Well, I have read very many stories here that discuss American football. It seems to be taken as read that the world understands the references. I have written rugby into my tale, a sport that has a far, far wider following than gridiron, but I realise that there are many folk who know absolutely nothing of it.
I have also written one of my other passions into my stuff, namely music. I get really into the swing and the flow and....
How do people write a "specialist" episode without spending half a chapter explaining "pastime for dummies"?
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good question
As a reader, I'd prefer that the writer not stop and explain things. Go ahead and use the specialized terminology, I find it more immersive that way. Of course it doesn't hurt to be a little descriptive, at the same time :)
If absolutely necessary, I can stop and call up wiki. But it's my choice, and I don't have to wade through explanation if it's not necessary.
Now, if your plot hinges on some subtle detail, that complicates things.
Seeing that title...
...I thought you were going to publicise this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mastermind/quiz/ (Hopefully it's playable outside the UK!)
Which is based on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_%28TV_series%29
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
I think ...
... if I wrote a story involving my own specialist interests, sailing say, I'd just jump right in and let the readers catch up unless understanding the terminology was crucial to understanding the subject when I might slide in the odd word to clarify. I wouldn't include a 'How to sail' section.
Lets face it, we Brits have had to pick up strange US school systems on the fly with no explanations at all. I still have no idea what a 'Junior' or 'Sophomore' is and I don't care. And as for American football ... :)
I've had it relatively easy in the case of 'Something to Declare' because I have been peripherally involved in the folk scene in the past, played rugby very reluctantly at school and I'm still quite heavily involved in cycling. I have greater problems with a lot of the stories here which reference TV programmes I've never heard of and celebrities unknown to me but I just ignore my ignorance and the stories still work.
I wonder if the fact that the life styles of your characters isn't familiar to the majority of readers here, who are presumably US citizens, accounts for the scandalously low reader numbers and comments you appear to be getting. I know your main protagonist is Welsh but much of the story takes place in a quintessentially English atmosphere. At least that's how it seems to me. Perhaps that's because all your characters live and work in England. I strongly recommend that people try your story. They'll be hugely rewarded for their efforts.
Robi
I think you're doing fine as
I think you're doing fine as is. Sure, I don't catch many of the references, but I don't understand many references to American football. Or regular football, for that matter. I'm just not into sports much. The story is still enjoyable without understanding every little detail, and sometimes I learn something new!
Saless
"But it is also tradition that times *must* and always do change, my friend." - Eddie Murphy, Coming To America
Danielle J has a knack for that.
Read Chess Prodigy, her Golf story, Mulligans and her Baseball story, Double Play.
All of these are games I have no interest in and know little about, yet she drew me in to the stories and kept me interested. I even learned something!
Mr. Ram
American/Canadian gridiron football
Gridiron football started out as Rugby, though the first football games at American colleges were probably more Association style than Rugby. In 1876, four of the Ivy League colleges adopted Rugby Union rules with only minor differences using compromises worked out mostly between Harvard and McGill (of Montreal). Gradually over the years, new rules were introduced, pretty much one at a time.
The same thing was happening in England, Canada, Australia and other Rugby playing countries. Because of American and Canadian teams frequently playing each other, their styles both changed into versions of gridiron football while in Australia, a different variety flourished. Even in England, Rugby split into two main varieties when the breakaway Northern Union became Northern League.
Both varieties of English Rugby continued to be recolonized around the world especially in the Empire/Commonwealth and in Europe. They both continued to evolve, too.
By the time President Teddy Roosevelt mandated helmets in the American collegiate game, gridiron football had surely evolved from Rugby, with trys called touchdowns, lines of scrimmage and the system of downs. This rather paralleled the development of Aussie footy and Rugby and Association styles from the earlier game (late 1700s-early 1800s) which was something like all four types but varied from place to place.
The different versions of football (even if you include basketball) are all more similar to each other than the stick-and-ball circuit games that have evolved in wildly different versions from cricket and baseball (which at least look a bit alike) to golf and hurling. Other goal games, like lacrosse and polo, evolved from different traditions but the football versions were pretty much the same game less than 180 years ago.
The split between baseball and cricket is older than that by a couple of centuries, probably. About 500 years ago, everyone played crookball in the summer in which the object was to use a shepherd's crook to knock a round object into a hole in the ground or through a wicket or over a style or past a defender who was also using a crook.
Compared to the difference between golf, baseball, shuffleboard and hockey (all probably derived from crookball), gridiron IS Rugby, just with local rules. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
To be fair...
I'm going to an AFL (Aussie rules) game on Saturday, in fact! I'm going to the MCG {Melbourne Cricket Ground} to watch the Collingwood Magpies versus the Adelaide Crows. Mah baybee keeps chanting, "Carn the Crows!" even though she isn't an AFL fan at all... she just like the chant, which is the only one she knows. She loves to shout it at obvious supporters of other teams just to see them riled. It is approaching the finals, but we don't know if this is one of the knockout games or a regular season game. Even though none of us attending really fully understand the game, we're all looking forward to our day of Bogan-ness!
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Don't you believe it
They have a huge stadium in Perth, called the Wacca in which the West Coast eagles play, it's in a nice colonial styled part of the city.
Angharad
Angharad
Perth
I know it well! One of my favourite places in the world. Perth that is, not the stadium. Is it there or in Brisbane where the police headquarters tower block "just happens" to back onto the stadium?
localisms
there are a lot of stories that take advantage of a particular location or group - there are distinctly British, Irish, and American stories. Those of us who may not be part of that particular group or environment may not catch all the nuances, but i think we would miss them if they were not there. I think the readers here are smart enough to look up anything you mention that they don't understand.
There are problems
When authors start using insider terms and phrases that are not readily looked up. Sometimes, such terms are used in a throw-away manner to set the feel. We've all seen enough medical shows, for instance, to be familiar with a doctor shouting "Gimme an amp of Epi, stat!". Yet the average man on the street likely couldn't explain what the three terms mean. But if the focus of a story revolves around a sport or a field of endeavor which many of your readers are not familiar with in the first place; and then you start using insider terms you won't find in a manual on the subject, then you start losing readers.
Th stories mentioned above were some I never even bothered to open, much less read. I have zero interest in sports, especially (but not limited to) Golf, Tennis, Hockey (field or ice), basketball, soccer or rugby. I also don't play card games, chess, checkers, board or video games.
What I'm trying to say here is the author should be prepared to do a bit of explaining to hir readers, or accept that a larger number than usual of hir readers will quickly be elsewhere.
Getting back to Dorthy's comment, a little flavor is fine. But if all the characters started talking like Tom in Angharad's stories, then a lot of readers will get confused, frustrated and annoyed and give up.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
Have Some Fun
When trying to explain something that is foreign or complicated and the story lends it to a comic interlude, have some fun with it. Take football. This is how I would do it.
-----------------
“You wanna know how to play football? Well, listen up good, pilgrim, ‘cause I’m gonna tell you this only once.â€
“Get 22 guys together who’s cumulative IG is somewhere between 100 and 110. Divide them into two teams and put them on a field that’s 100 yards long in America and 110 yards long in Canada.â€
“Give them a ball that ain’t shaped like a ball, one that’s covered in the skin of a dead pig. Just make sure any guys on your team that are Muslims are blockers.â€
“Give this ball to one team, tell them to kick it to the other team, then tell them to get it back. Clear so far?â€
“Now, if you have the ball, it’s your job to get it past, through, over or around the other team that just gave it to you by throwing it or running with it. It’s your call, ace. If you do throw it, just make sure one of your guys catches it, otherwise you go no where it it hits the ground or, the other team keeps it if they catch it.â€
“Now, here’s where it gets complicated. You have to move the ball ten yards in four go’s or less. Otherwise you have to give the ball back to the other guys. Don’t asked me why. It’s the rules.â€
“If you manage to move the ball past, through, over or around the other team all the way down the field until one of your players find himself holding the ball while he’s in the middle of the band or the cheerleaders, you get six points with an option to score one or two more points.â€
“Once you earn your points, you have the give the other team the ball and let them do the same thing.â€
“Any questions?â€
--------------------------
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
I'd probably
either leave it for the readers to figure out or more than likely write a description of the action of the game itself for at least an end, inning or first touchdown or score. Rugby is easy to understand as a lot of universities even in the Americas plat it to some degree. Thank god it's not cricket way too many terms there.
Bailey Summers
FANTASTIC question!
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
And then there is this...
Most of what I know about American "football" (you know, the one where you hardly ever put your feet on a ball that's not round) is from this essay by Sydney Michelle I found at Storysite:
http://www2.storysite.org/story/whatitwuzwuzfootball~01.html
Even not knowing half the terms, it was worth a lot of laughs.
Irish Dutch American Cricket from the Caribbean
One of the best books I've read lately was written by an Irish/Turk who was raised in The Netherlands, educated in England, lives in New York and plays a lot of cricket with people originally from various Caribbean Islands. It's about an Irishman who lives in Manhattan and was raised in Holland and plays Cricket with a bunch of guys that come from the islands.
There were about three or eight times during the book where I almost put it down and wiki-ed cricket, or ska, or steelpans, or social hierarchical status among Commonwealth emigrants to New York City, but I never did. Because I was too interested in the story. I think if these things had all been explained, rather than allowed to simmer, the book would not have been as good a read. YMMV
Irrelevant details
Don't describe the specific actions in the sporting event; just tell the reader how those actions impacted the character. We don't need play-by-play color commentary. Generally all that matters is whether Athlete X's team won or lost, and how well Athlete Y played in the game, or if mistakes were made. And most of all, we need to know how it makes them feel. You can use technical jargon for things like what position the characters play, but it shouldn't matter much to the reader.
Details
Agreed...up to apoint! One of the prime motivators of my character is down to some technical specifics, in other words how the game works. That's my balancing act; I have to assume a non-playing reader and feed them sufficient info to let them understand why hitting a fly half in possession is such a buzz for a flanker, how it makes her feel, without sliding off into a dissertation on blitz versus drift defence. What I did, in the end, was fudge it by trying to make the explanation slightly comic,as nancy did above.
Edited to add:
Which is also why I skipped the actual words to the astonishingly filthy Rugby song "The Alphabet".As with sex scenes, it is sufficient to know it took place; you don't have to be able to sing along with the participants..
The songs ...
... are probably the best things about rugby. Of course my favourite is the Engineers Song :)
A cycling friend of mine used to play rugby in his youth because he was tall and very fast (it helped him to a few cycling championships as well). However he was from a relatively staid working class background and he told me how much he found the disgraceful behaviour (as he saw it) of his usually much better educated team mates (solicitors, doctors etc) quite shocking. It's funny how people used to tolerate bad behaviour from the posher middle/upper class (that's the British definition btw) youth whilst condemning similar behaviour from the rougher end of the social spectrum.
Writers should be aware that too much concentration on a special group will inevitably put off many potential readers whilst attracting those who are members of that group. For example, there was a story here a few months ago which tagged golf as a primary feature which meant I didn't even open it. I think it's OK to use a sport or game as a metaphor provided it doesn't become so absorbed in the sport the characters become almost secondary. Jargon is useful shorthand for aficionados but, without any explanation, leaves others in the dark.
Robi
That engineer
Did he lell you, before he died,then?
When else?
:)
Now you see an example of an 'in' joke understood by few and to be avoided at all costs in fiction :)
Robi
Rugby and Football
There was a saying... I can't remember exactly, but it goes something like:
"Rugby is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen, and Football is a gentlemen's game played by hooligans."
Penny
Having played fly half
there is nothing pleasurable about being hit by thirteen stone plus of ugly forward, there is about dodging the tackle and either getting the pass or kick away, or starting a run at the enemy. Mind you I've also stopped flankers, when they were doing a back row move and I bravely tackled, well okay, he fell over me.
Rugby is a game played by men with queer shaped balls.
Angharad :)
Angharad
Specialised language
I never let my ignorance stop me from enjoying a story.
For the most part...specialised language can be skipped
over much like a sex scene...
Its like reading about a race, or competion. Knowing the
rules for rugger isnt required to enjoy a story. The
characters run around,get muddy. Injured etc. Its
the facts, emotions, story building stuff not the # of
yards/meters the ball has to be moved to make a down.
The supporting details make the story move along.
Talk to the reader
Where I think explanation is needed, I will often talk directly to the reader as an aside from the main story.
"OK, for those of you who don't live in the UK, I'd better explain that..."
It enables you to put in a brief description, and in my view, a story shouldn't need more than a brief description or you'll lose the reader's interest.
It is of course much easier to do when working in first person than third, although they can stll be used.
Indeed
Yes, dear reader, I do that