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Friday, November 2, 2012

Dictation, please: Writers who dictate, or don't

Have weighed in over past few days in a conversation about Dickens among WS (not William Shakespeare) and some English-majors of long ago from DU - subject of Dostoyevsky came up: in discussing authors who work well when read aloud (including Dickens) someone mentioned that Dostoyevsky dictated his work, so it probably also works well when read aloud. Maybe that's true - but I don't think that's why he dictated. Dictation for a writer in the 19th century had to be a break from the drudgery and even hand cramps of writing out a manuscript - something writers were not relieved from until the typewriter (Twain, and Henry James, which led I think to the absurd sentence constructions of his late novels). I don't think I could ever dictate; when I was writing fiction I tended to work slowly and methodically, making lots of changes as I went along (and maybe not so many needed on final edits), and actually discovering and revising plot elements as I proceeded. It amazes me that D. could have had the capacity to dictate an entire novel - he must have held it perfect and clear in his mind before beginning. Stendahl also dictated - the entire Charterhouse in a few days, if I remember right. Some contemporary novelists have taken to dictation in a digital manner: Powers has written an essay about how he dictates to his laptop using voice recognition. Edward Jones apparently has his work entirely whole in his mind before he begins writing - he may as well dictate, if that's the case. I don't think an elaborate stylist such as Proust or Joyce could possibly have dictated their work; Proust is known for his elaborate handwritten revisions, right down to the final proofs. Milton had to dictate because of his blindness - but of course he knew the plot already going in. I do think that reading the work aloud helps a writer craft not only the plot but also the style and tone of the piece: every writer I've ever known makes notes on the manuscript during a reading, and is constantly discovering (and correcting) infelicities of phrasing that looked good in type but sound off key when uttered.

1 comment:

  1. For Dostoyevsky and Stendahl, of course, there's the question of translation for us English readers. It's so difficult to know how sonorous the original may have been. Dickens creates wonderful sentences sometimes-- musical, muscular, and quirky. Also, as we know, he often (mostly?)wrote for publication in periodicals and I think sometimes one can discern prompts embedded near the beginning of chapters, indended to refresh a reader's memory of the previous installment which might have been a read a week or even a month prior.
    Speaking as poet, I cannot consider a poem 'finished' until I've read it aloud several times; better yet is reading the poem with auditors. Where the tongue stumbes, revision may well be required.

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