January 22nd, 2012 § 0
I’ve not done one of these in a while and it looks like Postalicious hasn’t picked up all of the links I’ve saved since the last one. Sorry about that. The curious can always just go look at the saved links directly on delicious.com. :)
Del.icio.us links for January 20th through January 22nd:
September 11th, 2011 § 0
Del.icio.us links for September 4th through September 11th:
February 27th, 2011 § 0
Del.icio.us links for February 20th through February 27th:
December 4th, 2009 § 0
…please, please try and get their voice right.
There’s nothing that ruins a story faster than characters who talk (or subvocalise) in an entirely unconvincing way. Based on personal and anecdotal experience it seems sprogs, kids and teens are the demographic writers tend to struggle with the most. This is understandable, to an extent; youth culture has a pace of change more rapid than science fiction has been able to boast for years. But you don’t get to make excuses for stories.
I don’t have any answers for writers who want to try and write contemporary youth well, but I’d suggest that irreverent cartoons beloved of children and young teens, TV shows that actually feature young actors (The Imbetweeners and Skins spring to mind, though I’ve seen little of either), and paying attention to the way groups of young people talk and interact is a more likely route to success than some painfully forced artifice that doesn’t even closely resemble your own youth.
Overall, though, you have to remember that kids are just like any other people. They don’t habitually pepper their sentences with buzzwords and pop-culture references – though in certain contexts they might. Some kids might use embarrassing substitutions like “freaking” or archaisms like “naff”, whereas others will cuss with the best of them. Whatever. If you are writing a character you need to ground them in a context, and that context will inform how they think, act and talk.
October 18th, 2009 § 0
Del.icio.us links for October 5th through October 18th: