(no subject)

[alanajoli]

On recommendation from jenlyn_b, I picked up I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You by Ally Carter. This is like the teen-spy-girl-school version of Harry Potter, if that makes any sense. At its core, it's a prep school book, which I figure is about as close as we can get in America to a British school book. It's also a teen love story, a story about relationships with parents and friends, and a book with so many gadgets it puts Batman to shame. (Who'd have thought that Nicotine Patches could inspire sticky tranquilizers called Napotine Patches? Brilliant!)

But here's the thing I noticed most in this book, and to some degree in jenlyn_b's work as well: many of us young writers in our twenties have had our language shaped by Joss Whedon and his writing staff. I knew jenlyn_b was a Buffy fan before I read her first novel, so the quirky whedonesque language use didn't surprise me. It was pretty clear early on that Carter was a fan, too, but I didn't actually stop in my tracks and notice the language until the narrator is agonizing over what candies/snacks are safe to eat at a movie on her first date.

"Junior Mints--of course! Minty chocolate fun with none of the dangerous side effects."

This makes me wonder if those of us who are devotees of Whedon's works purposefully emulate the writing style on his shows (I know I did in one of the manners of speaking I use in Into the Reach). Or has the quirky language has become so ingrained in our minds that we use it without even realizing it? We loved the way it sounded when it wasn't ours, and love it just as much when it is.

At any rate, kudos to Carter for a great, fun novel, and kudos to Whedon and his writers for shaping American dialogue. :)

Comments

[jenlyn-b.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed Ally's book!

As to your questions, I don't purposefully emulate Joss's writing style (though I do feel like I've learned a lot about HOW to tell a story from his shows). Buffy was just one of those shows that changed the way that people speak. To a certain extent, the movie CLUELESS was the same way. As you noted in an earlier post, Golden sounds an awful lot my blog, which- in turn- sounds a lot like my speaking voice. I write the way I speak, and Buffy (and a variety of other cultural influences) have affected both. I think that's pretty much the pinnacle of writing achievement right there!

[(Anonymous)]

And so the old English professor cringes at the talk of TV even possibly having a bigger impact on someone's writing than literature. ("I'm not old, I'm 37.")

OK, I will admit that the writing style of certain TV shows is appealing. It does draw attention to the language, which for people who work in words is never a bad thing. With poetry relegated to the fringes of society, maybe such works are the closest thing we have left, as a medium that states thoughts and feelings obliquely to get the reader/listener to see the world in a new way. Just put it in the mouths of pretty young people to take away the strangeness of it.

Of course, there is prose pre-dating Whedon that does this: Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O'Connor to name just a very few. If you ever have a free moment (HA!), grab any collection of short stories by a writer named Lee K. Abbott. He makes his hay disgourging some of the most uniquely worded prose you can imagine.

I find it amusing that in much literature the dialogue is pretty plain, while it is everything else that is "unique." This phenomenon, it seems to me, mirrors real life. Most mortals speak plainly but think and dream and observe in abstraction. TV, where narration is much harder to handle that literature, needs to bring the distinctiveness through dialogue.

Oi! I better stop now before I end up writing a thesis on this . . .

Shawm

[(Anonymous)]

And yes, I do know how to spell my own name.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

And here I thought you'd become a musical instrument without telling me... :)

[(Anonymous)]

It wouldn't be the most unflattering inanimate object I have been called.