Words

I haven’t blogged in a while – I think every time I do I preface it with those words. Leave ‘em wanting more, and all that…

However, this blog is all about the very same. Words.

Right now, I’m writing the first draft of a future novel. In it are a couple of teenagers. Yikes. The minefield of teenage language is almost without space for footfalls between the explosives. My eighteen-year-old and I were in the car the other day, listening to the radio. On it, a forty-something-year-old male presenter who thinks he is very funny and cool, but really is old enough to know better, was using words such as ‘flex’ and ‘aura’. To be fair, the discussion was about teenage language, but a sideways glance at my daughter’s expression had me grinning.

‘Please turn it off,’ she said. ‘Embarrassing.’

Teenagers are also known for their brevity of language, esp when txtng, yk? Yh! But she did go on to say it reminded her of the headmaster’s ‘down with the kids’ speech at the recent end of year speech day, where he employed as many flexy, aura-filled phrases as he could pack in. All in jest and with a dollop of good natured fun, but still… Cringe.

So, I asked her how we – the older generation – are supposed to handle it, especially in the realm of writing a book in which I want to reflect a little of their modern-day parlance. (Parlance…see what I did there?!)

‘Yeah. Good luck with that,’ was her less-than-helpful reply.

And being a writer, it then gave me pause to think about language in general. We all had our own words back in the day – nothing new there. And recently I’ve been watching ‘Ripper Street’, a drama series about the police in Whitechapel in the years after the horrors of Jack the Ripper. A rip-roaring adventure of the early years of forensics and old-fashioned policing – which consisted of everyone thumping everyone else on a regular basis. But what fascinated me was the richness of the language the writers used. It was wonderful – almost poetic. Mostly lost these days to quick, functional communication, but what about this:

CI Fred Abberline ‘Your face is known in these parts, Edmund. You raise hell, word will travel.’

DI Edmund Reid ‘There is hell to be raised, Fred, and I am to raise it.’

Or this:

Susan Hart ‘The regrets I have accrued in this life could fill all the oceans twice over. But that, him, the Captain… not one single moment.’

Or the number of times a character says to another ‘let’s parley’ and then proceeds to punch them in the face.

Or how about these one-liners:

Preacher ‘I make my home where men’s fear lies. I fight it for them.’

DI Edmund Reid ‘Money never begat courtesy, Bennet.’

Madoc Faulkner ‘I have little clemency for men behind desks in high places with low honour.’

Dr Karl Crabbe ‘Do you know, inspector, of all the emotions, which is the most insidious and entrapping? Shame. It carves its home in the marrow of your bones and rests there for all eternity.’

DI Edmund Reid ‘Evil men do as they please, men who would be good, they must do as they are allowed.’

Take that, teenagers – have a go at shortening those glorious phrases while allowing them to continue to shine so brightly… Would that we could find a way to ‘glow up’ some of the eloquence of ‘old-fashioned’ language to use right now…like IRL.

None of that solves my current problem, however. Which flexy words to use for my fictional teenager’s convos? Ah well, I’ll just have to try not to be too sus. No cap.

July 2025