Authenticity: How Much Is Too Much? Part II

Yesterday I promised to give a real world example of what I meant from my own writing. The best example I have is from my current WIP: WARRIOR-MONKS. If you aren't already a little familiar with it you can read the query above.

I'm not going to go into a whole lot of setup, but it should hopefully suffice to say that I have a character who speaks a rough version of Jamaican Patois in my novel. Jamaican Patois, also known as Jamaican Creole is an English Dialect heavily influenced by French, Spanish and several West African languages. It is very similar to, but not to be confused with, Jamaican English and Rastafari use of English.

Actually the character's accent is also influenced by Rasta Vocabulary, but that's not the point.

I've known some people in my life whose accents were quite similar, and have also been a long time fan of music like Reggae, Dancehall, Ragga-Jungle, and Dub, so I would like to think that I can write the accent with authenticity. That is also not the point.

The point is finding a balance that works for the level of realism and accuracy you as the writer want to convey while also not tripping the reader up, or drawing them out of the story. This can be an extremely difficult balance to achieve because each reader is different. Someone who is familiar with Patois or is at least curious about Jamaican or Rasta culture might be more drawn into a story with extremely accurate representation of the accents and vocabulary associated with it, but most other readers would not.

I'm now going to share a very small excerpt from my novel, giving you a clear example of what I mean. Then I will try to explain. Here is a moment when the character introduces himself, as it was written in the first draft:

“I an I name issa Jammy. Jammish Kerins fee real ceptah all man calls me Jammy K or a Jammy just fee shot, seen?”

This is probably a bad example because  the accent is not that thick here and the vocabulary not that strange, but it will have to do. Here is what the same lines would look like translated into pure English:

"My name is Jammy. Jammy Kerins for real but everyone calls me Jammy K or Jammy just for short, got it?

This version is not only dry and boring, but also completely out of character for this guy. I've haven't decided exactly how stuff like this will end up in the final draft, and I'm hoping for some help from my CPs, but I will probably write this piece, which again, is a bad example because there isn't that much difference, like this:

"I and I name is Jammy. Jammish Kerins for real but all man calls me Jammy K or Jammy just fee shot, seen?"

I'm not going to go into all the details here, but I and I is a Rastafarian religious concept and often replaces me, I, we and sometimes even other pronouns in Patois. Seen is a statement or interrogatory which is often used at the end of explanations to confirm understanding.

So that's it. I'm sorry this was such a poor example but I'm hoping you see my point. I'm a huge proponent of authenticity, and I'm a total detail nerd who can really go off the deep end if I let myself, but you always have to remember your reader, and try your best to allow as many of them to connect to your story as possible.

For further reading about Patois and Jamaican culture:

There is an awesome blogger named Sebastian, who does not blog very often, but when he does he sometimes writes poetry in Patois. You can read an example, his poem Maga Dawg, at his blog.

Two other great resources where you can read about Patois can be found here and here.

You can listen to some audio samples of how it sounds when spoken, here.

Authenticity: How Much Is Too Much?

Have you ever gotten bogged down in research? Or gotten stuck while inventing an entire language for a fictional race in your novel? Yeah, me either, but I do still wonder sometimes how truly accurate you have to be to sell you ideas to your reader.

Today I'm going to write about authenticity in written fiction, and how important it is to be accurate, without bogging your novel down in any way. When I read, I love to see the details, and know that the author has done their due diligence to make sure that they are correct. Sometimes this is less important than others.

For example when I just read Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men, he went into occasional detail about the caliber and functioning of certain types of guns and their ammunitions. Because of the type of story he was telling it felt important that he get those details right. Now I'm no gun nut, so he certainly could have fooled me, but I get the feeling that a man like Cormac with the success of the novels he writes, probably got it right.

If he hadn't gotten those details right, or had he gone too deeply into their nuances McCarthy could have ruined his novel. The thing about authentic details is that there is a fine line between too little and too much. Too much detail can ruin pacing, or even bog the entire plot down by worrying about things that don't really matter. It's all about balance.

In a novel like Beth Revis' Across The Universe, or Alex J. Cavanaugh's CassaStar, things work a little differently. Being Science-Fiction novels these books don't necessarily have to have details which are authentic to the real world, but the rules and technology they set forth must be consistent within the narrative.

If a Cosbolt is capable of certain physics in the beginning, it must be capable of the same maneuvers at the end. If the Solar Lamp aboard the Godspeed is great for hydroponic tomatoes but not so much for corn grown in actual soil, that can't suddenly change without a plausible explanation that allows the reader's suspension of disbelief to remain intact.

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I'm still working through an unpredictable schedule here at work, but I hope to be able to put up some real world examples from my own writing tomorrow.

In the meantime how have you all been and where do you stand on authenticity?