"'He's sending for people to take us prisoner -'
"[Yewwl] got no chance to explain that surrender was the single sensible course. Skogda howled and sprang." (p. 154)
How often does that happen? Premature interruption. Probably we have all experienced it. When I tried to tell a fellow student, "If you are criticizing me for taking so long to do that job, that's ok," I got as far as "If you are criticizing me..." and was interrupted by her shouting, "NO! I am NOT criticizing you!" What was she doing then? Although I thought that criticism was part of training, I found that the word "criticize" was highly charged among trainee careers advisers (verbal communicators).
I am both fascinated and frustrated by the ways in which verbal communication can fail and premature interruption is a classic example. Novelists ought to convey more accurately just how chaotic real conversations can be. People speak across each other, interrupt themselves and utter phrases like "Is the thing on the thing?" (I heard this a few evenings ago.) Communication works to the extent that it does because it is necessary for survival. Without it, there would be no human society and thus no self-conscious individuals.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I see your point, but I don't think it would be practical for novelists to do more than give short samples of how chaotic real world conversations can be in their stories. Too much of that kind of realism would make them too boring and tedious to read. An idea I first came across in one of Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries.
Ad astra! Sean
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