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Topic : Re: How to balance an eloquent character/narrator with the need for readers to understand the story I'm writing a short story told in first person by a character who, an avid book lover, is much - selfpublishingguru.com

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The thing to remember with writing is that you're trying to produce an effect --to induce certain states of mind in the readers, to give them experiences through your words. Everything that helps that is a good thing, everything that doesn't, isn't.
A modern convention followed by many writers for any unusual speech pattern is to give enough of it for flavor, and to establish the idea of it, but to render the majority of it in a more neutral voice. This has the advantage of being more accessible --it demands less of the reader. Accordingly, you would sprinkle in a few more unfamiliar or ornate words to establish this character's voice, but you wouldn't render every sentence that way. Older books made much fewer concessions to the reader. Whole novels were sometimes written in obscure or difficult dialects. That demands a lot more of the reader, but can be a more immersive and transformative experience for those who win their way through it --it forces the reader to engage more deeply with the language.
Unless you're consciously choosing to position your book counter to modern trends --which can sometimes be a successful strategy for an author --I would recommend the modern convention. Readers of today have many options, and short attention spans. A book that challenges them too much, just to read it, may be a book that is put down quickly. With that said, it is important to be true to yourself. If you find it more natural to write in an elaborated fashion, better that than to awkwardly suppress your own writer's voice.


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