Marilyn's Musings

  I tend to write by ear. I have to hear a line in my head before I can type it onto the screen. This makes writing dialogue a lot easier. Usually. The problem I sometimes have, however, is that I write historical mysteries. And what I hear in my normal life is often not something one would hear in, say, the 1920s, when my latest novel, The Last Witnesses, is set. When we talk about getting the language right in historical novels, we often think about things like slang. That people use different slang than they used to is pretty obvious. Finding slang words for a period is pretty easy, thanks to the Internet, although, like most things gotten off the ‘Net, you do have to be careful. Most of the sites featuring 1920s slang focus on the mobster culture, which is great if you’re trying to recreate a Damon Runyan story. Not so great if you’re going after more of an F. Scott Fitzgerald vibe. Which is where the issue really lies. I have a whole set of...