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Dear Author
(wow, it's been a while since I wrote one of these!)
Dear Author:
I know that you're British. I know that you're trying to set a scene very quickly. I know that America is surprising in how much territory our regional accents cover.
But just for the record, not everyone from New York sounds like they come from Brooklyn. And for that matter, Guys and Dolls is not an accurate record of Brooklynese.
Also - and again, I get it that you're British and this may be something that you either don't think about or don't want to think about, BUT! 1976 was kind of an important year in America. Especially July. Something about an anniversary of something, now what was it, it involved guys in red coats and a Declaration and some fighting, and yes we've made up and all, but you may have heard the odd mention of the event in your history classes?
SERIOUSLY. We as a nation didn't look up on July 4, 1976 and go "wow, it's the Bicentennial!" and then forget about it 24 hours later. Yes, it was particularly intense in early July, but it was kind of a year-long thing, especially for any state that counts as one of the original 13 colonies.
So, no, setting a story in New York on July 16, 1976 and not mentioning a certain little detail even in passing kind of stands out, no matter what the story is really about.
It especially stands out to old coots who *remember* 1976. Not all of your audience is knee high, I'm just sayin'.
Dear Author:
I know that you're British. I know that you're trying to set a scene very quickly. I know that America is surprising in how much territory our regional accents cover.
But just for the record, not everyone from New York sounds like they come from Brooklyn. And for that matter, Guys and Dolls is not an accurate record of Brooklynese.
Also - and again, I get it that you're British and this may be something that you either don't think about or don't want to think about, BUT! 1976 was kind of an important year in America. Especially July. Something about an anniversary of something, now what was it, it involved guys in red coats and a Declaration and some fighting, and yes we've made up and all, but you may have heard the odd mention of the event in your history classes?
SERIOUSLY. We as a nation didn't look up on July 4, 1976 and go "wow, it's the Bicentennial!" and then forget about it 24 hours later. Yes, it was particularly intense in early July, but it was kind of a year-long thing, especially for any state that counts as one of the original 13 colonies.
So, no, setting a story in New York on July 16, 1976 and not mentioning a certain little detail even in passing kind of stands out, no matter what the story is really about.
It especially stands out to old coots who *remember* 1976. Not all of your audience is knee high, I'm just sayin'.
no subject
Secondly, though; I was at a British school during the American Bicentennial and while I remember it vaguely being mentioned (I think we had to paint Stars and Stripes in Girl Guides) what was a much bigger deal that summer were, in order a)The Heatwave (people still talk about the summer of '76); b) the West Indies were touring, to devastating effect; c)the birth of punk rock and d) the leader of one of the three main political parties was enmired in s scandal involving a homesexual lover, an incompetent hitman, an Alsatian dog being shot and the sinister threat, "Bunnies can and will go to France". As you can imagine, the coverage the newspapers had to spare for the commemoration of events of 200 years ago almost three thousand miles away was pretty minimal.
So, I think for British writers the Bicentennial comes under the heading of "an unknown unknown" thus illustrating the danger of writing in an unfamiliar milieu in the first place.
no subject
It's an audio, so the accents aren't rendered phonetically. One of them would even almost pass as real here. One of them... *clears throat, rolls eyes*
no subject
The mysterious affair of the dog in the mine-shaft