My infamous Halloween-and-Christmas actor's monologue. "Knecht Ruprecht, or The Bad Boy's Christmas," has sent children shrieking in terror to their beds. It was written with the voice of Boris Karloff in mind, and now I have revised it to make it more Karloffian and more British. How? By eliminating almost all contractions, and adding "shall" and "do" in several places. What had sounded liked a gangster-demon talking in a boy's own jargon, is now more horrifyingly polite. I was surprised at how many contractions were in the original, considering how I shun them in my own writing, but the piece is dialogue and I was trying to simulate rather hurried speech, the only place where contractions should be permitted. I am much happier with this new version, Read it aloud, think of Boris, and send a child to bed with nightmares.
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