What type of books are your most technically challenging to write?

[Steven Lake]

I'm wondering, what would you consider to be your most technically challenging books to write? IE, what are the ones you work the hardest on in order to create an interesting story and keep it that way throughout the book? IE, keep the reader hooked all the way through. I think mine would have to be the more methodical, slower paced books. I can do action, adventure, drama, space opera, and anything a mixture of strong action and mystery/intrigue. Going between the intrigue and the action for me is easy. It's also a good way to break up a book to keep the reader interested without subjecting them to action burnout.

But when you're dealing with mostly light drama and suspense with very little action, generally I struggle at that. My current novel seems to be that way. I ended up 2/3rds of the way through the story before I hit any action, and that was very brief. The rest of it is held together with drama and suspense. So far that's proving to be tough for me to do and still keep it together without the benefits of some action to keep things stirred up.

What about you guys? What's your most technically challenging thing to write?

[EileenG]

I found that my Peninsular War mystery/romance was really tough. It needed a bucketload of research, and I've still got a stack of about two dozen reference books sitting on my kitchen table. And that's not counting the ones that went back to the library or are in my Kindle.

Then there was the problem of language. I had to try to balance the way they spoke (or at least the way they wrote letters) with what a modern reader would tolerate. It was almost like writing on a foreign language.

And getting into the mindset was a challenge as well.

[Steven Lake]

HA! I love your comment about the problem with language. I had a British character I wrote into my latest novel that proved to be quite the literary workout for me. I pulled it off, but it wasn't easy by a long shot. In fact, it kinda killed my interest in using British characters in my books again unless absolutely needed. heh. ^_^;;

[EileenG]

I'm constantly getting hell from my editor about having American characters who speak Irish, or rather, use Irish phrases and wording. Even when the story is set in Ireland, I'm still supposed to make them speak American.

At least with a historical, I don't have to worry about that.

[DarkScribe]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

HA! I love your comment about the problem with language. I had a British character I wrote into my latest novel that proved to be quite the literary workout for me. I pulled it off, but it wasn't easy by a long shot. In fact, it kinda killed my interest in using British characters in my books again unless absolutely needed. heh. ^_^;;

In what way do you feel that British or American characters are different (with regard to speech) when used in a novel? If both are educated there is little to tell them apart. Even if working or Blue Collar class, unless the person is fairly old there is still little difference. The days when idiomatic differences were clearly noticed are well past - movies and television have melded speech patterns from both sides of the Atlantic. Some writers tend to make any Brit into a caricature of a 1930's Englishman - I hope that was not so in your case. Nowadays there really is little difference.

[mr ploppy]

I read a book a while ago where the English characters kept drinking tea every few minutes and said things like "Blimey" a lot.

[Steven Lake]

Mr. Ploppy has it right. Educated or not, there are language idioms, colloquialisms, verbal shorthand that define people from a particular region or nationality and are imperative for getting the character's voice right. People from other countries also quite often have different names for things. For example, to the British, a flashlight is a "torch", a truck is a "lorry", and a highway is a "carriage way". Or take cars for example. To them a hood is a "bonnet", and the truck is the "boot". Again, to use another example of localised word use, you can't expect a Canadian to say they're from "out yonder", but you can certainly expect someone from down south to say that. There's also the mannerisms, what they consider polite, rude, in some cases curse words, general expressions, etc. In short, to get a character of a defined nationality right, you have to ensure that all of the obvious expressions are visible to the reader. Ie, the things they expect. If you don't have it, you kill the story by shattering the ability to suspend belief.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

Mr. Ploppy has it right. Educated or not, there are language idioms, colloquialisms, verbal shorthand that define people from a particular region or nationality and are imperative for getting the character's voice right. People from other countries also quite often have different names for things. For example, to the British, a flashlight is a "torch", a truck is a "lorry", and a highway is a "carriage way". Or take cars for example. To them a hood is a "bonnet", and the truck is the "boot". Again, to use another example of localised word use, you can't expect a Canadian to say they're from "out yonder", but you can certainly expect someone from down south to say that. There's also the mannerisms, what they consider polite, rude, in some cases curse words, general expressions, etc. In short, to get a character of a defined nationality right, you have to ensure that all of the obvious expressions are visible to the reader. Ie, the things they expect. If you don't have it, you kill the story by shattering the ability to suspend belief.

Just to emphasise how difficult it can be, you wouldn't very often hear somebody British describe a "highway" as a "carriageway" actually. It would just be a "road". The only time you would invariably hear "carriageway" would be as part of the term "dual carriageway", used to describe a road with two lanes going in each direction.

[mr ploppy]

"Pants" is another word I found out about recently. Apparently it means "trousers" in American, rather than underwear. "Sainsburys carrier bag" also generates confusion.

[Rob Lister]

AN/ASM 608 Inertial Measurement Unit Test Set (IMUTS) Intermediate Maintenance and Illustrated Parts Breakdown.

It was a real bitch keeping the plot consistent.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I read a book a while ago where the English characters kept drinking tea every few minutes and said things like "Blimey" a lot.

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

Mr. Ploppy has it right. Educated or not, there are language idioms, colloquialisms, verbal shorthand that define people from a particular region or nationality and are imperative for getting the character's voice right. People from other countries also quite often have different names for things. For example, to the British, a flashlight is a "torch", a truck is a "lorry", and a highway is a "carriage way". Or take cars for example. To them a hood is a "bonnet", and the truck is the "boot". Again, to use another example of localised word use, you can't expect a Canadian to say they're from "out yonder", but you can certainly expect someone from down south to say that. There's also the mannerisms, what they consider polite, rude, in some cases curse words, general expressions, etc. In short, to get a character of a defined nationality right, you have to ensure that all of the obvious expressions are visible to the reader. Ie, the things they expect. If you don't have it, you kill the story by shattering the ability to suspend belief.

I thought Mr Ploppy's response was tongue-in-cheek, I was going to agree that it is often very painful to see Australians portrayed in television and movies because of this tendency to take a few widely recognised mannerisms and exaggerate them out of all credibility.

And while you are certainly correct about different word usage in different regions, an outsider is rarely likely to get it exactly right - especially if you insist on considering "British" or "American" each as a single collection of idioms. Such aspects can be important to a story, but the importance varies with the type of book and its presentation. Sometimes exaggerated idioms are exactly right, but sometimes you're better off skipping them rather than getting them wrong.

[Steven Lake]

GMW, I've done Australian characters before, and unless they're bush people, like Crocodile Dundee was portrayed to be, it's best to look at mainstream Australian television shows, news, and so on (widely available for free on the web) as one of the better ways to get the daily word usage and other idioms right. Surprisingly enough, which most people don't realise, is that the Australians (mainstream, not bush) sound surprisingly like an Americanised Brit. Well, to an American anyways. I was listening to a clip from a cop show from Australia, and aside from a few one in a billion "Australia only" words or phrases, and a slight, almost unnoticeable accent, they sounded just like I'd expect of someone from Washington DC or even Florida.

So it really depends on what you're shooting for as far as a cultural identification. For example, in the latest Madagascar movie, they take the European national identifications and lather them on thick, and I mean THICK. Okay, yes, it's a comedy, so going a little overboard isn't all that bad in a case like that. (heck, look at how weird they designed the characters in the movie. Freaky.) But the point is, what are you trying to portray from your character?

Another good example of choosing how far to stretch your character's culturally identifiable speech is to look at the Uncharted series. In the second instalment the two British characters were straight up, back alley, hard core London Brits all the way. If you've played the games, you'll notice that they fit perfectly with what the writer was after for them. Yes, they're a little cliche stereotyped that way, but it worked perfectly for the story.

[gmw]

I agree, a lot of Australian television shows very heavy American influence, more so than actually exists on the street, I think, although, like elsewhere, there are regional and generational variations. In a truly serious piece of literate or historical fiction, you would have a lot of work to do - well beyond watching a few television shows.

But you're right. In comedy, children's or YA works an exaggeration is often fitting, even ideal. But if exaggeration is not your intention, then I still think it is better to go light with such characterisation than to go heavy but wrong.

[tonymcfadden]

My most technically challanging "write" so far was writing the female Australian protagonist in first person. In two of my books I alternated chapters with her POV (odd chapters) and even chapters as 3rd person. Don't know that I'd do it again.

[Steven Lake]

Have any of you ever tried doing the "letter writing" approach? CS Lewis did it with the Screwtape Letters. I tried it once and gave up after the first chapter. It has to be the single most impossible form of literary writing out there, because you have to literally create a story through the one sided first person narrative format of a letter. You can create multiple sided stories using multiple letters, but Lewis did it with a single person, IE Screwtape, and thus upped the impossibility factor by miles.