A new start!

[erastes]

And by that I mean that (as most of you will already know, so no need for further comment!) I've closed my underlucius fandom journal and will now be here on a permanent basis.

It's scary.

Am writing a short story and my first completely (or so I thought) unlikeable, unredeemable character. However, I'm not as clever as I thought I was as when I read it out to my mother she said "oh - poor man, I feel really sorry for him." *headdesk*

However: Have a quandry. It's a character study. He's thinking the entire story and he sounds more intelligent than you'd give him credit for. Hmm. need to try and address that, but what I was wondering... Do untutored people sound like that in their own heads? Do you think in dialect? *ponders*

Comments

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

The folks I have worke4d with who were minimally literate tended to give their spoken ideas in very direct terms, using simple words, but as with great kid's literature, they weren't necessarily simple ideas.
Sometimes they were quite subtle.
Often they'd mask it, too, so they didn't show up as too-clever compared to the people they worked with.
But it didn't happen often.
You'd get this effect from them maybe once or twice a month, not every other sentance.
That's tricky mix for somebody who's used to being able to stretch out for a lovely triple barrel latinate word that does the job right out of the box.
And yeah, they were really making cross-cultural allowances when they talked to me, because I couldn't hide the triple-barrel stuff even when I worked really hard at using simple language. My best efforts still showed that I had an "academic" background, just because of the way I contruct thought. The ability to tease something apart and run hypotheses in a very "if this, then this" manner was foreign to the way they would try something out.
"Hey, I thought if I cranked it over this way, it might catch better," is really abstract.
They can be really poetic, but it's not in a flowery way. It's more like a great stark photograph. Or a gut punch, maybe.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's interesting and just what I am aiming for. He's ignorant but he's not stupid, he's formed his own opinions on the world, even if they are completely wrong.

thank you!