Elgin identifies eight basic types of verbal violence and the modes for dealing with each one.This book changed my life. I read it in college, at a time when I was becoming aware of how much could be contained in language. It helped me deal with dysfunctional relationships and it provided strategies for dealing with verbal bullies that I still use on a regular basis. Elgin is also a science fiction writer that I highly recommend, including her book, Native Tongue. I still buy anything I see by Elgin, because I know I’ll end up giving it away.
What: The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense helps identify sneaky verbal attacks like back-handed compliments, insults disguised as jokes, and other jabs, as well as providing tactics for dealing with each other.
Who: Read this if you’ve ever felt bullied and didn’t know exactly why. Or if you’ve ever been accused of bullying someone in communication.
Why: Even if you feel totally in command of conversations, this book will help you write better dialogue by showing many of the constructions bullies use, as well as a better understanding of verbal interactions overall.
When: Read this when you’re at your wits end in dealing with a friend, colleague, or anyone else.
Where and how: Keep it handy for frequent reading. If you don’t understand what all the fuss is about, try working through the exercises.
Great suggestion, Cat. As a lawyer, I have no issue with responding to openly aggressive attacks. But I do struggle with those passive-aggressive, snide comments from “frenemies”. I always question how you respond to someone who doesn’t actually say what they are thinking and just implies it. I’ll check it out!
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
You may also like...
You Should Read This: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Cold Comfort Farm was Stella Gibbons' first novel but not her last - 22 other literary works followed it.Another adequate movie that was a brilliant book. I came to Cold Comfort Farm having seen it referenced somewhere as a comic novel. It was that, in spades.
What:Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons was published in 1932. It’s a send-up of all the books of the time romanticizing the rural life. It references many of the popular novels of its time, adding a layer of appreciation if you’re familiar with that work, but it isn’t necessary to know that much order to enjoy it.
Who: People who enjoy English humor at its subtlest will particularly enjoy Cold Comfort Farm, as will those familiar with the literature of the time. And, if you are a woman who has ever been hit on by a particular type of academic male, you will recognize Mr. Mybug and glory in the very very accurate portrayal of a man soaked in nature’s fecund blessing.
Why: If you’re considering writing humor, this is an excellent book to take a look at for its myriad of different strategies, including a very accurate send-up of the ways dialect are often portrayed. At the same time, it remains an interesting and engaging story.
When: Read this when you want a little humor and charm. Read it when you have been too long among the self-important, and need to see them skewered a little.
Where and how: Don’t read it in the woodshed; there’s something nasty in there.
Ammonite is beautifully real, and a good example of the heights speculative fiction can reach.Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith, is subtle and beautiful and a terrific piece of speculative fiction. An anthropologist, Marghe Taishan, arrives on the planet GP, there to test a vaccine against the deadly virus that has killed all but a few of the original colonists. She finds that the survivors, all women, have developed the ability to give birth without men.
The book won both a Lambda and Tiptree Award, and it’s easy to see why. A dynamite protagonist interacting with intriguing and beautifully three-dimensional characters. The world is fabulously drawn, evocative, and both the anthropological and physical science are accurate and carefully thought out.
Ammonite was Griffith’s debut novel. I’d also recommend her most recent, the absolutely amazing Hild, a retelling of the life of historical figure, Saint Hild of Whitby. Come to think of it, nothing I’ve read by her has been shabby, including Slow River, a near-future thriller that is also beautifully told and engaging.
I had the luck to sit in on a class Griffith taught for Clarion West a couple of years ago. She is a consummate, careful wordsmith. The word “luminous” keeps appearing in reviews of her work, and that’s because it’s so beautifully crafted that it seems to glow from within.
The first three paragraphs of a piece set up so much. Here’s the first three of Ammonite, to give you a taste:
Marghe’s suit was still open at neck and wrist, and the helmet rested in the crook of her left arm. An ID flash was sealed to her should” “Marguerite Angelica Taishan, SEC.” The suit was wrinkled and smelled of just-unrolled plastic, and she felt heavy and awkward, even in the two-thirds gravity of orbital station Estrade.
She stood by the airlock at the inside end of A Section. THe door was already open. Waiting. She rested the fingertips of her right hand on the smooth ceramic of the raised hatch frame; it was cool, shocking after two days of the close human heat of A Section.
The sill of the airlock reached her knees; easy enough to step over. No great barrier. The lock chamber itself was two strides across. THe dar door was still closed, sealed to another sill, like this one. Four steps from here to B Section. Four steps. She had recontracted with SEC, endured six months of retraining on Earth, traveled eighteen months aboard the Terragin, and spent the last two days on the Estrade bumping elbows with the three-member crew, all to take those four steps.
2 Responses
Great suggestion, Cat. As a lawyer, I have no issue with responding to openly aggressive attacks. But I do struggle with those passive-aggressive, snide comments from “frenemies”. I always question how you respond to someone who doesn’t actually say what they are thinking and just implies it. I’ll check it out!
It is such a USEFUL book.