Tina Willis asked Ben Lyle Bedard:

What made you decide to write the whole Slinger Trilogy in the imaginary western dialect and what point of view is the book written in?

Ben Lyle Bedard Hi Tina, thanks for the question!

The Slinger Trilogy began as a vague desire to write about pioneers on another planet. However, I didn't want to write a book from the perspective of cold, white walls and expensive science fiction gadgets. I wanted to write about how I thought the pioneering experience would be for most people. I wanted it to be down in the mud and real and I wanted to talk less about the people who change the world and more about the people who are caught up in that change.

That was my desire. I didn't know the best way to do that. At the time I was interested in dialect writing of all kinds and just in dialects in general. It came to me that a good way to talk about ordinary people was to speak in dialect, and what better way to portray a frontier world than the use of the western dialect? Once I started writing it, I thought it worked very well, and it propelled the entire Trilogy.

As to point of view, the book is written in third person, limited omniscience. The point of view changes from time to time from one character to another to best tell the story. Sometimes the narration pulls back into full-blown omniscience.

I hope this answers your question!

flag