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OK, it’s a tiny little spoiler to let you know this far ahead that there might be a gnomish appearance in this book, but you had a gnomish appearance in Kings, too, so…it’s something even the spoiler-aversives up with it must put. (And a gold star to the person who recognizes where that bit of inverted language came from and how it changed the way I write.)
Beyond the break is a snippet.
POV: Arcolin
Arcolin has just explained to some gnomes that there used to be orc lairs in some hills and they should be careful.
…………..
The estvin nodded and said something in their language that brought the rest to his side. They all laid hands on the same boulder the estvin had sniffed. They muttered in gnomish, faster and faster. Arcolin’s horse threw up its head, ears pinned. Then he could feel, through the horse’s body, the ground trembling; the horse squealed, whirled, and tried to bolt as the shaking grew. Arcolin wrenched it back around. Then a loud noise, deeper and louder than any drum, rolled out of the hills. Clouds of snow and dirt flew up from several hills, including the two nearest, and hung there a long moment before slowly settling again. The gnomes stepped back from the boulder, dusting their hands. The estvin looked up at Arcolin. “No more,” the estvin said.
“No more?”
“Orcs. Lairs. Gone.”
…………………………….
Telling you where, when, etc. would be very spoilerish, so I won’t. However, for those determined to see if they can outguess the writer (you who hate spoilers, Go Away Now) I’m sprinkling gingerbread crumbs here for you. (And again–if you really, really hate spoilers, do not read the next paragraph. Fair warning, OK?)
You already know–from Kings of the North–some of what gnomes are capable of, and from both Kings and the old group (both Divided Allegiance,where Paks runs across gnomes, and Surrender None, where Gird learns a lot about, and from gnomes) some of their attitudes about Law (their law always has the upper-case L), about gifts and charity (bad: must be fair exchange) and other salient facts about the square of…sorry. Brain is skipping around tonight. In “Judgment,” you may recall that dwarves (not gnomes) were at one time the guardians of dragons’ eggs, but…something happened. An egg or two got into the wrong hands.
I’m sure those who want to connect the dots can now connect the dots. The rest of you can pretend you never even saw the dots. There is more to be discovered about gnomes, as there is about us all.
I leave you with an unrelated quote accessed today via Twitter to a PlOS site, where the first sentence beyond the abstract was this astonishingly brilliant insight (sarcasm mode stuck on FULL.)
“A striking finding of recent research on human cooperation is that its expression is highly variable…” Ya think? Nobody ever noticed before that humans are not all equally cooperative? And that this varies by surroundings? You might as well say that a striking finding of recent research is that dropped things fall…or that some dogs bite the hand that feeds them and some don’t…or some people have messy houses and some have neat ones. I don’t mind someone doing research on a common phenomenon–it’s easy to accept that X is just there, and finding out why it’s there, and not somewhere else, or what it really is, and so on, is fine. But the artlessness of that first sentence sounds as if the authors think no one ever noticed that until recent research pointed it out…while anyone who’s lived through an ordinary childhood knows it by heart.
Comment by pjm — November 5, 2011 @ 4:19 am
Winston Churchill. Though the attibution to him may not be right. I couldn’t find in a very quick internet search any reference to somebody else inventing the phrase.
On co-operation – yes it’s obvious but still may be worth saying. As an example some people co-operate by letting you alone to work, while others ask you every 5 minutes how they can help. And sometimes you want the former and sometimes the latter.
What is the purpose of academic research?
A to advance the sum of human knowledge
B to advance one’s own prestige or that of one’s university
C to attract a research grant
D to satisfy the requirements for a PhD
Funny (but not really amusing) how priorities get scrambled.
Thanks for the snippet. It is great to have a bit more material to guess with!
Peter
Comment by iphinome — November 5, 2011 @ 4:57 am
Inverted language huh? Well Estvin is an anagram for invest or you can read it as “is wine” in french but if that’s the case better stay far away. Drinking with a french gnome can lead to waking up three days after the con missing your sword, in a torn surcoat with a pouch full of cockatrice eggs and faerie droppings.
Comment by Kerry aka Trouble — November 5, 2011 @ 6:10 am
I’ve heard several possible sources, but written in the margin next to a sentence that ended with a preposition was, “This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.”
As to where the snippet takes place, I would venture to say the hills where Tamarrion (sp?) and the kids were killed. After all, didn’t Arcolin take over Kieri’s domain in the north – AND – you had mentioned in a previous post about finding gnomes in the north unexpectedly.
Comment by Jenn — November 5, 2011 @ 7:35 am
French is the only other language I can speak albeit poorly. So that is my guess.
March 31, 2009 the The NY Science time published a small article with the title:
One Drink a day tied to Lower Death Risk
Um… No. Nothing lowers your risk of death.
I read it thinking perhaps it would indicate a certain kind of death….but no.
In fact it said that moderate alcohol consumption was associated with a 28 percent reduction in the risk of mortality.
I still have the article.
Comment by Daniel Glover — November 5, 2011 @ 8:03 am
Mmm, If my surmise is correct I’m curious about the gingerbread you didn’t mention above. But then, the pieces I’m thinking of, if mentioned would be REALLY, REAL spoilerish. But if those goosebumps mentioned in your previous post prove true I’ll still be delighted by how all the crumbs are connected. Waiting patiently in Minnesota.
Comment by Naomi — November 5, 2011 @ 9:11 am
Oh Elizabeth, I wish you could get Stephen Fry’s TV programme QI over in the states, it would certainly appeal to you! Loved the snippet.
Comment by elizabeth — November 5, 2011 @ 12:20 pm
pjm & Kerry: Winston Churchill, but in defense of ending a sentence with a preposition…when someone sniped at him for doing so (cannot remember now if it was someone copyediting something he wrote, or a verbal comment), his response was “That is something up with which I will not put.” I used Churchill’s Defense successfully against a correction by one of my teachers, but had to cite a reference of course. Back then it was easier to find; he was still alive and a lot of his writing was current and stories about him were still current.
iphinome: Inverted language implies more than one word, so estvin is just a gnome term.
Some dot connectors are doing better than others; that’s all I can say.
Comment by Richard — November 5, 2011 @ 5:01 pm
By Googling Winston Churchill Quotes I found http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
within which jump down to Disputed.
Wikipedia I knew, wikiquote is new to me.
Comment by Richard — November 5, 2011 @ 5:28 pm
oh and Daniel, all this can get awfully confusing: the gingerbread is Book III and the gooseberries (oops, deliberate mistake here) Book IV, is that right?
Comment by Richard — November 5, 2011 @ 5:55 pm
Naomi, elizabeth, everyone: UK cover for Echoes now there to be seen on amazon.
Comment by Sam Barnett-Cormack — November 6, 2011 @ 12:58 pm
Hmm, not as nice the other cover… but it’s also the first time I’ve read a blurb for the new book. Sounds interesting.
If that sounds unenthusiastic, consider it relative to my love and enthusiasm for these books, not as an absolute statement 😉
Comment by Annabel (Mrs Redboots) — November 6, 2011 @ 1:54 pm
Another vote for “The sort of nonsense up with which I will not put” being Churchill.
(My father quotes someone – I don’t know who – as when he saw the book his wife/daughter/companion had chosen for reading-aloud, grumbled: “What did you bring that book you know I can’t put up with down for?”)
Comment by elizabeth — November 7, 2011 @ 8:37 am
Sam: No book cover pleases every reader. (Or author.) The purpose of a book cover (from the publisher’s POV) is to attract readers who will like that book. The more varied a book’s readership, the less possible that is, so they go for their conception of the average reader for that kind of book. All a writer can do is point out when they think a proposed book cover will alienate the book’s core readership–and sometimes they’re not given a chance to do even that. Quite often what we get is “Here’s the cover–we really like it; hope you do too.”
Annabel: Linguists are a little more careful about formations that “would never be found in a native speaker of English” than they used to be…such as the one you quoted. Much of the communication in language is not inside the words and grammar, but expressed with, well, “expression”–pitch, loudness, tonality, rate, facial expression, posture, gesture, etc. It’s easy to separate–and make easily understandable–segments that are confusing on the page. (You probably already knew that, but it bears repeating for those who haven’t thought of it.)
Comment by Genko — November 7, 2011 @ 9:19 am
Regarding prepositions, and other English grammar rules. When I studied linguistics, they made a point of explaining that many of the “rules” of grammar were created by people who studied Greek and Latin and decided that there were universal rules of grammar (because they fit both of those languages). However, English is not based on Greek and Latin, but on German (and other influences). And so, we have double negatives, for example, that are found in very early traditional sources of written English.
The prepositions at the end of sentences rule ignores the fact that we have many phrasal verbs that look like they include prepositions. But in those cases, like “up” and “to” and “with,” the word isn’t acting like a preposition, but as part of the verb. And so we have things like “put up with,” which really could end up at the end of a sentence, and be grammatically correct.
Those grammar rules have plagued us all for a couple of centuries, I believe, and have created more confusion than assistance. The fact is that language is organic, and works best when we don’t put a lot of judgment on it of right and wrong, but only whether and how it is understood.
So I’ve seen several responses to the quote being by Churchill (or maybe not), but not to the second part of that sentence — how has it affected your writing?
Comment by elizabeth — November 7, 2011 @ 10:20 am
In the ’50s, when I started school, the old rules were still taught as if handed down from on high: no sentence could be ended with a preposition without getting the big red mark. Ending a sentence with a preposition verbally would earn a reprimand. “Don’t you know you can’t end a sentence with a preposition?”
Finding the Churchill quote (which was years before I knew “linguistics” existed) was the first crack in the impenetrable wall, and made me more aware of how people really spoke. And wrote. I started paying attention, in what I read, to the less obvious signs of relaxed rules (not just “ain’t” and the like in dialogue.) I started experimenting with my own writing–breaking a rule here and there and seeing what happened. In the 9th grade, I wrote a paper with many incomplete sentences and when the inevitable happened, argued with the teacher, citing sources. (And losing that round: “When you’re an experienced writer, you can do that, but not in this class.” Sigh. But looking back, she was right: that was a lousy paper because I was trying to show off, not communicate.)
I’m sure that the same revelation might have arrived later, even gradually, from other sources, but coming when it did, and in such a tidy and memorable package, started a process that ended up here. (With a linguistics course along the way.)
In defense of grammar rules, and with a mild grump at the linguists who are so smug about how silly such rules are…writing isn’t speech. Writing is a code interpreting speech, not a direct transcription. The old grammar rules are a fairly reliable way of conveying meaning: the code aims at reducing misunderstandings. Turning people loose to “write as you speak” without the corresponding instruction “but be clear and avoid confusion” leads to problems, and the attempt to teach “be clear and avoid confusion” without rules leaves students confused. (“But *I* know what I meant,” and “What I meant was…” are familiar to writing workshop instructors.) Writers, unlike speakers, have only the words and punctuation to convey what speakers can convey with stance, gesture, direction and duration of gaze, facial expression, rate, pitch changes, volume changes, tone of voice, and the rest of the human communication system. A code–including rules for decoding–familiar to both writer and reader makes written communication both easier and more likely to be understood.
Comment by Daniel Glover — November 7, 2011 @ 12:11 pm
Elizabeth,
Thank you for the elucidation on how it changed your writing. I was waiting on figuring out the quote before the guess as to effect. Since, as you mentioned, timing of when the source was found affected the outcome as much as the source itself.
Genko,
I curious about your source for grammatical rules since when I was taking ancient Greek one of the fun and enjoyable parts of the class was to be able to put prepositions, etc. pretty much anywhere in the sentence so long as the “tense” was consistent. Multiple prepositions in a sentence with the one referring to the bits at the end being at the start of the sentence and the one at the end to the earlier bits was the fun part of the word games we would play to come up with the “prettiest” sentence–short words at the end, long ones in the middle or vice versa. I only had the one term in Greek but had a lot of discussions with the prof. who wanted me to take more. Couldn’t fit it in with the plan to get out in three years.
Comment by Genko — November 7, 2011 @ 1:12 pm
Of course I don’t remember a source for such a thing — only remember my professors saying it, and was struck by it. It seemed to explain a lot about why there were these rules and then there was the way people talked. I didn’t pursue it. And I may well be wrong about how it affects the prepositions thing, but I do remember again being struck by the very concept of “phrasal verbs,” never having noticed that before.
And Elizabeth, you’re right that things have to be said differently in writing than in speech, for clarity. One of the problems people get into in e-mail, for example, is that they think it’s more like speech, which it is, but then they have to use all these emoticons to try to explain what they really mean, and those are not exactly precise.
It also seems that fantasy writing has its own conventions, to take it out of the realm everyday modern speech. I think I remember Usula LeGuin writing about that.
Here’s a site about how the rules of grammar (and spelling) changed around the development of the printing press.
http://englishplus.com/news/news0300.htm
Comment by elizabeth — November 7, 2011 @ 1:45 pm
Genko: That was in LeGuin’s _The Language of the Night_, and was LeGuin’s own opinion of the role of style in fantasy, and her dislike of styles she felt were not appropriate though often used. SF and fantasy both can be more stylistically flexible than some other genres, because readers accept variant styles as part of the world-building. However, in some fantasies, “everyday modern speech” can be used successfully (urban fantasy, for instance, or “window/door/gate” fantasies in which part of the story is in everyday modern settings. William Mayne, a British writer, handled style shifts brilliantly in some of his YA books.
Comment by Jenn — November 8, 2011 @ 10:57 am
I am finding this thread very interesting to read. As a last generation “phonetically taught” reader and first generation of no grammar rules in elementary school. To this day I have very little idea how to use punctuation properly outside of the end of a sentence. I learned what adverbs were from doing mad-libs with my friends. The only reason I can spell is because I read so much.
I do wish some days that I had been forced to memorize and dissect sentence if only to help me be a better writer. Of course maybe I would have ended up hating composition all the more.
Comment by Peter — November 8, 2011 @ 1:11 pm
I know this if off the current topic but author + knitter + conservation = just had to share it here.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/10/25/atwood-knits-up-extinct-bird-for-u-k-exhibit/
Comment by elizabeth — November 8, 2011 @ 5:18 pm
Thanks! I’m going to spread this link around. I wish they’d shown a picture of it.
Comment by elizabeth — November 8, 2011 @ 5:56 pm
Actually, having some guidance in punctuation, grammar, and composition might have made you like it more, because you’d have been more confident and your work would have been more comprehensible. And like many other things, it’s easier to learn in childhood.
Punctuation, for instance, exists to help readers understand complicated or long sentences. (And no, writing only short sentences does not help comprehension.) That’s why apostrophe abuse is so annoying–using an apostrophe where it doesn’t belong obscures meaning–makes the reader’s mind pause to be sure what it means in that place–and in slowing down reading, adds to confusion. Standard punctuation is easiest to read because it’s familiar–the punctuation itself doesn’t require a “stop, look, interpret” from the brain.
For instance: “John and Bob went to the train station, bought round trip tickets, and boarded the 2:34 to Perigee.” Standard punctuation. Items in the series “…went to the train station, bought round trip tickets, and boarded the 2:34 to Perigee…” are separated by commas. The function of the comma is a standard function (separating items in a series) and no non-standard commas were used. Separating items in a series is not the only standard use of commas (the most versatile of punctuation marks) but it’s easy to recognize.
Suppose you read: “John, and Bob, went to the train, station, bought round trip, tickets, and boarded, the 2:34, to Perigee.” Here the comma is used to set off nouns–a non-standard use of the comma. Your brain, used to standard punctuation, will slow down and start rearranging the word clumps into something more familiar, easier to read.
One of the commonest uncertainties is when to use a semi-colon or a colon between parts of a sentence. It arises from the inability to tell a complete sentence from an incomplete one; the popularity of incomplete sentences in published works probably made the distinction harder for readers who were not taught grammar in school. A complete sentence has a core of subject-verb, although a verb alone may count as a sentence if the subject is clearly understood (You’re standing there and someone waves at you and yells “Jump!” The meaning is “You jump!” in command form (technically, the hortatory subjunctive, but never mind that.) So in the ordinary way, “Dogs ran” is a complete sentence. “Dogs, freed at last from fences and leashes, ran happily after anything that moved” is a complete sentence. You can hang a lot of decoration on the basic subject-verb and have a complete sentence. But–no number of words makes a complete sentence if there’s no subject-verb, and only the subject can be implied. “Dogs, freed at last from fences and leashes, bounding over the verdant grass in the brilliant sunshine” is not a complete sentence.
A semicolon signals the end of one independent clause (could be a complete sentence) and the start of another independent clause (could be a complete sentence.) “Dogs run; dogs also bark.” That could be two sentences: “Dogs run. Dogs also bark.” Hence, the semicolon between them.
You can learn grammar and the rules of punctuation as an adult (just as I’m presently struggling to learn key signatures in music as an adult) if you want to. I like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style because it’s brief, witty, and more than just a punctuation/grammar guide. Some people sneer at it. There are other guides available, including online.
Comment by Daniel Glover — November 8, 2011 @ 6:42 pm
Too go with punctuation is paragraph structure; introduction, body and closing. In college I still remember the philosophy class where I stopped and looked at the paragraph. It didn’t quite fill the page. A line or two short at the top and the bottom. The rest of the page was one paragraph, with a single short introductory sentence and a slightly longer concluding one. The rest of the page was a single sentence that comprised the body of the paragraph. And, like Elizabeth mentions above, I had to slow way down and read every punctuation mark for it to make sense.
Comment by Richard — November 9, 2011 @ 9:17 am
Elizabeth: They (Peter’s link, comment #20) now are showing a picture of it (the knitting: Ms Atwood is holding it up). The picture is above the article. I hope you are not seeing instead one of those empty boxes with little red cross place-holding for a picture your ISP-browser combination refuses to display.
Comment by elizabeth — November 9, 2011 @ 11:16 am
Great! The first time I clicked on the link, I didn’t get anything but a list of topics. The second time I got the article but no picture. THIS time I got the picture–delightful. Thanks for nudging me again.
Comment by Jenn — November 10, 2011 @ 2:17 pm
Thanks for the comp lesson. I think I am going to cut and paste that to a sheet and keep on had. It really is frustrating not being able to understand how to write well. But we are never to old to learn.
I loved the knitting pic of Margret Atwood! I love that writers seem to be turning to knitting:) such a relaxing hobby. Back to dragons!!!!
Comment by Gareth — November 11, 2011 @ 10:08 am
I wish everyone (especially budding tech writers) would read Strunk and White (and Fowler even though he’s a bit dated now)
{start rant}
While we are at this I wish every PUBLISHER would study what makes a page EASIER TO READ not what makes it look pretty. Smaller fonts with extra spacing between the lines and justified both sides plays havoc with the natural flow of reading. If the eye has to concentrate to perceive the small letters and then can’t quickly move on ahead to the next line it destroys readability however good the author’s words.
Also the trend to bigger books with longer lines interferes with speed reading (as a writer you may cringe that we speed read your books) but long lines are hard for us.
Books should be read not make to look pretty – that’s for the covers and illustrations not the pages of words.
{end of rant}
By the way what I usually do is speed read first then return and savour. I ready your books many times often gaining new insights on different readings – sort of different PoV reading. That way I think I get the most out of it.
Gareth
Comment by elizabeth — November 11, 2011 @ 10:27 am
Gareth: Sounds like you read the way I read. Inhale quickly the first time through…then re-read several times, with different intent each time.
Comment by Genko — November 11, 2011 @ 11:56 am
Gareth: as a former typesetter I read you loud and clear (pun somewhat intended). My guiding principle (and is still true in web design) is clarity. You can make a page look very pretty and still have it be readable. You can make a readable page look all sorts of ways, from ugly to plain to fancy. And I totally get you about justified lines — they only work on a line length long enough that the variable spacing between words is not noticeable. Ditto about line spacing — the whole thing needs to breathe. I often find that I don’t have to increase the type size if I just increase the line spacing a little bit. And x-height matters.
I’m not actually sure who designs the basic type of a book. As a typesetter, manuscripts were given to me with specs already figured out by someone (a designer? wouldn’t think it would be an editor). The books I typeset usually worked just fine because whoever designed them knew what they were doing. Not sure that’s true these days. Anyway, the whole process is different now.
Another things I suspect is not true these days is proofreading. We employed proofreaders in our type shop, who checked everything before it went out. That meant that they actually read everything, and if there was something that didn’t quite seem to fit, they would query it. Same thing for typesetters (we used to have to input everything) — we would automatically correct obvious spelling errors, and would query things that didn’t look right to us. By the time you have that many sets of eyes on it, Again, fewer things to trip up the reader.
Comment by Gareth — November 11, 2011 @ 11:58 am
Exactly so. Anything that stops me loving the flow of the book and plot first time through is very bad. On transatlantic (Uk to E coast) flight it’s usually about 1.5 complete paperbacks. If they’re good I’ll then re-read parts or the whole many times in ‘thinking and appreciating’ mode not in ‘what happens next’ mode.
Love the comments in the blog.
Comment by Jenn — November 11, 2011 @ 4:58 pm
I am so glad to know that I am not the only inhaler of books. I am not a speed reader but I do read fast. If I like the story then I will return to savouring the story. Any book read 3 times in two months makes my 4-5 star list.
I am also glad to know that it is not just me having a difficult time reading some books printed.
Comment by Nigel — November 12, 2011 @ 9:17 am
Elizabeth – Like Jenn any book that I reread multiple times, make my 4-5 star series, you have managed to do that with the original 3 book series, the current series, Vattas War and the Serrano series. If other authors were as good I would have no time to do any work!
I am sure that the new books in the current series will continue to make me re-read the series, I have had to replace several of your books as they have started to fall apart.
Comment by pjm — November 13, 2011 @ 4:24 am
“Inhaling” a book. I like that. I read a book a bit like watching television (which is usually less interesting). A good book will stand several re-readings, and I pick up more each time.
On page design, I totally agree with other commenters in this thread. Occasionally I pick up a book printed in a sans-serif typeface, and it always looks subtly wrong, even though it can be quite readable.
Peter