Writer Trevor Locke

Tag: Writing

  • Does writing have a future?

    Does writing have a future?

    Friday 23rd August 2019

    The story of writing’s evolution includes its origins in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan symbols carved in stone and the clay tablets into which Cuneiform scripts were pressed. Through the early printed texts such as William Caxton’s edition of The Canterbury Tales to the art of note-taking by some of history’s greatest minds, and onwards to the digital communication tools we use today.

    Language evolved from the early days of mankind and that evolution played a pivotal role in the development of agriculture and, later, civilisation. The ability of ancient peoples to communicate using a wide range of specific and abstract ideas and to share information was essential to their survival or to their progress as a group. It became increasingly necessary for early man to communicate facts, knowledge and information and to record aspects of the environment and personal history. Verbal communications were inadequate to transmit thought from one generation to another. As people changed from being hunter-gatherers to living in settled communities, it became increasingly possible for people to store artefacts and tools.

    What is writing?

    What was it in existence before the invention of the pen? What other forms of writing do we see in history? Hieroglyphs, Cuneiform, Chinese characters and pictograms were alternatives to writing using letters or symbols, that represented the sounds of speech, through to the use of letters based on spoken phonemes. It is possible that the very earliest writings did not represent spoken words but actions or pictures of the natural world. These would have been pictograms or signals or signs that could be made (on some physical medium) and this lead to the development of writing.

    We should distinguish between the act of writing, using some form of instrument, and the text or script that results from such activity. Writing could mean typing as much as using a pen. Text is written language. The boundary between text and speech is being blurred with the continuing advance of voice recognition software. Writing is likely to become synonymous with the output more than with the activities used to regenerate it.

    Today, writing is largely electronic. Ink is being replaced by the electron. What does history tell us about the technology of writing? Is there something about the art and craft of writing that will ensure its survival into the digital age of multi-media? Will writing be one of those activities that will attract and engage people beyond the changes that will take place in the technology of communication? Even given the prevalence of electronic, digitised literature, many people still cherish reading books printed on paper. For the few, there is still the enchantment of using a pen to write on paper. People who love literature cherish the nostalgia of paper and the hand-written word. For the majority, however, digital communication is the norm and will be in the foreseeable future.

    Does writing have a future?

    Can we foresee a time when humans will communicate with each without the need to write? Science fiction writers have imagined a time when people communicate with each other directly using telepathy. Others have imagined electronic implants in the brain enabling people to send messages to each other without the intermediation of the written or spoken word.

    Will writing survive the increasing prevalence of video? Will we take advantage of technology to talk to each other without the need to learn the written word? Will we lay down the pen in favour of the camera? The development of technologies of communication affects how people communicate. But, does it also affect what people communicate about? Mobile phones have increased the ability of people to engage in communication. Do we see, from this, that what people communicate has also changed?

    There will always be two kinds of communications: those that are made by people as part of their everyday lives, such as communications between family members and between friends and those that are undertaken in a work setting. Given the prevalence of telephones, it is likely that communications will be by spoken language. Sending text messages is very common these days but users are mostly required to type the text into the phone using their fingers. It is likely, I believe, that, in the future, voice applications will be available allowing a message to be spoken and converted to text with voice recognition software. It is also likely that spoken messages will be sent as though they were text. Photos and videos are already being sent in preference to text messages. Speech recognition software has been available for several decades and has become increasingly sophisticated. This trend is likely to continue as people turn from the time-consuming process of typing individual characters on keypads to dictating the content of a message they wish to send. Predictive text messaging is now widely available on smartphones and this has speeded up the composition of written messages.

    The second kind of communication is formal, business or governmental messaging. This is where text is likely to survive over other media because of the legal requirements of accurate transmissions. For communications of this kind, text is preferable because of its accuracy and because it leaves a searchable archive of what has been sent. But, voice recognition software might be more widely used, in such circumstances, than it currently is today. In the world of commerce, government and science, text will continue to offer the best medium through which information can be sent and messages exchanged. One consequence of this is that users will need to speak very clearly and accurately. That is nothing new. Even back in the day when I worked in an office, Dictaphones were used to compose correspondence that would later be sent to a pool of typists. Users who need not speak clearly would find many mistakes in their letters and this would cause lengthy delays while corrections were made.

    Techno-speak

    Is the technology of writing something that changes what is written? Is the mobile phone changing what people say? Is what we say affected by how we say it? Clayton describes how the development of the technology of writing brought about changes to what people wrote about. In fact, he examines the relationship between handwriting, printing and changes to the world including the industrial revolution. As the technology used to make writing became increasingly sophisticated, the way people wrote changed. Authors began to write in a way that suited the printed medium. The layout of a printed book was different from that of one that has been written using a quill pen. The medium has become the message and written communications are gradually being changed by the way in which they are transmitted. This process has been driven more by the demands of the commercial and governmental world than it has by the arts.

    Technology has changed writing over millennia. This will continue as technology becomes increasingly sophisticated. When text messaging became widespread (with the mass adoption of phones and computers) we saw changes to written language. A new vocabulary emerged tailored by the needs of texting from phones. Texting saw users shortening words and using abbreviations to avoid typing lengthy words. Abbreviations such as LOL became universally used. The informality of person-to-person text messaging saw rules of grammar, syntax and punctuation is ignored. The distinction between upper and lower case characters was largely abandoned in the days of the early mobile phones; only later did it become re-established with predictive text. The use of predictive text has improved the quality of written communications.

    Sending text messages (or emails) is a routine activity and few people would approach it as they would a craft or form of art. It is perhaps rather odd that the layout of the English keyboard did not change with the emergence of digital communication. The same QWERTY configuration is used today as that invented for the early manual typewriter. Even on devices that do not have an external keyboard, such as the mobile phone, this standard way of arranging the letters of the western alphabet is used in preference to ordering them alphabetically. People these days know where to find of the letters in a QWERTY keypad even if they have never used an external keyboard.

    Where more substantial changes to written language will be seen is when speech becomes the ubiquitous way of writing. In everyday life, people do not speak in the way they write. Spoken English is different from written English. It is therefore very likely that written English will change as more of it is originated by voice dictation. Dictation, in the world of the office, has been with us for a long time. Following the development of the office typewriter, men would dictate with letters to their (female) secretaries. Office shorthand started to be widely used in the early part of the twentieth century. It became a basic requirement for all secretaries and typists. It was also used by reporters to take notes during interviews and when reporting events. Pitman shorthand was first introduced in 1837. Something approximating shorthand was also known in ancient Greece and in imperial China, where court clerks used an abbreviated form of characters to record proceedings. These were later used to create more formal transcripts. A form of shortened writing emerged in England in the sixteenth century. Thomas Shelton’s Short Writing of 1626 was used by Samuel Pepys for his diary and by Sir Isaac Newton for his notebooks. These developments did not take place because of changes in technology; they came about as a result of the need to make speedy recordings either in courts or in interviews or during scientific inquiries.

    Writing has been with us for the past five thousand years. It is not likely to die out in the near future. It will change as the technology used to do it changes. Written language has changed with the development of printing and digital communications. Spoken language too will also change as people become accustomed to dictating what they want they want to write. Despite these changes in technology, many people will continue to practice the craft of writing with a pen simply because they love it for what it is. By the same token, people will continue to read printed books in preference to digital formats. Nostalgia is a considerable force, in this regard.

    Re-inventing writing

    If we try to imagine what might happen to human communications in the far future, what might we see? English is not easy to learn; neither does it have the logicality of a computer programme. English results from history; from invasions and cultural change. Just as shorthand was invented in order to speed up the process of keeping written records (prior to the invention of electronic recording) so too there will be a demand for being able to communicate using something other than English words. What might that something be? Two things could happen in the far future. Firstly, English will become increasingly simplified. That is already happening. It is a process driven by the pace at which communication takes place, in the digital age, and by increasing cultural and ethnic diversification. English is fast becoming a second language for a large section of the population, in this country. This has already started to create new styles of English and to the simplification of English grammar and syntax. I predict that communication will become increasing graphic. Ideas are already being expressed by emoticons and other symbols. Ideas that would take several words to put across. If I were to visit England in two hundred years time, I would find a form of written language that I would hardly recognise as being English and would not be able to understand, at first sight. Written text would appear as a combination of words using a standard alphabet and graphical symbols that are substitutes for phrases or sentences. The purpose of communicating in this way is to speed up the process of sending and reading a message. It is possible that people will begin to use the kind of pictograms that were familiar to our ancestors in the age before formal written language.
    Secondly, thought will become more complex. That will demand new styles of communication that are better able to meet the demands of increasingly sophisticated ideas. In this respect, the use of graphical representations will increase in order to state ideas that would be long-winded in standard English. Already, the internet, with its worldwide web, has given the power to mix together text and graphics in a powerful medium of communication. That medium is now multi-media including sounds and video.

    References

    The Golden Thread: the story of writing, Ewan Clayton, 2013, Atlantic Books.

    Related articles:  Language and evolution.

  • Poetry 2017

    Working on Poems

    Sunday 24th September 2017

    Back in March this year, I had my first poetry week – seven days during which I did no other work than editing and transcribing my poetry. It was a successful project and so I marked up another week –  from 18th September to 24th September. As with my last project, much of the work was about transcribing hand-written poems into word-processing documents and printing them out for the Poetry folder. During the week I worked on 80 of my poems, transcribing them into the current anthology.

    The project allowed me to become reacquainted with my early poems, just as it did last time. As before, I was impressed by the quality of some of the pieces I composed in the 1960s through to the 70s; others I just left in place as a record and archive – having looked at them and judged them to be too poor to justify even the work of typing them. In those early days, my approach to writing was spontaneous; there was no planning, no premeditation. I just sat down with some paper and wrote. Whatever came into my brain I committed to paper. That is not something I can do these days. During the ’60s I was very given to writing in decametres – lines with ten syllables. I loved the way the thing flows and its rhythms and I still do. It is, however, an outmoded style of poetry – a bit like a contemporary composer writing a piece of music that sounds like Mozart.

    Reading through my teenage poems put me in touch with myself, the self I had some fifty years ago. Having edited a large number of pieces, I began to think like my teenage alter ego. A couple of pieces were turned into metrical versions just so they would fit more into the flow of the work of that period. In doing this I had to be careful not to alter what the piece was about or to add new material that was not in some way or another present in the original. An example of this is The ever dying men, 1968, where I gave each line ten syllables but took great care not to doctor the content. It is still the same poem; it is just presented differently.

    Some pieces I looked at and thought it was not worth the effort of typing them; they were just so bad. A few poems were transferred to my Journals – these were written like pieces of prose and lacked either poetic form or style. Now, much of the Poetry folder has been committed to typescript and only a small number of pieces remain in their handwritten format. When I was working on some of the poems, I thought they were worthy of a complete re-edit and that I might one day compose them again, afresh. Several of my early works went through a number of versions before being placed in one of the anthologies.

    Reserving time for a project – setting aside days for working on something specific – has been, I think, useful and beneficial. These two weeks of poetry time have seen a lot done that would otherwise not have been done. It is an approach I might use for other aspects of my work.

    It might be some time before I work on poetry again. In a life spent doing many other things, there are few opportunities for making poems; there is little now that inspires me and rouses my passions. Too little in today’s life to be passionate about. I rarely write poetry these days because I cannot seem to find subjects, as once I could. I would not sit down and write poetry for the sake of writing poetry – I must have something to be poetic about. My youth was full of poetry; not something that one finds in old age, quite so much. I have one work in progress – The age of starlight – a poem that contemplates the history of the cosmos from its birth through to its final end and all that means for humanity and the world we cherish so much. It is the last of my ‘cosmological poems.’

     

  • Character profiling

    Writing a character profile for a film

    18th May 2017

    My character profile for Riffkid in The Trench †

    Physical appearance of the protagonist

    Riffkid is 18. He is somewhat short in stature. He has a mop of black hair and very bright blue eyes. His face is pretty. He dresses how he thinks rock musicians should dress. His choice of clothes portrays his identity. He is an unemployed teenager living with his parents on a deprived housing estate. He is a dreamer; he has passions and associates with the outcasts who don’t want to be like the other working-class kids who have their lives mapped out for them by their parents and community. He sees punk music as his ideal and in it, he sees his values. Riffkid’s strengths are his good looks and his passion for music; his weaknesses are his lack of knowledge and skills in guitar playing and his dreams that are out of kilter with reality.

    Background note: Riffkid joins the music scene at a time when punk is the predominant style of rock; but rock changes rapidly and soon fans start to prefer the edgier sounds of post-punk. All this is thrown in the air by the generation of the new romantics who come in with their new sounds – the indie bands. Musical tastes are fickle and change rapidly. All the bands play at the venue called The Trench, a dismal, damp basement that traps young musicians and exploits them mercilessly. The bands are trapped in the Trench and only the best manage to escape from it.

    The story

    Actions taken by Riffkid (include wants and needs) [How he thinks] {affect – consequences}

    Act 1.

    Riffkid goes to The Trench music venue to ask if he can join The Howlers – a big and successful punk band. His mates have told him that this is the best punk band in Portsmouth. The lead singer likes him and invites him to come for an audition. (Riffkid wants to be in the band he idolises) [He thinks he has to skills to hack it.] {Riffkid goes to the audition but he fails to prepare himself for it. He fails to study the songs of the band.}

    Riffkid attends the audition with The Howlers but he is torn to shreds by the musicians. He realises that the invitation was a fake. He’s been strung along. [He thought he had enough skills to do the job but they prove to him how little he knows.] {Riffkid is rejected by the band. He is devastated. His dreams have failed.}

    His best mate tells Riffkid not to give up but to go back to The Trench and try to find another band to join. Riffkid is driven by his dreams; his best mate is more practical and realistic. Riffkid goes back to the venue and, by chance, meets Sean, the bassist from the post-punk band Distorted. Sean just happens to be looking for a new guitarist. [Sean thinks that Riffkid would fit in; realises he is not that good as a musician but his personality would fit and make up for his weaknesses as a guitarist.] {Sean does not bother with an audition; he takes Riffkid on and hopes for the best.}

    Riffkid joins Distorted. He decides he needs to get a better guitar and people help him to do this. (He is desperate to be in a band.) [He thinks that trying to get into the much bigger band was a bad mistake) {He gladly accepts the offer to be in Distorted as the rhythm guitarist. He buys the new guitar he needs.}

    Act 2

    Riffkid’s new band is a great success. Everybody loves them. They enjoy considerable popularity in their home town of Portsmouth. (They want to be popular and in demand for their music.) [They think their music will attract people in large numbers.] {They get booked at all the major venues and play to big audiences.}

    Two years pass. Riffkid and Distorted become a successful post-punk band. But the scene is changing and fans are beginning to like the new wave of music coming from the new romantics.

    Riffkid has an argument about musical style in the band and quits. (He wants to be a success.) [He sees the band failing because it clings to outmoded post-punk songs when the fans are moving over to indie. He thinks that the world of rock is changing and the band must change with it.] {He sticks to his beliefs and leaves the band.]

    Riffkid and Jennifer enrol on the music course. (They need to learn about music.) [They think that having skills and knowledge will get them where they want to be] {They are exposed to a lot of new ideas and experiences they never had before.}

    Riffkid makes new friends on the music course. He also goes back to his old friends – the ones who supported him when he needed them. (He wants people around him that can help him; people he can depend on.) [He begins to realise the importance of comradeship.] {He visits his old mates from the band he was in.}

    Act 3

    Riffkid and Jennifer complete the music course. He now has the skills and the knowledge to become a professional musician. (He wants to make a success of himself) [He realises that music is more than just image and passion.] {They both realise that they will get nowhere if they stay in Portsmouth.}

    Riffkid leaves Portsmouth with Jennifer; they go to London to start a new career in music and a new life together. They are free of The Trench at last. (Wants a new life) [Thinks about the future] {Chooses to be with Jennifer.}

    † The Trench was my second novel. It has not yet been published.

    Explanation

    This character profile was written because I was doing a course about screen-writing for films. The course was led by Michael Lengsfield of the University of East Anglia, whose article ‘Thoughts on character’ set out how to compose the profile. I chose to write about my novel The Trench. The protagonist, main character is Riffkid. This provides my choice of story for the exercises to do with script-writing.