Evolution of writing and other random thoughts

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

A bit of backstory:

I reread lots of my favorite books from childhood. Unlike people who need adult covers for Harry Potter, I unabashedly read Alcott and Five Little Peppers and Laura Ingalls Wilder religiously--each series once a year every year at this time.

So--I was reading "Betsy and The Great World" today by Maud Hart Lovelace(Betsy-Tacy books--I read the novels written by Lovelace about Betsy from high school on) when I ran across this paragraph:

He went with her while she said good-by to Venice. Venezia! She would always remember the carying colors of the sky and water; the time-worn marble palaces with their barred windows and their wave=washed steps and the colored hitching posts in front for gondolas; the little courts and alleys with the swarms of gesticulating people; sunsets in the Giudecca; the Lido with its golden beach and turquoise sea. But, above all, the Square: St. mark's and the Doge's Palace, the bric-a-brac shops under the counades, the streams of people, the little outdoor tables, and the fat glossy pigeons circling down.

My first thought was, "Oh thank God she wrote this before she met my editor."

My second thought was: "Now wait a second."

This book was published in 1952, and was based on the author's experiences as a 22-year-old traveling in Europe in 1914. I believe (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) that all of the Betsy-Tacy books are a ficitonalized memoir. Generations of young girls have grown up with Lovelace's books and MY first thought was that this paragraph, as written, was unpublishable fifty five years later. So then I took a look as if I were an editor at the rest of the book. Oh, the commas! The dialogue tags--ick. Oh--the ADVERBS. Every time I ran into something that I would edit out and rewrite in my own work I winced.

Just think about that. Isn't that a shame? A book that can quite correctly be termed an American YA classic does not meet my semi-pro standards. Wow. The times sure have changed. This is further evidenced by an exchange in a later part of the chapter:

"We won't be walking," Mrs. Main-Whittaker chuckled. "But...pardon me for saying so...and believe me I do only say so because I've just had a check for royalties big enough to float a bond issue...This is all going to be my treat."

Miss Wilson, with a common sense and dignity that made Betsy want to hug her, gave a chuckle not unlike Mrs. Main-Whittaker's. "A teacher's salary," she said, "is definitely no royalty check. But, at least I'll pay for the cab."

Now then, after all of that--here is my question: How is it that a classic of literature then would suddenly become unpublishable now? All of those parts of speech--are they just passe' or are they submission killers or are they just not used correctly any more? Is it possible that the guidelines we all subscribe to in order to GET published is more in the nature of a fad?

JoNightshade · Oct 21, 2007

The beauty of language is that it changes over time. It's not static, it's living. Conventions change and preferences change. The "rules" that we adhere to are just a set of guidelines that we agree on for the time being. Then someone breaks one rule, and someone else does it, and soon enough it's a convention in its own right.

I'm sure that Ms. Lovelace, if she were to read a comparable selection of modern YA lit, would have a lot of shocking things to say about all of our mistakes!

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

That's a very valid point and one that I hoped someone would bring up!

*rings the bell in glee*

I just thought that the evolution of the language in a historically tiny portion of time was interesting. Lovelace isn't as well-read as some of the other greats in YA but her books are still in circulation. Some of her contemporaries who don't write in YA are sort of the same way. *JUST MY OPINION ALERT* Would Faulkner, sending his partial into a busy agent's office, be immediately recognized as a writing genius? Or, would he be chucked into the bin?

From The Sound and the Fury

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went through the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.

.

CheshireCat · Oct 21, 2007

Is it possible that the guidelines we all subscribe to in order to GET published is more in the nature of a fad?

Yes.

Going into my third decade, I can confidently promise you that should this board or something like it still be in existence a decade from now, aspiring writers will be given a whole different set of nits those offering are absolutely certain editors will be picking at.

Have fun with that sentence.

lkp · Oct 21, 2007

Those passages break the rules. But they work. That's the only rule that counts.

I love Maud Hart Lovelace, especially when Betsy got older. I bought a copy of Betsy and the Great World used a few years ago. I think it is my favourite.

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

CheshireCat said:
Yes.

Going into my third decade, I can confidently promise you that should this board or something like it still be in existence a decade from now, aspiring writers will be given a whole different set of nits those offering are absolutely certain editors will be picking at.

Have fun with that sentence.

Very true.

And no I ain't gonna parse, no way no how.

*shrug* I just thought it was an interesting thought. Usually my thoughts don't interest me all that much so I felt I had to post it while I could still remember it. Even the grammatical rules I was taught in high school *mumblemumble* years ago are vastly different now. i'm reasonably certain that I would have failed a test if I used a question with THAT many semicolons.

Just makes you wonder. The first time I wrote a short story using the punctuation techniques I'd been taught, some infant came along and shredded it at my crit group.

Then I had to explain that back 'in the good old days' we used commas to indicate a pause.

LisaHy · Oct 21, 2007

This article (sorry, can't do a fancy link thing) http://www.leftwrites.net/?p=125 kind of sums up the situation.

In the Australian incident of this nature, the lit agents and publishers received a lot of unwarrented slack, IMO. But it was fun watching them all do the justification dance afterwards...

Cheers, Lisa.

CheshireCat · Oct 21, 2007

Then I had to explain that back 'in the good old days' we used commas to indicate a pause.

Some of us still do. *sighs*

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

some of us pause a LOT. *sighs*

clockwatcher · Oct 21, 2007

LisaHy said:
This article (sorry, can't do a fancy link thing) http://www.leftwrites.net/?p=125 kind of sums up the situation.

In the Australian incident of this nature, the lit agents and publishers received a lot of unwarrented slack, IMO. But it was fun watching them all do the justification dance afterwards...

Cheers, Lisa.

Thanks for the link. It's quite interesting. I really enjoyed the Times article, especially this part:

Doris Lessing, the author who was once rejected by her own publishers when she submitted a novel under a pseudonym

lol

blacbird · Oct 21, 2007

I can see absolutely nothing wrong about adults reading children's and YA literature purely for enjoyment. The best of it is wonderful, just as the best of adult-level fiction is wonderful. I read aloud, religiously, to both my children, every night until they were eleven or twelve years old. The reading included Mark Twain, H. G. Wells and Charles Dickens (Great Expectations was a considerable hit), but also several books by Scott O'Dell, George Macdonald and L.M. Montgomery, and earlier, many Frank Baum classics. Plus many newer books. I loved reading all of them.

caw

lfraser · Oct 21, 2007

mscelina said:
My first thought was, "Oh thank God she wrote this before she met my editor."

If I wrote the paragraph you quoted I wouldn't change a word. Style is style, and that writer had it.

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

lfraser said:
If I wrote the paragraph you quoted I wouldn't change a word. Style is style, and that writer had it.

I agree. My editor, unfortunately, is an anti-semicolon crusader. That's why i found it so jarring--I'm so used to eliminating most of my semicolons (although there are some I fought to keep) in rewrites that this particular passage really made my fillings jump right out of their sockets.

And thanks, blacbird! I won't give up my childhood favorites. And I have to give you mad props--my kids would have pushed me out a window before they sat through Great Expectations and if I had had to read it I would have climbed up to the sill to make it easier.

veinglory · Oct 21, 2007

Some days the only thing I want to read is Tamora Pierce--but this is partly for the low reading age being easy on my neurons

girlyswot · Oct 21, 2007

I have to say, I was wondering what you thought was so wrong with that first paragraph. It seemed to me a perfectly correct use of the semicolon. And a beautiful description of Venice, to boot. The ellipses in the second quotation were annoying but still not wholly wrong.

wayndom · Oct 21, 2007

Things change over time, and things in a competitive marketplace improve. I recall reading that novel sales to the general public became significant only after WWII, thanks to the "paperback revolution" (and I suspect the GI bill, which made college available to anyone with the requisite brains -- previous to WWII, college was the domain of the well-to-do only).

Over the years, as the fiction market grew and became more competitive, standards for writing rose. Same thing happened with movies. In the B&W cowboy movies I watched as a child, every time a person was shot, he immediately fell to the ground and lay with arms and legs outstretched, as if about to make a snow angel. It worked in its time, because audiences had never seen a person shot. Newsreels took care of that.

As for books from the past, if you go back far enough, the readers were mostly the leisure class, who had too much time on their hands, and wanted fat books that would fill the empty hours. Ever looked at an unabridged edition of Moby Dick? Melville goes on for about four or more pages, describing (and discussing) a color in the sea. You wonder when the hell he's going to get around to the story, if there is one... Virtually unreadable by today's standards, and absolutely unpublishable, if it were submitted today as a new book.

I understand what you're saying. I love the Marx Brothers, but to watch them, you have to put your head in the 1930's, and accept the (much) lower level of sophistication in both artists and their audiences.

It is kind of annoying to think, though, that you or I would have had a much easier path to publication had we been writing forty or fifty years ago...

wayndom · Oct 21, 2007

Can't answer your question about Faulkner (haven't read him), but I know Jerzey Kozinski took The Painted Bird, which was an international bestseller and won many literary awards, changed the title and his name, and sent it to every major publisher in America, and every one turned it down flat.

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

Yep. Then I wouldn't have to fight for my semicolons...or commas...or adverbs...or dialogue tags...

dang. no wonder I'm depressed.

WittyandorIronic · Oct 21, 2007

Only because I always think of it, the one rule I know changed while I was in school was the double space after the period. I was never taught to add a double space. Why? Because I had computers in school, not typewriters. When I joined the military I learned a job that required technical report writing, and would get ripped to shreds because of my lack of spaces, and I had honestly never hear the rule, EVER. It took me years to even learn that the whole thing stemmed from stupid typewriter (I think, right?) to begin with.
Well, my whole point was that technology can impact grammar too. Kind of scary, when you think about it all. "IDK, MY BFF JILL?"

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

*shudders*

if I ever have to write a novel in cyber-speak I'm SOL.

WittyandorIronic · Oct 21, 2007

Ha. I think it would be a hoot to try, but it just isn't deep enough to convey the good stuff.

GONE W/ TEH W1ND

Just doesn't have the same ring. lol.
Can you imagine trying to write a steamy romance with geekspeak?

He double clicked on her floppy drive.

ha! I crack me up.

ETA: Spelling errors intentional.

mscelina · Oct 21, 2007

*snerk*

oh boy that could be a GREAT game. Think of it.

Iz or iznt? ?

lfraser · Oct 21, 2007

wayndom said:
wayndom said:

As for books from the past, if you go back far enough, the readers were mostly the leisure class, who had too much time on their hands, and wanted fat books that would fill the empty hours.

Click to expand...

Well then -- why do we read novels now, if not to fill hours with pleasure?

jpospich · Oct 21, 2007

Hey, don't forget that excerpt from The Sound and the Fury was intended to evince the thoughts of a (excuse the term) retard. That notwithstanding, the entire novel is genius. Undoubtedly though, if Faulkner was trying to pitch that novel in today's world, he would have a long list of rejections - and possibly nothing other than that.

David I · Oct 22, 2007

mscelina said:
...and MY first thought was that this paragraph, as written, was unpublishable fifty five years later. So then I took a look as if I were an editor at the rest of the book. Oh, the commas! The dialogue tags--ick. Oh--the ADVERBS. Every time I ran into something that I would edit out and rewrite in my own work I winced.

Well, first of all, I'm confused. I see nothing wrong with the first paragraph you quote, though it is the sort of thing you have to earn from context. The paragraph is actually rather clean, and I don't see an adverb of manner anywhere in there. Adjectives, yes, but "fat glossy pigeons" could be straight out of Hemingway. In fact, barring the punctuation, the first paragraph owes a good deal to Hemingway. ("...with their barred windows and their wave-washed steps and the colored hitching posts in front for gondolas..." is very close, though he would have fiddled with the word order.)

I use plenty of semicolons in my writing, and have never had an editor or copyeditor question a single one.

If there is an overuse of adverbs anywhere in these two passages I don't see it. In fact, after a close look I don't see a single adverb of manner or intensifier adverb.

I dislike having people "chuckle" their words, but this isn't some recent prejudice dreamed up by a conspiracy or some sudden fad. In fact, the upsurge in weird substitutes for "said" was largely a phenomenon of the pulp explosion of the 1930s and 1940s.

In the 1940s, Wolcott Gibbs at the New Yorker sent round a memo that read, “Word 'said’ is O.K. Efforts to avoid repetition by inserting ‘grunted,’ ‘snorted,’ etc., are waste motion and offend the pure in heart.” So dislike of odd dialogue tags predates the book you are quoting. This goes back to the 1930s, and has been an issue for at least 70 years.

I haven't read the book you are quoting, but I see nothing there in terms of style that would make it impossible to publish today.

Especially when JK Rowling's characters "hiss", "snarl", and even "ejaculate." "Chuckling" your words is a mild offense in comparison, and apparently no bar to publication.

Evolution of writing and other random thoughts

Teh doommobile, drivin' rite by you

has finally arrived

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It's probably a tumour

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Bored and Frantic

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volitare nequeo

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Bored and Frantic