Writing Right with Dmitri: Who Do You Quote?
Created | Updated Apr 22, 2018
Writing Right with Dmitri: Who Do You Quote?
Juliet O'Hara: Detective Lassiter is literally on fire today.
Shawn Spencer: "Literally on fire" as in Michael Jackson in the Pepsi commercial, or as in a misuse of the word "literally?"
Psych
Martha Jones: So, magic and stuff? It's a surprise, it's all a bit Harry Potter.
The Doctor: Wait till you read book 7. Oh, I cried.
Doctor Who: The Shakespeare Code
Tell me who you quote, and I'll tell you who you read. In the 19th Century, educated Europeans and North Americans quoted their 'classic' authors. In the case of England and America, that usually meant Shakespeare. For German speakers, it was Goethe. If you went to the Middle East, you might hear quotes from Rumi; in China, Confucius; in India, the Mahabharata. People quoted what they knew best, and what they felt contained wisdom.
Writers could count on that knowledge to some extent. English writers could rely on the familiarity of Shakespearean phrases. Americans could be expected to get a Bible reference. Germans knew that people wouldn't scratch their heads over a reference to 'des Pudels Kern', which would just baffle anybody else. Quotes were part of the cultural baggage you counted on to tell a story.
In the 20th Century, the references shifted. Germans still knew their Goethe, at least well into the 60s and 70s. But Americans forgot most of their Shakespeare beyond 'To be or not to be', and frankly, they probably knew that from cartoons. They were more likely to get references from hard-boiled detective novels, or Gone With the Wind. They still got the less obscure Bible quotes, though they might not know who Jephthah's daughter was, or what Ruth was doing amid the 'alien corn'. The British were fast becoming just as bad. By the 21st Century, you can forget it. The Bible and Shakespeare are out.
One reason the Bible is out – in spite of the continued popularity of that book – is that nobody reads the Authorised Version anymore (except Your Editor, who has it mostly by heart). The proliferation of translations and paraphrases in 'modern' English have put paid to memorisation. You could probably pass almost any anodyne comment off as a Bible quote, and these New Living Uptodate Bible readers would believe you. On the other hand, they might be truly astonished as to what the book really said….
And you can forget Shakespeare. They won't even notice if you steal the plots, especially if you set the movie on another planet. The 21st Century is clueless about the 'classics'. The same goes for Dickens, Defoe, Robert Burns, Thackeray, and just about anybody who's not named Jane Austen. For some reason, they really like Jane Austen. It's probably the fashions.
What does the 21st Century quote?
- Advertising slogans.
- Movie lines.
- Song lyrics.
- Catchphrases from television shows.
- Twitter memes.
And therein lies the writer's dilemma. Which song lyrics? What movie lines? Whose advertising slogans? That depends. It depends on the geographical location, age, socioeconomic level, gender, and niche interests of your audience.
And it's all time-dependent. Will that advertising slogan still be remembered in five years? Do you care? (If you want the book to last longer than a season, duh, yeah.). Do you remember:
- I can't believe I ate the whole thing, or
- Where's the beef?
If so, you are an American, and you are old. Probably not the target demographic for a novel entitled Like, Totally Here and Now.
Like slang, cultural referencing evolves very quickly. Worse, the 21st Century is the era of niche marketing. We don't share cultural frameworks with everyone else. We pick and choose who we talk to, where we go for our entertainment, what we know, and how we know it. I can always tell when an explanation is necessary: my family's eyes glaze over when I mention a new internet phenomenon or a film I've just seen. On the other hand, I have to get them to tell me who the heck that sports figure is, because I am not only clueless, but worse, I don't care. We live in information bubbles of our own making. We need to: we could drown in the overload out there.
What does that mean to writers? It means you pick your audience. You reconcile yourself to the niche marketing. Or….you learn to write without the crutch of reference. You remember to explain. You create your own bleepin' memes. You try to engage rather than embed. It just might work: and your writing just might be readable in ten years' time. Give it a try.
Oh: the first quote is from a US television series of the last decade called Psych. Shawn Spencer is a detective who pretends to be a psychic. He's about thirty years old, and his favourite cultural references are from the 1980s and 1990s. He loves junk food. Of course he quotes Michael Jackson.
For some strange reason, I assume that you know who Doctor Who and Harry Potter are. I just have a feeling….
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