Month: March 2017

West Virginia Wednesdays

rafting-2071983_1280Talkin’ Like a Mountaineer

I wrote in my tip about what I learned from Damon Runyon that a writer should only sprinkle in slang or words from a dialect.  Since my book is set in West Virginia, I use words my West Virginian relatives speak.  I use some of them myself, even though I grew up across the river in Ohio.

Just a note: If you are not from around Appalachia, you should understand there’s a difference between a Southern accent and an Appalachian one.  In the book The Story of English, some experts consider the Appalachian accent a cross between Midwestern and Southern. The further south you travel in the Appalachian mountains, the more southern the accent becomes.

The words I list below may not be unique to West Virginia but they are not common in the Midwest where I grew up.

No account — no good, disreputable, unreliable.  The farmer down the road was no account – he let his farm fall down to rack and ruin.

Lopper-jawed (I am guessing on the spelling) — to hang crookedly.  The door to the abandoned house hung lopper-jawed.

heap sight (I am guessing on the spelling of “sight”) — a great amount.  We had a heap sight more tomatoes this summer than last summer.

red up — clean up.  We red up the house before our company comes.country-lane-2089645_1280

fer piece — a long distance.  My nearest neighbor is a fer piece down this road.

pert near — almost or close.  “Pert” is short for “pretty”.  When that dog lunged for me, it pert near scared the pants off me.

I will have some more Appalachian words and patterns of speech next Wednesday.

 

 

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Writing Tip

london-244261_1280Favorite Author – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I discovered the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was in high school through the British series starring Jeremy Brett as the Great Detective.  That sent me to the original short stories and four novels.  I don’t think the novels are as good as the short stories.  I still enjoy reading the short stories and recently introduced children’s versions of them to my kids.

Back in high school, one thing that intrigued me about Sherlock Holmes was that the character had taken on a life of his own.  So many different people had written about him or performed as the character that I found it interesting to read about Holmes as Doyle originally conceived him.

The details Doyle dropped about Holmes – his pipe smoking, love of the violin, eccentric personal habits – made him seem all the more real.  As I have grown older, I have developed an appreciation for the Good Doctor, John Watson.  He’s the kind of friend all of us want or would like to be – loyal, patient, ready at a moment’s notice for adventure.  Because Watson tells almost all the stories, he also makes Holmes, as another writer pointed out, much more approachable.

sherlock-holmes-147255_1280

I personally love all the stories Watson hints at but never describes in full.  At the beginning of the story “The Golden Prince-nez”, Watson writes about:

“the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby the banker.  Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow.  The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case come also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin”.

Doyle dropped many such teasers in the introductions to his short stories but nothing tops the one in “The Sussex Vampire”.  Holmes says, “Matilda Briggs . . . was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, for which the world is not yet prepared.”

Did Doyle add those hints to make another layer of reality, as if Holmes was so busy that Watson couldn’t possibly relate all their adventures and readers could imagine him at work in between stories?  Or did Doyle just enjoying toying with his readers?  He couldn’t foresee what those hints would generate: hundreds of short stories and books as writers use those few clues to flesh out complete adventures.  I have read two explanations for “the giant rat of Sumatra”, one pure science fiction, the other more like an adventure.  Doyle couldn’t have left better inspiration for future writers.

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Writing Tip

crocus-1753790_1280Writing in Time-March

Since I wrote about how you could use February to inspire a setting for your writing, I thought I would write about each month as it comes up.  But I have a problem.

I hate March.  As Patrick F. McManus writes, “God created March in case eternity should prove to brief.”

It’s a month with a split personality.  Caught between winter and spring, it’s both and neither.  There are no decent holidays or events for me in March.  I’m not Irish, or live in Ireland, so St. Patrick’s Day doesn’t mean anything more to me that cute crafts from my kids.  I’m not interested in basketball, so March Madness is boring.  Lent is always partially in March.  It can be a time of growth or depression, the religious observance underlining March’s contrary dual nature. Whoever came up with the lion-lamb imagery for March hit it dead on.

Easter in March would help, but it’s in April this year.  And a March Easter runs the risk of being snowy where I live.  Snow on Easter puts me more in the mood for caroling and wrapping gifts than hunting Easter eggs and celebrating renewal and redemption.  March does have the spring equinox.  If the darkness of winter depresses you, then the equinox signals the return of longer daylight.

So, what can a writer do with March?

I admit I hate March so much I have never set a story in it.  But writing this blog has given me a few ideas.  I could create a character torn between opposites — within his or her own personality, between two jobs or two friends, anything where the character must make a choice between two opposing things.  If I wrote fantasy, I could use the spring equinox as some kind of magical day when two opposing forces clash with equal strength.  Or I could write a storyline about a character’s miserable misadventures during a miserable month.

Do you like March?  Le me know why and how you would use it in your writing.

 

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