{"id":28673,"date":"2024-04-30T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T09:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=28673"},"modified":"2024-04-29T20:42:07","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T00:42:07","slug":"talk-the-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/talk-the-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Talk the Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regular readers of this site know I tend to make fun of H P Lovecraft\u2019s prose style.\u00a0 In his better written stories, it has a quasi-nineteenth century sound to it.\u00a0 But in some of his less ably written material it instead just sounds kind of overblown.\u00a0 But recently I\u2019ve been listening to a YouTube channel called Horror Babble by some guy called Ian Gordon<\/a> who sounds a little like the actor who played Jay Peterman on Seinfeld.\u00a0 He provides an accent that, I guess, is supposed to sound like something between 1920\u2019s Oxbridge English and possibly early twentieth century Boston Brahmin.<\/p>\n

After listening to a few of these recordings I\u2019ve realized that this presentation makes these stories incalculably more entertaining.\u00a0 Let me qualify this statement.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make the stories better horror stories.\u00a0 But the presentation is just more fun.\u00a0 I think the accent makes the ridiculousness of the stories seem intentional.\u00a0 It\u2019s camp.<\/p>\n

And maybe it works because that\u2019s more or less the \u201cvoice\u201d that Lovecraft was hearing in his own head.\u00a0 It\u2019s always seemed to me that Lovecraft\u2019s work was sort of an homage to Edgar Allan Poe.\u00a0 And because Lovecraft lived far removed from the era when Poe\u2019s prose was contemporary and because Poe was a consummately better writer Lovecraft\u2019s language always seems stilted.\u00a0\u00a0 But with a spoken word interpreter somewhat bridging the gap with his theatrical reading it somehow works pretty well.<\/p>\n

Now most of you probably already listen to audio-books.\u00a0 The only ones I\u2019ve ever listened to were Larry Correia\u2019s Adventures of Tom Stranger with Adam Baldwin providing the voice talent.\u00a0 And come to think of it the specific voice really does make a big difference in the enjoyment of that story too.<\/p>\n

Well, anyway, this little epiphany has got me thinking about the voice that you hear when you write something.\u00a0 I mean, unless you\u2019re writing a character that\u2019s more or less you, how do you hear that character or characters speaking.\u00a0 What do they sound like?\u00a0 Is it a regional accent?\u00a0 And that\u2019s kind of a big deal.\u00a0 If all my characters sound exactly like me that might make it hard for my readers to see these characters as real people.\u00a0 Going back and reading some of my dialog I would say that there are definitely differences in speech for the different characters.\u00a0 And this is most noticeable for characters that differ in sex, age and generation.\u00a0 So, I\u2019m not worried that I have to reinvent all of my dialog.<\/p>\n

But it does occur to me that maybe I\u2019d like to add some characters that have very flamboyant speech patterns just to give the story some extra zing.\u00a0 After all, even Shakespeare added dialect characters to make some of the scenes comical or memorable.\u00a0 His dialect characters were usually Irish or Welsh or Scottish.\u00a0 I guess I could throw in a Southie from Boston or a South Asian character for good measure.\u00a0 But if I really want to get exotic, I\u2019ll throw in a Millennial Social Justice Warrior.\u00a0 Now that\u2019s a foreign language that\u2019ll take some practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regular readers of this site know I tend to make fun of H P Lovecraft\u2019s prose style.\u00a0 In his better written stories, it has a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,2510,1289,818,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[76,255,354,4525],"class_list":["post-28673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-ocf","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-fiction-writing","tag-h-p-lovecraft","tag-horror","tag-horror-babble"],"yoast_head":"\nTalk the Talk - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/talk-the-talk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Talk the Talk - Orion's Cold Fire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Regular readers of this site know I tend to make fun of H P Lovecraft\u2019s prose style.\u00a0 In his better written stories, it has a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/talk-the-talk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Orion's Cold Fire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-04-30T09:00:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-04-30T00:42:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"photog\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@orionscoldfire\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@orionscoldfire\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"photog\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/talk-the-talk\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/talk-the-talk\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"photog\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/#\/schema\/person\/d11e80f83f3825ce9fe38a5303eb64d3\"},\"headline\":\"Talk the Talk\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-04-30T09:00:36+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-04-30T00:42:07+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/30\/talk-the-talk\/\"},\"wordCount\":537,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"fiction writing\",\"H. 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