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WriteOn! Making your way down on Wardour Street [1]
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Date: 2025-03-13
Greetings, writers! Good evening and welcome.
Tonight I’d like to think about old-fashioned phraseology, and whether to use it or eschew it. I think it might make sense for certain kinds of stories and settings, but the usual advice is to avoid it.
Stories that are written in a certain false-archaic style are sometimes called “Wardour Street” and the language, “Wardour Street English.” Fowler’s Modern English Usage deprecated words like
anent, aught, ere, erstwhile, haply, maugre, oft, perchance, thither, to wit, varlet, withal, and wot
Have you ever written anything that was meant to sound old-fashioned? Every used words like whilom, anon, thrice, or eftsoons? I recall something I read where Poe cast aspersions on such language and pointed out that the writers we think of as quaint, like Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, or others (who else comes to mind?) were not trying to sound quaint, they were writing in the vernacular of their time, or at least, that of the highbrow literary set.
I think the advice against using such language is good, because it rings false unless done exceptionally well and with exceptional care, and can take the reader out of the story, but I also think that on occasion it can be a lot of fun. (I once started writing a story in a pastiche of the Arabian Nights, although I didn’t get far before the well ran dry.)
What do you think about language like that? Does it draw you in or drive you away from a story? What about futuristic language in science fiction stories? Certainly in there, and in fantasy, there is a certain acceptance of making up vocabulary. How does that compare to Wardour Street? Is it less distracting, more acceptable? Or do you prefer stories in ordinary, colloquial English?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Tonight’s Challenge
Write a scene using old-fashioned language. Try to keep it under 200 words and engage at least 3 different senses. Extra credit (only if you feel like it): rewrite the same scene using modern language. How does it feel? Which do you prefer? Or: write a scene using any three of the old timey words in this diary.
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