(A writing tips post)
Gail Kittleson
Lost in the gorgeous
musical score of Saving Private Ryan, I sailed into our little town
after attending our country church. I stopped for appropriate stop signs,
looked both ways, and continued into our alley and then the garage.
Getting out of the
car, I glanced up to see our local police deputy had pulled in behind me and
stood with arms akimbo. I hadn’t noticed anyone following me at all.
I took a few steps
his way. “What did I do?”
“You never slowed
down.”
“Never...but I
stopped at the stop signs.”
“I’ve had my lights
on from the highway, and you never slowed down. That one family has little
kids, so I think they’d appreciate it if you took it a little slower next
time.”
“Um...OK.”
He’s a friendly man,
and kind. His daughter plays with my granddaughter, and we often see him at
softball games.
As the week passed, I
pondered his words: You never slowed down. About
midweek, it dawned on me what he had meant.
I’m pretty sure he
meant, “You didn’t slow down at the 45 mph sign just north of town.”
That had to be it
because, obviously I did slow down several times as I passed through the
intersections leading to our home.
Here’s the catch. For
him, never means didn’t.
It’s not an obscure
meaning, and most people around here understand both. But in this situation,
his rendition of never became confusing. And that’s the way dialect
often works. One person calls the breading mix you eat with turkey dressing.
Another calls it stuffing. And the list goes on.
It behooves us to
delve into the particular nuances of the area about which we’re writing. When
my World War II scenes take place in rural Iowa where I spent my childhood,
this conundrum can emerge.
For example, I know
what farmers mean when they say, “separate hogs.”
But that phrase
brought a question from my editor at one point. I explained that most folks in
northern Iowa farm country know that separating hogs means to weed out the
smaller ones from the larger, usually for the purpose of vaccinating or
preparing for market.
But my editor had
never heard of this process. It’s one of those phrases I needed to consider a
bit closer, since some of my readers might not recognize the wording, either.
In the end, we left it in, partly because the story takes place during World
War II, so the reader expects dialect to have changed since then.
I’m glad for this
morning’s reminder about dialect. I’m even happier that it came without an
expensive driving ticket.
Pearl Harbor
attacked! The United States is at war. But Addie fights her own battles on the
Iowa home front. Her controlling husband Harold vents his rage on her when his
father's stroke prevents him from joining the military. He degrades Addie,
ridicules her productive victory garden, and even labels her childlessness as
God's punishment. When he manipulates his way into a military unit bound for
Normandy, Addie learns that her best friend Kate's pilot husband has died on a
mission, leaving her stranded in London in desperate straits. Will Addie be
able to help Kate, and find courage to trust God with her future?
Late blooming women's
fiction author Gail Kittleson writes mostly WWII stories of overcoming fear and
finding one's voice. She and her husband enjoy family in northern Iowa and the
Arizona Ponderosa pine forest in winter. Gail taught college expository writing
and facilitates memoir writing and fiction workshops.
