I smell of dust, old books and bluebells. Shurly you jest, my liege? : comments.
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Too cool for subject
The only reason I could see for a writer "trying" to approximate speech of that time would be if he/she was unable to get the atmosphere and feel of that time across in another way. Clearly that's not the case with "Alpha & Omega". I could see the villa, smell the ocean, taste the olives, feel the breeze and the sun, hear the carriages and noise from the slaves in the fields. You did a superb job on the research and have the writing skills to boot to put it all into the right words.
This "feeling" this feedbacker describes probably stems from having read other historical fic where the voices were from the time the fic took place in. If it was fanfic, too, I dare say the writer probably didn't think about what he/she was doing as much as you were, else he/she'd likely arrived at the same conclusion instead of laboring over making her characters "sound" right (and probably failing). If it was original fic, well, the same argument can be made of course, but if the writer wants to use an approximation of the language of that time, the results are less disastrous. ;-)
That said, I wanna add: "Alpha & Omega" is a great piece. Absolutely nothing wrong with it and I love it. Like Bev I look forward to reading it again at some point, when I find a quiet evening at home and can do it in one go :-)
Too cool for subject
That said, I wanna add: "Alpha & Omega" is a great piece. Absolutely nothing wrong with it and I love it. Like Bev I look forward to reading it again at some point, when I find a quiet evening at home and can do it in one go :-)”
Well first off, thanks for the gorgeous comment which, as you know, I feel no shame in lapping-up like a cat with a bowl of cream. (o:
As for your thoughts on the language; you’ve hit my nail squarely on its head. It depends to a certain extent what it is you’re trying to achieve, I guess. Shakespeare wasn’t writing contemporary speech, he was writing a stylized form of 16C English for effect. If what you’re trying for is a poetical, ‘this is not of our time’ effect, then fine. If what you’re after is two characters, in and of their time talking to each other as two Romans, two Egyptions – whatever, then I really think contemporary English is most appropriate.