“‘You see the problem that we face, my friend. The French would sit there, twid their thumbs, and laugh. We must perforce attack, yet few we are; and twenty thousand Frenchmen sit astride the road toward home.’”

Wait a minute. Twid? Let’s come back to that.

A recent story in the New York Times explained the derivation of the “Alohamora,” the name of a spell invoked in one of the Harry Potter books. The schlub who was sued for daring to publish a Harry Potter lexicon wrote that it was related to the Hawaiian word “aloha.” J. K. Rowling, however, testified that his opinion was “errant nonsense,” and that the name of the spell had its origins in a West African dialogue. According to the Times, the poor guy was flabbergasted to learn that: “‘That’s exciting stuff for someone like me,’ Mr. Vander Ark said from the witness stand. ‘Did she happen to mention which dialect?’”

Are you people serious? What happened to “makin’ stuff up?” Sometimes the things I “make up” actually exist. For all I know, there may actually be a town of Hardwood, Pennsylvania, the setting of my eXcessica novel, “Living Dolls.” Whether by coincidence or because it’s a deep, buried memory of mine is irrelevant. In my mind, I still made the place up. (And even if there is one, I’ll bet my last nickel that their sports teams aren’t nicknamed the “Trojans.” Get it? Hardwood? Trojans? Oh, just forget I brought it up.)

The point in making stuff up is not to be real, or even to be realistic, but to make readers believe in the world that you’ve created. You can ask them to suspend some disbelief - like dolls that come to life, or the ability to travel through time, or a beautiful teacher who is willing to have sex with an underage boy in one of her classes (oh, yeah; never mind) - as long as the rest of your story presents a believable view of what would happen if the underlying premise is true.

The April 7 issue of The New Yorker contains a fascinating review of Richard Price’s new novel, Lush Life entitled “Say What?” The article’s author suggests that Price’s dialogue is not great because it imitates life: “Actual speech tends to be dribblingly repetitive, and relatively nonfigurative, nonpictorial. Price, by contrast, awards his characters great figurative powers, endows them with an ability to take everyone’s clichés and customize them into something gleaming and fresh.”

He cites as one example Price’s use of the term “coming-out party” for the act of giving birth. It’s far from a commonplace expression, but when the reader comes across it in context, her reaction isn’t one of disbelief. Instead it’s more along the lines of, “Yeah, that’s clever. My friend Joe would say something like that.”

We like to think that the things we read are worth the investment of our time. We like to think that the author has reasons for choosing the words that appear on the page, whether they come from West African dialogue (*rolls eyes*) or the author’s own peculiar imagination. And as long as there aren’t any (or at least too many) cues that suggest sloppiness on the part of the author, we’re happy to go along for the ride. Sometimes we’ll even stay on the bus despite the cues as long as we’re appropriately compensated. You tear out your hair reading Robert Heinlein’s dialogue, but you stay with him because of his wonderful imagination. For the rest of us, though, believability is the key. We need you to accept our world: the settings, the way the character’s speak, the acts that drive the story.

Oh, yeah; right. Twid. Look, I’ve already taken up too much of your time here. How about we come back to that next time?

Marshall Ian Key

The late Canadian novelist Robertson Davies urged readers, in his 1992 book Reading and Writing, to “read eloquently,” to read a book “at the pace at which you can pronounce and hear every word in your own head.” He argued that the novel, no less than a dramatic work, is a work of performance. And like poetry, its “sound” must allow the reader to stage that performance in her mind.

Creating that sound is something that I have worked diligently to develop in my own writing. Storytelling is not a problem for me. At least a dozen concepts for stories pop into my head each month and, as one wag said of the ten or so daily ideas that Winston Churchill is supposed to have urged on his staff during the Second World War, one or two of them are actually good. It is the work of getting those ideas on paper – of writing – that slows me down.

As a result, I am particularly appreciative of comments that relate to the technique of writing. One of my on-line readers once singled out a single line of dialogue in a historical romance on which I am still working. In it, my hero, a dashing captain in the post-Nelson Royal Navy, sends his faithful coxswain in search of the man responsible for assaulting a young woman, and later asks him what became of the fellow: “Matthew scratched his head. ‘You see, sir, he were accidentally scragged, like, after he were found.’” My correspondent told me that I had perfectly established Matthew’s character in that one line. I was delighted to hear that. To me, it meant that the line had rung true enough to allow her to perform that scene in her mind, and to create a Matthew that probably matched, to a very close extent, the Matthew that inhabits my mind while I’m writing.

I can recall a time when I thought that certain novels were called “plot-boilers.” And it made sense. All the meat had been boiled off, leaving only the bone of the plot. I learned later that the actual term is “pot-boiler.” But I like my term, too. I hope to produce something a little better. And so, like Davies, I would urge you, if you really like something that you’re reading, to give it the attention that it deserves. Read it at a simmer, not a boil, and savor the sound of the author’s words.

Marshall Ian Key