The following is a snippet from my book, Pirate Tales. The bit is from the story “Bawdy, Bonny Sally.” The character speaking is named Riley, and he narrates the whole story:
All in all, it was quite pleasant sittin’ there with this natuv girl.
Well, it wasn’t too long afore ol’ Landers woke up and spied me. He saunters over an’ I ask ‘im right out. I says, “Hey, thought there was no natuvs on this here island.”
“There ain’t,” he pipes back, motionin’ for me to hand ‘im up the bottle. I did. I then jerked my thumb t’wrds the girl sittin’ right next to me. I know’d I wasn’t seein’ things, at least not yet. She sat there gigglin’ the whole time. “There ain’t,” he says. “She’s from the island a short-ways to the north and east. She an’ a few others come here periodic times to get hold of a species of bird they like to eat that ain’t as common on their own island.”
“Oh,” says I.
“She’s what they calls a ‘pollyneeson.’”
That’s what he said, ‘pollyneeson.’ Exactly like that. I never heard of it before. I got an ear for languages. I know fifteen diff’rent ones at least. I can count ‘em out on one hand if’n you need me to show ya. Ha. That’s me tuggin’ on your leg a little if’n you didn’t catch my blink eye on the port side there signalin’ it. I reached up for ol Landers to pass the bottle on back. He did. Landers wandered off again after we jawed a little and then I sat there with the girl some more. I started callin’ her ‘Polly,’ as short for pollyneeson as her name. She tried to tell me her name was Tink or Tok or some such that didn’t make no sense to me. “Polly, you is to me, young lady,” says I. She giggled some more at that and leaned in close.
Now, from this short passage, I imagine you were able to get a pretty good image in your mind of what type of person Riley is. And yet, I didn’t give you any description of clothing or hair or eye color, etc. I do give a description of the “natuv” girl at some point (through Riley’s eyes, of course).
This is pretty much how a character comes to life for me, through dialogue, expression, and movement. There are times when I give a more detailed description than normal, but not often. Usually I have to consciously think about it. I’ll think, oh yeah, I better give a little more descriptive detail. Most of the time it works out that two or more characters will start talking back and forth and I’m off and running. Most times it is as though I have no control at all. I’m just recording it all as it plays out. It’s a good thing.
Some people are better at describing what a character is wearing, or what that character physically looks like, etc. I’m not one of those people. Clothes, trees, plants–I don’t have a clue. I would like to be better at it, and eventually, maybe I’ll get there.
If you go to Amazon and do the “Look Inside” feature for my book Daguerreotype Dreams, and you read the first story, “The Trap,” you’ll see that I do give a fairly detailed description of Higby (the overseer), and a little bit of a physical description of Nell. Now, perhaps I took the time because these characters and this story (though in the first person) is from a novel that I was working on and I had more time to flesh things out. Of course, in the novel, all is in the third person and this story is stretched out, with other scenes happening in between the few scenes that make up this story. But anyway, my description of Jem (Jemilayah) is minimal. She, by the way, plays a significant role in the novel, but a very minor role in this story. All of the characters presented in this story are main characters in the novel. Anyway, in describing Jem, I have her wearing a muslin dress. Now, I have no more of an idea what muslin is than the man on the moon, I have to be honest. I had read it somewhere and it stuck. In my mind I’m thinking it is a cloth vaguely similar to burlap. That’s it. If I’m writing a story and the woman’s clothing is more modern, I would mention that she has a blouse and a skirt on, or that she is wearing a dress. I could provide a color, and I could say the blouse she was wearing was silk. I know what silk is. The basics I can do. If it’s a guy, I’m even less interested. He’s usually just got a shirt and pants, and maybe a jacket of some sort.
As a side note: My female characters are most often the stronger characters (though probably not in Pirate Tales, with the exception of “Bawdy Bonny Sally”).
Part of the reason I’m not that great at physical description regarding appearance might just be due to my bent in real life. In talking to someone, I tend to get a “feel” for the person, as in what type of a person they are, etc. Once this person walks away, if you asked me what they were wearing, or their eye color, etc. I would be hard-pressed to give you an answer.
I don’t know if you remember the T.V show “Lie to Me,” that was on a few years back. I loved that show. I would love to have the software they used to train to read facial expressions. I had read Paul Ekman’s book, Unmasking the Face. In other words, I’m that type of person.
This might explain why I lean toward character expressions and vocalization rather than clothing, etc. to establish characters.
And if you are talking about trees and plants, forget about it. I can tell a pine from an oak, but that’s about it.
So, this is all something I need to work on. And perhaps I can sometimes manage, at times, to convey a scene with more description. I can get by. But overall, that’s not my natural inclination.
These character-driven stories, that are more colloquial in nature, seem to be more fluid in movement, and usually make for a more entertaining story. To my mind, anyway. These are stories that I can handle easily, with the back and forth play of dialogue and action to move the story along, or forward. I can easily move in and out of the character’s thoughts to the dialogue, and then touch on some aspects of the environment, only to then shift back to the character’s thoughts again. This type of writing is totally natural to me. That’s just how I roll, as they say.
But here’s where I get into trouble. If I have to dispense with the correct spelling of a word in order to express the character more fully, I will. For example, I’m sure you noticed the spelling of natuv above, as opposed to the correct spelling of native. I couldn’t tell you what the correct way to handle things might be. Would it be correct to just spell it natuv within the quotation marks, but spell the word correctly as native when it isn’t in quotes? The way I see it, if I’m still in Riley’s head, I’m still going to use natuv. Even though he isn’t speaking to another character, he is still speaking to the reader. I’m guessing this is the correct way to handle it.
It’s funny. If you read Huck Finn, even just the opening lines, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The reason I say it is funny is because I stumbled on an article online recently which was about the top ten most banned books of all time. Huckleberry Finn was right up there. But it wasn’t on the list for the reasons you might think. Louisa May Alcott, it seems, was vehemently opposed to the book from the first; not, as one might imagine, due to the use of the N word. Nope. The book gave her fits because it was colloquial in nature, and didn’t adhere to the rules of correct English.
So, I’ve digressed for a second, as I tend to do. Anyway, following the story “Bawdy, Bonny Sally,” in the book, is a story called, “Awaiting Dickie Raggs.” And in this story, I’m the narrator. There isn’t a character narrating. And I still take liberties with language. I speak very colloquially, and I even step out of the story a time or two as narrator to address the reader about something in the story. Being that it is a book of Pirate Tales, I feel the need too speak less formally. I can’t help it. And though I don’t have any ready examples, there are cases where I use ‘a’ in place of ‘of’. Off the top of my head I’ll give the example of someone saying (whether it be me or a character), “We climbed to the top a the mountain.” Now, someone could read that line and think I made a mistake. They would think that I meant to type ‘of’ and mistakenly typed ‘a’. I had a lot of these types of things throughout the whole book. And this leads me to the question of errors!
Now, I make errors all the time. And these errors make it into publication. It doesn’t matter if I’ve paid a proofreader, or I’ve proofread it myself (which I do, of course), or I’ve simply had a friend read it–there will be mistakes. I could do all of the above, each one of us reading the book ten times over, and there would still be errors found on the next reading. I’ve come to accept this. It’s a catch as catch can, or whatever the saying is, as you go along. The thing is, the errors become fewer and fewer, until finally, hopefully, all of the errors get weeded out. Does this mean the manuscript is perfect? No. I mainly have a problem with reading it over and thinking well, I could word this a little better, or I should really have a semi-colon here instead of a comma, etc. So it never ends . . . It is a process. It all can be frustrating. I usually have been over the manuscript at least five times by the time I upload it for publication. Then, it never fails, I find more errors and have to correct and upload again. I will say, however, that I am pretty lucky in that my writing usually comes out fairly clean as it spills out of me. I’m not bragging here, I’m thankful. And yes, there are still errors. Always. I’m just saying it could be a lot worse from the get go. The following is what I have been sort of leading up to.
And so . . . here is the first review I’ve received for my book, Pirate Tales:
Top review from the United States
JPB 4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, Quick Read Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2020
I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review…
Pirate Tales is a collection of short stories mostly centering around, well, pirates. I have to admit that I did enjoy the read, as it brought into clarity how few pirate stories we get. I appreciated the strong theme and the natural fun that comes with the subject matter.
As with most short story collections, some stories are better than others. Also, it could use another pass of proofreading. In the first story alone, one of the character’s names changes from Jarvitz to Jarvis, an oft-repeated mistake in the book that should have been easy to catch.
That being said, the errors don’t get in the way of an enjoyable read. If you like pirates and want something you can speed through, I’d recommend it.
So, this was what I was getting to. I’m not, by any means, making excuses. The errors were there.
And I am thankful that the reviewer pointed out where at least one mistake was, so I could easily find and correct it. I had, in fact, switched from Jarvitz to Jarvis at least once (maybe I had it twice). This is something that I probably would have missed on another twenty rereads, unless I was specifically looking for it. The name would have looked close enough in the rereads for me to have skimmed right on by it.
I’m not finished proofing the book again, and have found a couple more errors. In one story I have a skeletal arm sticking up from the ocean floor and mention the word “ebony” in describing it when obviously I meant to say “ivory.”
There is another story where I spelled the word powder as pouder, for whatever reason. A definite mistake.
I’ve got about four stories left to read. And yes, I groan with each mistake I find. I’m like, dang, why didn’t I catch that?
Does it sting? A little. But hey, I made the mistakes. And a four star rating isn’t too bad. The ratings will probably get worse, though some will be better, as more and more people find and read my stuff. That is the only plus side of not being known yet–you (or I, rather) have time to still catch and correct errors before a lot of people see them.
It was just while I was reading through the stories yesterday that the thought hit me that the reviewer might be mistaking some of my narrative-voice-spelling for errors (which they technically are misspellings, so I can’t argue about that). It just got me wondering . . .
I have to say, I do envy the writers who have the fan base, or followers who will proofread the book in exchange for a free copy. Let me just say, I’m offering mine up if anyone is interested! LOL.
It would also be nice if the reviewer could email me and tell me where the mistakes are, so I don’t have to reread the entire book to find them. Not that I don’t enjoy the stories. They are solid stories, at least in my view, but then I am a little biased. It’s just that on the twentieth, or so read-through, your mind wanders since you already know what happens, which makes catching errors even more difficult.
And oh, by the way, if you want to read the last story in the Pirate Tales book, “Marooned,” it is here on the blog. It is spread over three posts. You are very welcome to read it and let me know what you think.
