Playful Language

I may as well have a natter about language. For the most part, the language in my novels is Standard Australian English, but I like to playfully push the boundaries due to the fact that children/young adults, and people in general, acquire language skills via the use of playful language. So in Galaxy Trotters I embraced the opportunity to endow the pig-human hybrids with a distinctive brand of  English, piglet- speak, in fact a new pig-English, a pignolect. Now the whole technique stems from this lecturer/teacher I had at NMIT TAFE who taught me to switch language around the way I do. There is an element of gentle humour too, for it’s not unlike some child getting the word wrong, or replacing one letter with another, characteristic of shifts in language in general. The teacher at the time also pointed out how naughty this novelty language may sound. Note: I returned to study Professional Writing & Editing after twenty years teaching English and Humanities with a wonderful literary degree in critical analysis already behind me from Latrobe University.

Galaxy Trotters was originally for Grade five-seven approximately (Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge), but I noticed the sentence index pushed it up to 16-17 years. The fact is that if language is sufficiently evocative, includes literary devices such as rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia etc, this language flows effectively enough for children and young adults to access longer sentences, provided these sentences are well-constructed. Access points need to be maintained at all costs, of course. Currently I have the copies Galaxy Trotters available in boxes. If interested in purchasing them, please contact me via this website. Hopefully, comments and email will soon work.

I guess I am delighted to respond to the comment on TROVE, about turning language around, but after all–a novel is a novel–a uniquely constructed story, exploring a fresh, novel idea filled with novelty characters and novelty language etc. Or have we forgotten this intrinsic meaning? This intrinsic novelty in characterisation and language was hopefully the case for Galaxy Trotters in 2009-10 when I first published it with Sid Hartha after writing it over a twenty year period, first on family leave and later while studying my diploma. A leader in its field, Galaxy Trotters was a precursor to other pig novels and received a variety of rave reviews at the time. https://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/Marie-C-Lukic/Galaxy-Trotters.html  My first novel was in draft for such a long time as I sent it around, that in its embryonic state, early drafts of Galaxy Trotters under various titles may even have been earlier than Pigs Might Fly. For many, writing early novels is often a far longer proposition than we expect. The reasons for the process taking so long may be the subject of a future article. I do feel I can speed the process up now, which is a major relief.

So this leads me to my Kingdom of Nerada series, which for the most part embraces fairly straight forward language, aside from cyclops speak, such a humorous creation, that I love.  Kill your darlings,! they tell novel writers, but I simply refused, so readers may find cyclops speak worthy of reading aloud. We is etc…. Form and content marry with unique situations in Isabella Airyfairyabelous & the Sleepy Dragon , which for the most part is an original spin on a traditional fantasy or fairy tale. Kingdom of Nerada is now available around the world https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=marie+lukic&i=stripbooks&crid=1EWIJA29TUT3A&sprefix=%2Cstripbooks%2C281&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent

For those excited by language, I bid you discover pig-English in Galaxy Trotters and Cyclops Speak in Isabella Airyfairyabelous.

https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=marie+lukic&i=stripbooks&crid=1EWIJA29TUT3A&sprefix=%2Cstripbooks%2C281&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent

Image: photo of pig leased by Marie Lukic from Shutterstock