October Review Challenge, #23 - Special talent as a writer

October Review Challenge, #23 - "What is your special talent as a writer?"

I think I may safely say, without fear of self-flattery, that I am at this point a pretty good writer. I'm lucky enough to have a little bit of talent, but over the last decade with study and practice I've developed that through work into some real ability. So at this point I'm pretty good at a number of things, among the building blocks of what tends to make a good writer.

But if I had to pick something special, that separates me from another good writer, I'd probably go with my ability to write convincing period dialogue. I mentioned in my Preferred Genre entry that I'm mostly into historical adventure these days, particularly with a setting of the long 19th Century. One of the tricks to telling effective stories in such a milieu is capturing a feel of the setting in how people talk and behave. And dialogue is the primary way characters in a drama inform the audience about themselves, so it's incredibly important to get right.


Photo by John Benfield

I have a knack for giving my 19th Century characters' verbiage the flavor of the time— but still keeping it accessible to the modern audience. This means I only use period slang very sparingly, as often it can get so weird as to be alienating. I find a combination of capturing a noticeably British idiom, while making the cadence a bit more pointed, does the trick for me. And you can't fall into the trap of "excessive formality" like many people do when writing "old timey"— that just makes it sound stiff and unnatural. It's a little hard to quantify, but I love British literature from this period, and it develops your ear over time. But it's one of the little things that makes me unique as a writer, that this is something you can count on from me.