Kay Springsteen Tate

Lingo Logistical Limbo:

Using the Contraction in Historical Fiction

I love reading historical romance. It’s comforting to think about the timelessness of love and how the era might be different but the emotions remain the same across the ages. Writing an historical novel sounded interesting but the amount of research involved was always daunting. Then I wrote a Christmas story, part of which was set in present day Afghanistan in a war zone, a place I’ve never been, and I realized I do a fair amount of research no matter what I write. So, together with my co-author, Kim Bowman, I set on the journey that would take me back in time.

Finding information on nobility lineage, customs, geographic locale and street names, foods and meals, carriages and horses, and basically everything from furniture, carpets, and draperies…We had fun sailing along in our research and it’s all right at a fingertip and a mouse click.

And then it happened. Our first real snag. Our heroine simply could not get on our hero’s last nerve. Why? Because our story is set in 1813. The word “nerve,” as in someone getting on one’s nerves, was not used in such a context until the early 1900s. Did you know that a heroine cannot subject a hero to a “tirade” (a volley of words) – or at least it couldn’t be called that – before 1801? Because the word didn’t exist in common language. Enter our dilemma. How to figure out which of our wonderful story-telling words could be used to tell A Lot Like a Lady without leaving the period and making the language too modern.

Enter the most wonderful subject of study in the world. Etymology. Etymology is the study of historical linguistics, which is basically studying language for signs of changing as it evolves through the centuries. This includes things like grammar usage and variations of words and different usages for the same words. A good etymology dictionary will give the verified, also known as the attested, use of a word when it made it to common language, and will expand about when the word was used in certain contexts. This reference should be the best friend of every historical author. How else would you know that when someone falls in 1810, you wouldn’t ask her if she’s “all right”? You would ask if she has injured herself. Now, it can be painstaking to look up all the important words, but I promise you it’s worth it in terms of developing a believable story.

And I must admit that a good etymology dictionary can be the historical author’s best friend for another reason. At one point, Kim and I found we had limited ourselves and our work sounded extremely stuffy and stilted. We had fallen into the trap of thinking an historical fiction must have limited use of contractions.

Indeed, we were very much in error.

When we looked up certain contractions in the etymology dictionary, we were quite astonished to learn they had been about since around the 17th Century. In fact, contractions were around much earlier than that but the apostrophe was not invented until the middle of the 17th Century. So sometimes the lack of contractions in the written word had more to do with the printers having no sign or symbol to notate them than the fact that they didn’t exist. But if you’ve read Shakespeare, then you know it’s full of contractions—even ones from words we no longer use today. Having said that, Beowulf comes to mind. It is one of the oldest pieces of written history around (dated between the 8^th and 11^th centuries), thankfully having survived being damaged in a fire in the 1700s. And it is FULL of the contraction o’er (over). For example:

High o’er his head they hoist the standard, a gold-wove banner; let billows take him, gave him to ocean. …swiftly thus the lifeless corpse was clear devoured, e’en feet and hands.

Even in such classics as Don Quixote and Wuthering Heights, contractions were used.

“You’d better let the dog alone,” growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, checking fiercer demonstrations with a punch of his foot.  ~Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights Published 1847

“Didn't I say so? worse luck to my line!” said Sancho.  ~Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote Published in English 1612/1620.

 

“What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You Tom!”

“Well, I know. It’s jam—that’s what it is. Forty times I’ve said if you didn’t let that jam alone I’d skin you. Hand me that switch.”  ~Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Published 1876

“Wo-ho!” said the coachman. “So, then! One more pull and you’re at the top…”

Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities Published 1859

Hallelujah! We were back in business and our characters wouldn’t have to sound like they were constipated.

Granted, contractions were not used as much as we see it in today’s fiction, but there is no reason to omit them when writing an historical just because it feels too modern. In doing our research we conducted a test of sorts by picking a few historical and reading through them. One in particular had no contractions. Kim and I couldn’t read past five pages. The language was stilted and choppy and it didn’t feel natural. One thing about human nature is that the easiest path is most often the one taken, and it truly is easier to say can’t as opposed to cannot.

And, while we agree that the nobility may have tended to use more formal speech, especially in public, I know of no 200-year-old people with whom I might confer to determine the truth of this, and the only record of speeches from those times was…the formally written one. As an author, it’s really a matter of preference and characterization how any of the people in an historical novel are depicted. If the story is historically accurate, and a writer prefers to use more contractions than not, that would be his/her choice. The most important thing is to make sure that a particular word existed and in what context it was used during the era being written about.

Kay Springsteen is the author of five full length contemporary romance novels: Heartsight, Operation: Christmas Hearts, Lifeline Echoes, Elusive Echoes, and Heartsent. She collaborated with Kim Bowman to write her first historical fiction work, A Lot Like a Lady, which is scheduled for release in March 2012.

Find out more about Kay at http://kayspringsteen.wordpress.com/  and on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kay-Springsteen-Author-of-Romance/143469035711422