The right words…
After all the stories I’ve written—shorts, novellas, and novels—I’ve arrived at the point where I know I’m missing the “mot juste.” I even edit things I hear on TV now, automatically, looking for editing mistakes in word usage and better ways of saying things. Here’s a silly example: A TV reporter said, “Police investigations into what happened continue and are needed to determine what happened.” I thought when I heard that, “That first ‘happened’ is okay. It might be referring to an extended action. But the second ‘happened’ should have been changed to ‘occurred’ for two reasons: It’s over and done with, i.e. not extended action; and using ‘happened’ twice is repetitive, after all.”
Of course, I’m a forgiving fellow! You have to figure an excited reporter on the scene and orally describing an emotionally charged event (even though such events aren’t unusual in urban areas, especially those in ‘red states’). You might say, “Big deal!” Or, “So what?”
You’d be right to say that. Call it a personality aberration, failure, or quirk, but I’ve always been a perfectionist about language usage. I’m hardest on myself. (That reporter isn’t likely to learn to do better from me either, hence no names given here. Now, in fact, I spend more time tracking Trump’s blathering and outright lies because Bezos’s Washington Post no longer does it!) Call it a bad habit: If I’m chatting with you, I’m likely to be multitasking, listening to what you say but also analyzing how you say it. Same for what people write.
I think this is compatible with my belief that being a good observer of what human beings do is a necessary condition for every author who wants to be successful. (My usual measure, the number of successful stories, could be questioned: I like my own; other readers evidently not so much.) Understanding human nature, especially their idiomatic use of language, isn’t a sufficient condition, though. Psychiatrists supposedly are excellent observers of human nature, but most mental health professionals couldn’t write a novel even if they wanted to take that obvious pay cut!
Language is an important part of what we authors can observe to get background for our stories. In a complex DEI environment like the one here in the US that we live in (sorry, Donald, you can’t kill DEI by fascist fiat, so you should stop trying!), varied idiomatic use of language is as important as regional settings, plots and themes, and interesting characters (who might be all the more interesting because of the idioms they use—remember Eliza Doolittle?). An important part of my motivation for writing so many British-style mysteries was and is a fascination with the multiple language variations even in English usage present on that island found across the pond. Variations in English around the world might not be as extensive as those found in Spanish (I’m familiar with those too, having lived among Latinos all my life), but they are all fascinating…even if you aren’t a storyteller!
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Mind Games. This third book in A. B. Carolan’s “Sci-Fi Mysteries for Young Adults” covers DEI in near-Earth space’s far future. You can actually get into the mind of the main character, just like she gets into the minds of others with her ESP skills, during her quest to find who’s murdered her adoptive father. It’s a heady mystery and thriller story about an insidious plot to take over ITUIP (the “Interplanetary Trade Union of Independent Planets”), something like the Earth’s EU but on a galactic scale. It will entertain young adults and many adults who are young-at-heart.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
