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#WritersCoffeeClub 9 Dec
Is it like slay to use sick street talk like in your lit literature, or is that just gonna give you salty vibes?
NOTHING dates (or localizes) writing like street talk: it's really best avoided except in dialog (or narrative viewpoint), when you deploy it to put a datestamp or location on your prose.
Be warned that old slang may age into quaintness or hilarity for cultural reasons, or just render your writing impenetrable and obscure.
@cstross Some sci-fi authors sidestep the short shelf-life problem by creating their street slang from scratch. That way, they're not seduced into assuming that the readers of 2020 are going to be impressed by the street talk of 2010.
@davidleeholcomb Speaking as an SF author … my stretch goal is creating a new piece of slang that goes the distance. ( @pluralistic hit it out of the ball park with "enshittification".)
@cstross @davidleeholcomb @pluralistic :
I have no idea if it will stay but I’m quite proud to say that the title of my latest novel "bikepunk" has been generalized by Paris-Match as the name of a grass root anarcho-punk movement to fight cars and capitalism.
They managed to find a "bike punk" zine from the 70’s and a "bike punx" rock song form the 90’s (I was not aware of any of them) to write a whole paper about the "bikepunk movement"
spoiler: there’s no such movement, just a book ;-)