ROBUST discussion

Here's the link:

http://bookbrouhaha.blogspot.com/2011...

She didn't pull her punches, which I like in a reviewer. I feel I got more good comments than not, but the one thing that got me biting my bottom lip was the mention of Susan's dialog.

You see, I was told that her words were 'stiff' sounding and out of phase to a degree before hand. I rationalized it to my degree of realism that I intended and very few saw or 'got it' after the story was done.

As a previous professional in the Mental Health field, a career now long over, I was trained at one point to analyze what is known as 'panic talk' versus a coherant sentence that leads from one subject to the next.

When you're in a panic, shot through with fear, your words won't sound as articulate as you might expect.

But alas, this was a little too much forensic detail related to the state of mind, and it came back to haunt me. Next time, I'll know better.

As for the review itself, I loved it. Honesty goes a long ways in my book, and I'm a very happy camper she gave me a 3/5 rating. ^_^

I know what you mean about "panic talk". In my supposedly finished version of Zaharoff Commission I had a line of dialogue that read, while hussars were crashing through the stained windows into the hall, swinging sabres, "Do have a firearm, Nadel?" Shirley Jones, who was editing the MS suggested that "A gun, do you have a gun?" would be more fitting.

Right on, Andre. "Do have a firearm, Nadel?" is classic panic talk. Shirely Jones suggested something with more flow and a more reasonable line... but I personally hate insulting the intelligence of my readers.

The human mind has a tendency to connect a goal with seamingly babble talk when soaked in fear sometimes. I actually witnessed a guy in the middle of a panic attack scream for his "Holy book of church comfort!" All he wanted to say was that he needed his Bible.

Then again, I also walked into a home with a guy stroking a shoe box saying, "Nice kitty...nice kitty..." and I had to put it together. His cat was upstairs in his shoe closet, hogtied with shoe string. Poor thing was unharmed, but that's how they associate when the thinking machinery isn't working as intended.

^_^

Nah, I think Shirley was right. The drawingroom sound of "Do have a firearm, Nadel?" would stop readers without the special knowledge of psychologists. Even the label, "panic talk" merely sounds self-explanatory because we already know what it means. I've always found reason-in-madness (as in your kitten/shoebox example) a very difficult concept to put on the page in a thriller. You never know which of your readers are literal-minded.

There's a British farceur, Tom Sharpe, who does brilliantly with reason-in-madness. I recommend The Throwback as an introduction to him.

Coolio Andre, I'll check it out.

I'm curious, if you're seeking to represent the speech of a teenage girl and you've never been a teenage girl did you run it by any teenage girls or women for their reaction? I suspect that you're missing the point - it's not a matter of panic talk and realism - you just don't sound like a teenage girl (obviously I can't judge because I haven't read the book, but that seems to be the feedback that you're getting).

Now I'm confused. Where's this teenage girl, Alina?

If you're referring to my remarks re "Do you have a firearm" etc, that was spoken by Basil Zaharoff, a 70 year old arms dealer of (probably) Armenian origin, speaking not in his mother tongue but in French. No teenage girls in that entire book. Zaharoff really lived, and the events I describe happened. Zaharoff, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, was by this stage enamoured of a Spanish Duchess and Clemenceau among others observed that Zaharoff
was pulling his speech up in to the ducal class.

In any event, Shirley wasn't talking about how I sound in general, but about whether the wording suited the tempo of action on the page at that stage, as I hadn't told the reader Zaharoff was mooning himself poncier by the month, and didn't intend to.

Donald McCormick, Zaharoff's biographer, said my novel brought him closer to Zaharoff than years of research.

Point taken Alina, if the woman in the story was actually a teenager.

Susan is 20. She was eighteen when she left home, this is two years later.

It's at the end of the first chapter when the story starts. ^_^ That's one of the reasons why it's helpful to read the story first.

On a positive note, I did know a 17 year old girl who once screamed "Daddy it got me oh god no help me daddy!" or something very close to it. I should know. I was the teenage guy who hid in the closet and grabbed her ankle in the dark hallway as she walked by. That was about... around 29 years ago.

Andre, I was replying to the first post in the thread after I'd read the review of the author's work.

Daniel, I was mislead into thinking that the protagonist was a teenage girl by the reviewers frequent use of "young girl" to describe the female character. Still, it sounds like her main objection was the believability of the female voice and I think it would always be good policy for an author seeking to represent a character not of their age, gender, ethnicity, etc. to run it by someone who can comment on believability. That might have stopped The Help from being the diabolical work that it is - even though the author ended up rolling in money.

Oh yeah, and your story of scaring a teenage girl is really creepy, not a positive note.

Sorry about that. Conjunction of posts, yours following immediately on mine, misled me to believe you were addressing me.