fantasy, but I do
know that whenever a writer takes up this genre they have a lot to take on, for
they have to not only introduce the reader to the people and the things that
they will encounter, but they also have to introduce the locations and the
fantasy creatures, such as dragons, elves and dwarves that one might run into
in that fictional world.
The
predecessor to The Lord of the Rings (LOTR), The Hobbit, is one of my favorite
novels, one which I have read time and again. It has a very different style
than LOTR. I have heard that The Hobbit was more extensively edited before it
was released and that LOTR was not edited in the same way. Tolkien spent years
building his mythological world of Middle Earth before the trilogy was written.
The countries, races, famous weapons, creatures, and much history were already
in place before he began to write the book.
I was
talking to my brother the other day and he spoke about reading Tolkien’s The
Silmarillion. I have not read the text myself but apparently it reads something
like a history textbook. Characters are suddenly introduced with no context. It
s written as a report of events, a summary rather than a drawn-out story that
we are used to hearing.
However the
author chooses to approach their text, it is interesting to see how the styles
of writing have changed over the centuries. Though within a period there will
certainly be authors who differ from one another, as time progresses societies
change in tastes and authors change in how their approach to writing.
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