Writing novel using archaic words- a mistake?

[lordinferno]

Hello everyone!
So this is my first post actually and I kinda felt this was kinda useful to discuss problems with my writing seeing as you guys should know plenty of this stuff. Forgive me if this is the wrong section.

So I'm writing this adventure novel set in the period from 1610 to 1620-ish.

I got the plot and all ready and also finished writing the first 3 chapters of my first draft. That is not the problem though.

I want the reader to feel like they're living the story so I thought in the second draft I'd rewrite it in 17th century language to make it seem more authentic. Thing is, I read the king James version of the bible and found it uses thou and words like sayeth and hateth. I can't really decide between the formal and informal. I mean my main my main character's a poor apprentice in Bristol. Too formal, and it'd be as if a king is speaking. Too informal, and he'll sound like he's drunk

Do you think I'm making a mistake writing in early modern English? Should I stick with common day English for everyone to understand?
If you don't, could you try answering these questions if you know about them-

1) would a young boy in Bristol (1610) address a friendly merchant using thou or ye?

2) was the sayeth and hateth words still around, or did the -eth dissappear by then?

3) even if they weren't, would a poor young boy really say 'Thou art most gracious' to anyone? Or would he just say 'you're too kind?'

4) like the previous example, would he say 'take heed of these word that I utter' or 'listen to mine words.' I mean you can't expect a 14 year old to be THAT formal. You see this is what I meant when I said I can't decide formal or informal

[Pompey Bum]

There are three ways you could go with this. The first, to try to replicate authentic 17th century English, seems to me to be the worst option. Unless you are already conversant in that idiom, you are going to have to ask the kind of questions you ask below for every sentence you write, and the result will still sound bogus. If you really insist on giving it a try, I would suggest you immerse yourself in 17th century English literature for a year or two, until you have an authentic feel for the way people at all levels of society expressed themselves. Remember that not everyone talked like the KJV.

A second option is to do what Hilary Mantel did with her Thomas Cromwell novels (I think, but check with Paulclem, who has actually red them) and just ditch all that for modern idiom. I'm not crazy about that solution myself (like I'm not personally mad about modern-dress Shakespeare), but it may be your best bet. If nothing else, it would leave you free to speak in your own voice.

The third option is to strike a balance of some kind. That requires a lot of work (by which I mean that it can't be done carelessly). There was a Booker nominee this year called The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, about native resistance in post-1066 England. If Kingsnorth had used the language of the period, modern readers wouldn't have been able to read it. But he sought a tone consistent with a lost and ultimately doomed age, so he couldn't pull a Hilary Mantel, either. As a result, he just made up a spooky sounding, easy to understand version of Anglo-Saxon. You have to puzzle the words out (a bit like droogie-woogie talk in A Clockwork Orange), and if you don't have the aptitude or patience for that, then it's probably the wrong book for you, but he did manage to create something that seems believable (even though it is utterly bogus). That takes skill, though.

I hope that was helpful. I recommend that you listen to this interview of David Mitchell by Terry Gross, in which Mitchell, who had just written The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, talks about the same issue.

http://www.npr.org/2010/08/05/128872438/mitchells-thousand-autumns-on-a-man-made-island

Good luck and welcome to the site.

[Mercy]

I think trying to work with archaic dialect is a mistake. I know that there are writers who have pulled it off...Still, I've been reading medieval literature for years and when I've tried to craft sentences in archaic English it always sounds horribly tinny. I'm not trying to denigrate your writing abilities; it's just that an idiom that's been dead for centuries is really, really hard to resurrect. Add regional and class differences, and you've landed yourself in quite a stew.

If you're going to give it a shot, though, I would suggest reading Shakespeare. He had a great ear for the way people in his day talked, right down to street slang. Another book to take a look at is Pilgrim's Progress -- the author writes in a nice straightforward "common man" idiom.

Good luck!

[AuntShecky]

Shakespeare still thrills us, despite the archaic language, which is, in fact, an early form of modern English. His expressiveness transcends the relative antiquity of his works. Additionally,some of the classic works I read don't sound archaic at all. For instance, I was pleasantly surprised how "fresh" Jonathan Swift sounds, and how smoothly it read. Same with Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield.

Even so, I don't care for trying to replicate archaic language in contemporary works. We are writing in 2014, soon to be 2015, and some of us would be delighted if our works had a longer shelf life, so to speak. Artists (including writers) are supposed be ahead of their times. Go forward, not backward.

Break new ground with language.

[lordinferno]

Thanks everyone. I agree with all that you have written and think a subtle mix of early modern English and our tongue is the most beneficial. I really don't want to write in modern idiom because it'll lose the authenticity. I don't know about you but in my opinion 'The Passion of the Christ' was much better than those all too common jesus films because of the language.

- to those who said use Shakespeare- that's not colloquial right? I'm sure the thou and all had fallen out of use by 1610? Besides he wrote for nobility and the queen. Still, if you know some 'streetslang' Shakespeare please tell me which one