Friday 28 August 2015

"Word Hoard" - the struggle for dialogue authenticity

Today my piece on dialogue authenticity, where I talk about words derived from Old English (with the help of Jim Sinclair, an OE expert) is on the EHFA blog and can be found here: English Historical Fiction Authors
Please pop over and have a read!

4 comments:

  1. Readers please do! It's a fantastic piece, both informative and amusing. Thanks for sharing it, Annie.

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    1. Thanks very much Linda! - so glad you enjoyed it

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  2. I strive for a slighty archaic tone in my Saxon novels as well. I have the advantage that English is not my native language, and some of the first books I read were old-fashioned ones like Sir Walter Scott, so that tone comes easily to me. Sometimes I read a bit Tolkien to get back into the Saxon mood (then I use 'ere' a lot for which I got scolded in the crit circle that I left for there's no arguing with people who haven't read anything older than Hemmingway).

    I use a more modern language for my Roman novels, since those would be translations from Latin anyway. Though I make sure to avoid modern concepts like 'adrenaline'. Some of the Roman stuff out there is a bit too modern when it comes to word choices.

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    1. Wonderful, as always, Gabriele, to have your thoughts. It is difficult to achieve the correct balance, but as you say, modern concepts must always be avoided!

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