Dialogue between characters in historical fiction

I'm new to LibraryThing, an author of historical mystery/suspense, and I'm curious what technique works the best for you folks when authors attempt to reconstruct the way people spoke with each other in historical times -- before we had recordings of their conversations.

Some authors try to make their fictional conversations sound the way people wrote their letters or journals. Others make conversations sound the way we talk now, in the 21st century, complete with modern slang. Others adopt a sort of middle ground, with their characters conversing mostly the way we do now, but minus the slang and anachronisms.

And please post your recommendations for authors who, in your opinion, do the dialogue part of historical fiction well.

Thanks for your input!

I'll need to think about the authors, but I do not like conversations using modern slang. Part of the reason I read historical is to immerse myself in a different time -- that's hard to do when the characters are using modern language.

Sometimes I don't understand the words but that's ok I can either look them up or guess based on the rest of the sentence. An author I have read, Edward Cline, used quite a bit old english in his Sarrowhawk series and I enjoyed it.

Tell me about your work.

I like for conversations to sound timeless. Too much reliance on antiquated ways of speaking makes it hard or annoying to read, but slang and words that are clearly modern take me out of the book.

The hands down winner for this contest is Patrick O'Brian in his Master and Commander series of the nautical adventures of Capt. Aubrey and Dr. Maturin. Not only does he successfully navigate early 19th century English for characters of diverse backgrounds he also masters the seafaring terminology.

chriskeil, I'm with you about not liking modern slang in a work of historical fiction. It yanks the reader out of the story.

IMHO the best way to use period terms is to make sure that readers understand what the terms mean from the context. Ed Cline does that well. And he and I see each other just about every 4 July and the first weekend of December when we sell our books at the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center bookstore. :-)

I write a mystery/suspense series set in the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War. The titles published thus far are Paper Woman, The Blacksmith's Daughter, and Camp Follower.

DevourerOfBooks, one of the trends I've seen in historical mysteries, specifically in the sub-genre of noir, is for the protagonist (usually the detective) to talk and engage in inner monologue the way the PIs of the 1930s and 1940s did. Many readers like this technique, but every historical mystery/noir I've read like this bothers me. Conversations sound so out of place, and *dated*, not at all timeless. If you've read any of these mysteries, let me know what you think of the characters' conversations.

varielle, O'Brian is the Sensai of Nautical Adventure. :-) That seafaring terminology doesn't come easy. I'd never been aboard a tall ship when I wrote the first draft of Paper Woman, so I had to get lots of help when I was editing the chapters involving the Portuguese brig Gloria Maria's journey from St. Augustine, Florida to Havana, Cuba.

Thanks, everyone who has responded so far. I'm writing a guest essay for a blog that will be published later this year. My topic is on the various angles from which authors approach dialogue in historical fiction. I'm curious to see who enjoys reading conversations in which characters sound antiquated or slang-modern. My guess is that most readers prefer something in the middle.

Remember, post any recommendations you have for authors who, in your opinion, do the dialogue well in historicals!

Recently, a well known author described the language of bygone-ese. It is not completely accurate but it gives the flavor of bygone times. In my research of 17th Century English,

I was somewhat surprised to find that 16th Century Shakespearean English had evolved into a language much like our own. The sentence structure is a bit more formal. The didn't have the advantage of Hemingway's simple declarative sentences in those days.

In The French Blue, www.thefrenchblue.com, I simply added negative modifiers like, "would he not." after a statement of a character's intention. I admit to having consulted O'Brien for some archaic turns of phrase as well as some nautical jargon. I am ex-Coast Guard (age 17-21) and you would be surprised how many archaic nautical terms have survived into the early 21st Century. You must constantly be on guard against modern expressions and at the same time not allow your wariness to reduce you to tongue-tied-ness. Some surprisingly modern phrases were Au courant. "You need to..." was not one of them.

RichardWise, thanks for your post. You've touched upon a couple of important points that, I believe, authors of historical fiction would do well to keep in mind when writing dialogue.

When you use the "would he not" construction, you've made a conscious effort to back off from modern expression in search of more historically palatable wording. And constantly being on guard against anachronisms is important, too. Both these practices come easier with time.

But you'll probably agree with me that author vigilance and experience don't substitute for having a) a good dictionary that shows when words entered the language, and b) a set of early readers who each have a great ear for what sounds too modern. :-)

Although I can't think of specific examples, I am one of those who would vote for the "middle ground", as you put it. If the author is trying too hard to sound period, it just sounds contrived to me (especially since we don't know what spoken English sounded like for most of history), but a modern style is very off-putting to me in a historical novel. I suppose achieving the middle ground is harder than it sounds, but that's my preference.

I also prefer the "middle ground". I really hate trying to read a thick dialect (or whatever dialect they may have spoken in the characters' time). Most of the characters I'm reading didn't even speak English so why bother. OTOH, I don't want medieval English characters saying things like "bitchin!" or "coolio" haha

The best at writing dialogue in my opinion? O'brian and Sharon Kay Penman. Of course O'Brian writes in nautical jargon quite a bit out of necessity.

As an example of dialect putting me off of a book...Cold Mountain. A wonderful book but it took me 3 tries to read the danged thing because I got so tired of sounding out their speech (and I'm from the South!) I had to read entire sections aloud to make any sense of it.

Having just completed my read of Colleen McCullough's The Touch, I must say that Nell Kinrosses dialog was blunt and in modern prose best portays to me her kurt nature, if somewhat earthy. Her speaking was timed circa 1890 but the modern directness conveyed her character directly as would be said in 2010. My congrats to the Australian author writing circa 2003.

I am a big fan of Jane Austen and when you go back and read some of the dialogue in her books it is surprising how 'colloquial' it sounds - and i think 'sounds' it accurate because if you read it out loud it sounds like natural conversation even today, even though some of the terms are different - always easy to put it in context. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, one character says - 'Women fancy admiration means more than it does' and the reply is 'And men take care that they should', it sounds like natural conversation even though we dont use the verb 'fancy' to mean 'imagine' a lot today.
I would say that Sharon Kay Penman does a good job in her books. I was also a fan of 'Lady Vernon and Her Daughter', a recent novel based on an early Jane Austen work and written in her style. I also think some of the dialogue between Jane Eyre and Rochester in 'Jane Eyre' sounds 'realistic' by our standards.

AlaMich, I agree. If an author goes back far enough in history and tries to sound period with the dialogue, it not only sounds contrived, but it may be incomprehensible to us.

And you've hit on a very important point: that we don't really know what spoken English (or any other language) sounded like before we were able to record people speaking. People certainly didn't speak the way they wrote. We don't do that now.

Speaking from personal experience, the middle ground (where I strive to write) *is* difficult to achieve. I attempt to weed out anachronisms while striving to balance the rhythms of dialogue in the present and past.

rebel1031, I've read some historicals that used so much dialect that I couldn't finish the book. And I've read others that used so much modern slang that it threw me out of the book.

MichaelHodges, thanks for the book recommendation.

LibrarianBarb, I don't know whether _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Jane Eyre_ qualify as "historical fiction" because they're written by authors in that historical period. :-) However, you touched on an interesting point: writing dialogue in a manner such that readers generations later won't struggle to understand what's being communicated. Both Austen and Bronte have done that. But I can see how certain slang terms embedded in a lot of contemporary fiction will present a barrier in another generation or two. That's why I'm careful how I use 18th-century slang in my fiction.

You folks are giving me some excellent issues to discuss in my essay.

Hi Suzanneadir et al, OK, there must be a "Wikipedia" definition of what constitutes "Historical Fiction". I delight in reading historical fiction, as I believe gaining knowledge, even be it history, is a worthwhile use of one's freetime. Co-joining Historical knowledge with a well crafted entertaining "Story" and one has the best of both worlds.

Writers that engage the services of good research staffs are admirable. Consequently I enjoy (Colleen McCollough , Ken Follett, Ian McEwan, James Michener and Michael Crichton ). Robert Harris'es Pompeii is also a rave. My next read after Stieg Larson's "The girl with the ......." series will be Colleen McCollough's, The Thornbirds, Tolstoys Anna Karenina is in the queue.
So I for one am willing to also classify- Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens as authors of historical fiction

I have published one historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, set in 1879 San Francisco, and I am working on a sequel, so I was really interested in this question and how everyone responded.

When I wrote my first draft (not that long after working on my dissertation on that period) I got a number of comments by readers about how "old-fashioned" my prose was (ie longer sentences, more formal, unusual words). I realized that I had just spent 4 years immersed in reading diaries, memoirs, newspapers, and fiction of the late 19th century and my prose reflected that. Since then, after numerous rewritings, I hope I reached that middle ground that so many of the commentators mentioned (in that I varied my sentence structure, tightened up the narrative, was careful to put any dated words in context, etc).

However, the most difficult task has been to convey different class and ethnic groups without either being offensive or confusing. As a reader of historical fiction I enjoy getting the flavor of the past-by use of archaic terms, slightly different grammar, etc-but I generally hate broad use of dialect. It slows down my reading, often is used for lower class individuals and it feels like they are being made fun of, and frankly anything that takes me out of the story (as I figure out precisely what the person was saying) is a problem.

I will continue to follow this thread, and look forward to reading Suzanne's blog post.

MichaelHodges, defining exactly what "historical fiction" is opens a whole can of worms. I've seen it happen on discussion lists, so watch me run from that topic. :-)

I dream of being rich and famous, able to pay a staff of researchers. Right now, I'm grateful to have the interest of several history profs and history buffs who volunteer to proof my new manuscripts for anachronisms and inaccuracies and don't mind the klutzy writing that hobbles my early drafts. Yes, these wonderful folks help with my dialogue, too.

You'll love The Thorn Birds. You can immerse yourself in it.

And I'm now number 611 in queue at my library to receive The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Not bad, considering that I started at number 954 a few weeks ago.

mlouisalocke, I agree with you on the broad use of dialect. Some authors employ page after page of it, and I cannot follow the conversation. I think it's best to avoid use of dialect, keep it confined to just a portion of a page, or intersperse the conversation with dialogue from someone who is more easily understood (to help the reader pick up clues from context).

I suppose I would vote for Middle Ground with a slight lean towards a historic patina. I find part of the fun of writing characters from two thousand years ago (whose language wasn't even English) is that I can come up with jokes, insults and analogies that seem right for the period. I hate pages of yokelised dialect where the writer seems to have fallen in love with the apostrophe, but you do need a bit of historic colour to fill in the gaps where we would use swear-words and cultural references, or our warrior ancestors end up sounding like middle-managers at a sales conference.

This is a delicate issue, and I won't pretend to be an expert. I *will* say, though, that it really irks me in historical fiction when characters address each other as "wife", "husband", "sister", "brother", etc. OTOH, I don't mind, i.e., Mrs. Bennet addressing her husband as "Mr. Bennet".

For me it makes a difference whether the novel I'm reading is "serious" historical fiction (i.e. Penman, Saylor and Sansom) or "fun" historical fiction (i.e. Lindsey Davis's Falco mysteries, David Wishart and Elizabeth Peters).

Obviously, one cannot know the way ancient Romans, for example, spoke to one another. I cannot believe it was in the same ponderous style of their formal writings. Plus, we have a lot of evidence from graffiti they left on their buildings to indicate they were highly creative in the insult and joke departments I'm willing, therefore, to give some leeway to slangish terms, so long as they aren't obviously anachronistic (i.e. "bitchin'" or "coolio"), especially for the "fun" variety of hf.

About the question of dialect, I completely agree with everyone that a little goes a long way. When I write historical fiction, I limit dialect to a few lines of dialogue, then slip in a word or two of dialect every so often after that to keep the idea fresh in the reader's mind without making it difficult to read. I like that technique when reading historical fiction too.

>23 webgeekstress: webgeekstress But didn't Mrs. Bennet call her siblings "Brother" and "Sister?" I distinctly recall her shrieking, "Oh, Brother!" when Lydia eloped and her brother came to see her.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread! I've enjoyed the discussion. I incorporated some of your ideas into a guest essay that will be posted on 15 October. I'll post the exact url here when the blog owner releases it to me.

I hope you'll stop in on 15 October and comment. I'll be giving away a copy of Camp Follower.

While I think Dan Simmons Drood had some imperfections, I reckon his dialogue between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins worked well. It did not jar with me, and did not appear anachronistic.

Today on her blog, Lois Winston hosts my guest essay: "They Said What? Crafting Dialogue in Historical Mystery and Suspense."

http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2010/10/book-club-friday-guest-author-suzan...

I thank all of you for your input on this article! Don't forget to stop by and comment. I'll be giving away a copy of Camp Follower to a blog visitor who posts a comment.

Nice essay! I think you make some good points.

The slang thing is a tricky one - as you say, we might find "bro" jarring in a historical novel with a Regency setting, but it's actually been around since at least the 17th century. The OED cites Evelyn using it in 1666, although I think it was always confined to a biological brother (cf. "sis") until recently. So that's a nice example of something where using "correct" dialogue could actually be counter-productive as far as the modern reader is concerned.

(edited for typo)

Thorold, thanks for bringing up this point. I've run into counterproductive use of correct terminology with modern readers and had to edit the "suspicious" word to something that sounded less modern.

Please post your comment on Lois's blog. It would bring another angle into the discussion -- plus give you a chance to win the drawing. :-)

This is an excellent topic. It is very challenging for an author to capture the tone and structure of, say, mid-19th-century speech without losing the 21st-century reader. Charles Frazier did a superb job with this in Cold Mountain. It is a matter of capturing the essence of the sound, tone, and lyricalism of the speech in a given time and place, but not subjecting the reader to a laboriously precise representation of it. I also like the approach Kurt Hanson used in The Imperialist: A Novel of the Hawaiian Revolution, which included the problem of 19th-century pidgin. Use just enough to remind the reader of where and when, but not to abuse him with it. We accept Mark Twain's extreme use of dialect, for instance, because he's Mark Twain. The rest of us should be more circumspect.

Guitarguy

This is an old topic but maybe I can revive it. . .
For me I prefer if the dialog sounds proper for the period, or at least don't use any modern terms or slang. But for me the thing is consistency. If you're going to write using period language keep using it the whole time, don't decide half way through your book (or worse sentence) that you want to use modern, and vise versa.

#1: I vastly prefer the middle ground. No matter how great our expertise, we cannot know for absolute sure how their speech sounded.

I really don't care for modern slang in historical fiction. There is a wealth of slang that was used in the book's respective time period, so even if the author isn't going into the 'thee's and 'thou's of the time, the slang will give it a greater authenticity. Using modern slang would detract from it, and misusing the 'thee's and 'thou's (or equivalent novel speech of the time) will make the book, even if it has a really good story, sound ridiculous.

I'll see if I can find a copy of your story.