Katherine Frances's Blog, page 424
December 20, 2014
FORGET WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT DISABILITY.
SOME OF US WERE BORN TO...
FORGET WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT DISABILITY.
SOME OF US WERE BORN TO BE DIFFERENT.
SOME OF US WERE BORN TO TAKE RISKS.
This has nothing to do with my blog but seriously, you guys should watch the whole video. It was amazing, like jaw dropping, I’m not kidding.
darksilenceinsuburbia:
An Inuk girl with her husky puppy in the...
An Inuk girl with her husky puppy in the hood of her amatiuq circa 1920. Mothers would also carry their infants in the same manner. This little girl is playing mommy and baby with her puppy.
"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."
- Stephen King (via kushandwizdom)
"Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different."
- C.S. Lewis (via teenager90s)
"I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done."
- Steve Wright
December 19, 2014
eastiseverywhere:
unexplained-events:
Cartoon...
Cartoon Skeletons
Hyungkoo Lee’s art shows what cartoons look like underneath their skin.
1-Bugs Bunny
2-Donald Duck
3-Tweety
4-Tom and Jerry
5-Felix the Cat and Goofy
This is his Animatus series! (Some located at this site.) Here’s their actual titles:
1. Lepus Animatus, Korea (2005–2006)
2. Anas Animatus, Korea (2006)
3. Leiothrix Lutea Animatus, Korea (2009)
4. Felis Catus Animatus & Mus Animatus, Korea (2006-2007)
5. Felis Catus Animatus, Korea (2006) and Ridicularis (2008)
Teen Dialogue and The Use of Slang
I’ve seen here and there that writer’s shouldn’t use slang in their dialogue, which is an opinion I disagree with. I’m just putting this out there because I like to reinforce the idea that in writing as well as in all art, there are thousands of opinions and many of them differ, so in the end you have to do what feels best for your story if you’re feeling conflicted about advice you’ve been given.
Do use slang, in my very humble, non-authority-on-writing opinion. There’s a few reasons why I think for teenage characters, and all characters, slang can be an essential part of communication.
1) The first job of dialogue is to represent the character in the realest way possible. If the character is stuttering, show us how.
Ex: “I- I don’t know about all that, John. I really don’t, I-… I’m just the post man for Christ’s sake!”.
If representing your character in a real way demands the use of slang, almost always, use it— unless you think it’s going to greatly confuse the reader.
2) It’s true that slang changes all the time. Basic slang though, such as ‘yeah’ and ‘okay’? Those are hardly even slang anymore, people know what they mean, adults, kids, teens, and they’re not going away. Here’s the truth of the matter. There are going to be things in your novel that people in 50 years will not understand. And because you’re not a time traveler, you’ll have no way of knowing what that is. Could be an outdated electronic devise, could be a obsolete daily routine, could be literally anything. So trying to edit out all of these things is nonsense. Your story takes place in a time period, write about that time period and don’t worry about the future.
3) It’s possible that you don’t know anything about the slang your character would use. If you don’t know how your character would realistically talk, you’re not equipped to write that character, especially if they’re going to be a central character in your story. You need to do some anthropological research. Go into a teen hang out spot in your town, do some eves dropping. Go online. Go literally anywhere young people open there mouths, which is pretty much everywhere. Also this is important; Slang is locational as well as generational. This means that right now, teenagers from one town could be saying things that teenagers in another town have never heard of. This happens all the time, and has even happened to me when I was in high school within my own friend group. This pretty much gives you the license to make crap up. A teen will read it and just think it’s slang they’ve never heard of. This is even more realistic if it’s between close friends, because friends make up words all the time that no one else gets. Again, with this, the only restriction is that your readers need to understand what they’re saying. But give the readers credit, they’ll be able to fill in the blanks most of the time.
Ex: “That’s so fetch.” “Grechen, stop trying to make fetch happen, it’s not going to happen.”
Fetch is not a word (in the way it was used), nor is it slang that existed before hand, but we get it! We know what fetch means, and we understand whats happening in this scene.
Take home message: The most important thing about dialogue is that it makes sense, it conveys what you want to convey, and it sounds real. If you can do all these things without slang, than by all means you should. But some characters just don’t make sense to speak in perfect, formal English, and you shouldn’t force them to talk in a way that is unnatural. It will damage your characterization and skew how your reader views them.
