Thursday, September 25, 2008

Talkin' Heads #7

Title: PRINCESS

Genre: Time-travel romance


Background: The setting is 1580 England. Lexy (Alexia) was raised in the twentieth century, Lukas is the youngest son of a duke. I’ve tried to make his speech more formal, while keeping hers more in line with present day.




Lukas’s hair had been neatly tied back and while he no longer wore the traveling clothes of the previous days, his outfit was still completely black. His knee-length pants, hose, doublet and cape were all black. Only a glimpse of white shirt could be seen under the layers of dark clothing.


He looked like evil incarnate.


“You look well this morning, Princess Alexia.”


But could evil incarnate cause her stomach to flip-flop by simply saying her name?


“Thank you,” Lexy whispered. He seemed to be in a better disposition, but she had no intention of staying in his presence long enough to find out.


“I feared for your health when you did not appear for dinner last night.”


He spoke with a straight face; he probably didn’t mean it as a joke. “I can’t believe you’d think I’d want to spend time with you after your outburst yesterday.”


“Outburst? You can hardly fault me for being forthright in my speech. I was merely giving you another opinion to think on as you made your decision.”


She detected no trace of sarcasm, but still didn’t believe him. “I don’t need your help.” She moved to pass him.


He blocked her path. “I am not certain you speak the entire truth. It would appear you need help dressing. Is not your outfit missing something?”


She put her hands on her hips. “No, it’s not missing something. I refuse to wear that ruff thing. Besides, I don’t think you’re one to give fashion advice, do you wear anything besides black?”

9 comments:

  1. I can definitely see the contrast in speeches; the lack of contractions in his, the lack of eloquence in hers. I'm no expert on old-English, but I thought you did a good job.

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  2. The Lukas stuff is great, but I think you could go further with Alexia - to really highlight that difference, especially if she was to use slang that he was unfamiliar with. This line from her especially felt a little too stuff: "I can’t believe you’d think I’d want to spend time with you after your outburst yesterday.”

    Maybe instead of "want to" she would say "wanna". Instead of "spend time" - hang out, and that sort of thing.

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  3. A little more contrast would certainly be welcome here, as Kate says. She makes some good points.

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  4. I agree with Kate and Karen--I think Alexia could be even less formal. Just be careful not to make her sound crass or uneducated. By the way--I love the way she stands up to him.

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  5. See Kate's comments above... otherwise, fine.

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  6. I could see the difference in speech patterns just fine and thought it flowed pretty well, just some minor editing to clean it up as people have mentioned.

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  7. Ditto on Alexia sounding too formal. I know this is only a short snippet, but neither of these characters resonated with me--their dialogue just seemed flat and didn't advance the scene any, IMHO.

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  8. Yeah, a little more contrast would be nice, but I thought you did well with Lukas and I liked the narrative quite a bit (like the evil incarnate bits--that made me chuckle). ;) Good luck!

    ~Merc

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  9. I thought you did well - Kate had some good suggestions though that would make it "pop" a little more :)

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