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Language of story and language of anecdote

Back on GEnie, we defined a novel as an attack novel if it had an incredible amount of momentum that made it impossible to not write. As you can imagine, this was -- and is -- an incredibly satisfying state to be in when breaking draft.

Cast in Courtlight (and yes, I know the latter isn't a real word, but it's a fantasy), is like that at the moment. Which is good, as it stops me from hovering on the phone and complaining at all hours to my ISP. Which is, once again, down. And has been for several hours. I'm logging in via someone else's connection, and I hate doing that. I'd rather have the television or the telephone die completely than lose my internet connection. Go geeks.

I've been thinking a bit about why this book is different from, say, HOUSE WAR, which is (was; I'm writing to Luna deadline at the moment) progressing at a much slower rate, and wanted to talk about it a bit here -- which means I'm putting off the round-up for another post.

A friend of mine has infrequently used the phrase the language of story. Cutting it down to my interpretation (and he may feel free to expound on his, since there's no guarantee they're the same thing <wry g>), the language of story is a force of Story, like the motion and form and shape -- but it's about the words used, the rhythms, the way the sentences are built; they run in a current that in some way captures a specific and individual tone. There are certain stories, certain books, that I could not tell in any other way -- but I think they're less accessible than, say, my LJ posts because they're written in the language of story.

His language is in every possible way more emeshed in epics and things that are not modern in sensibility. We've talked about ways to change this to make his writing more accessible -- but at base, I'm fairly sure it's not possible; for him, the language of story and the story itself are not separable.

I would say that my West novels are written in what is for me the language of story. I don't labour intellectually to evoke tone; the tone is present and it permeates the whole.

But recently, this friend dropped by the store, having started something entirely different. His intent, he said, was to use the language of anecdote to tell this particular story. This struck me as sensible.

And then it stayed with me, as these things often do, growing roots in odd places. Writing Cast in Courtlight, I realized that what I've done with the Luna books is almost exactly that, but much less consciously: I'm using the language of anecdote in which to convey the story. Letting the language of story take over would alter everything I'm writing about; it would give it a different scope, a totally different tone, and an entirely different texture. The story itself would be the same -- but were I to write in the language of story, and hand some poor alpha-reader both versions, I'm not sure they'd recognize it.

There are some books that are written in what is, to me, the language of anecdote. Some of them, I love, and some I don't. This is also true of the language of story. Let me give a couple of examples, and then someone can tromp on my feet.

Tanya Huff writes in the language of anecdote. Her style is modern, and it almost never invokes the mythic; it's fast-paced and breezy and so utterly witty, often in a black way, it's almost like she's standing right there. Brust is another writer I would classify this way for the Vlad books.

Patricia McKillip writes in the language of story. She evokes the mythic, echoes of old magic, things that were almost lost and are remembered in glimpses of her words.

In both cases, the use of words, the choice of words, the way those words are handled, are above reproach; the stories they tell are different, and the tone is different as well.

I don't think I could write something with a huge scope in the language of anecdote. But I also think that the language of anecdote carries with it more accessibility; the language is closer to spoken asides and verbal cuts, rather than to something that has to be read on the page; you can't speak a single sentence paragraph as if it were, well, spoken.

I'm still mulling over this as I write.


Oct. 13th, 2004 10:24 pm (UTC)
What you're talking about sounds a little bit like what I think of as the voice of a story (though I may in fact be thinking of something completely different--always hard to tell. :->) I know that some of my stories have what I think of as a transparent voice, while others have a more lyrical or mythic voice--I wonder if these don't align to the language of anecdote and of story, at least in part.
Oct. 14th, 2004 01:14 pm (UTC)
Let me try this again -- and let me once again be grateful that no one is paying me to write this, because clearly a refund would be in order.

For me the language of story is, in fact, a type of language I use only when telling stories. It's the subconscious voice of story, for me. It's its own narrative force.

The language of anecdote is what I would use to tell my friends something that happened. Well, okay, I tend to use more colourful langauge in real life than on-line, but the basic idea is still sound.

Television writing is always anecdotal, to me. It's the dialogue.

The Luna book is consciously written in a very present & modern/contemporary tone -- and I really do have to stop myself and rewrite passages when I lose that sense of tone, in a way that I don't have to when I'm working on a story that's rooted in a different reality. I've actually had three people now tell me there's something anime-like about it. I'm not quite sure how to take that.

Oct. 14th, 2004 01:54 pm (UTC)
Ah! Much like, say, 150 years ago, there was a poetic diction that would never be used in daily conversation but was considered the appropriate language for verse. And today there's a rhetorical language used in political speeches (and sometimes sermons) but rarely elsewhere. (Not that all political speeches use this — Bush's "folksy" manner is when he consciously doesn't.)