I just wrote an e-mail to my beloved beta, in which I whined about those exact things you desribe.
It's not the grammar (or word choice or "school English") that bugs me, I'll trust my beta to fix that. It's just the way that I feel extremely limited when it comes to my possibility of expression, in two ways: a) on the language level and b) on the cultural level.
a) I have dictionaries and a thesaurus - but I can only get so far with that when it comes to the language of a Chicago flatfoot with experimantal hair. I always have the feeling that my Kowalski sounds incredibly laboured. Or I find something that sounds perfectly him - and then find out that I just used a very "Southern" expression he wouldn't use - or if he woudld I'd need a backstory like an aunt from Mississippi who always used tht phrase... well, it's exhausting, really.
b) references to television series every American aged 30 to 50 knows. Quotes from great authors, so common everyone uses them. Growing up in the Midwest of the 70's. Junk food brand names. Common knowledge, urban legends, collective subconscious... all of those things and a couple of thousand more are completely foreign territory to me. Of course, there are always many things about a character one has to develop a feeling for/do research, but if I were writing about a German character It'd be far fewer. And I don't just have to learn and read about many things, in the process of writing there are so many details I don't even consider, like... it'd feel strange to me to let a character get some groceries after 8 p.m. Stuff like that is like... out of my mental reach, as long as I don't specifically do research. Know what I mean? And all those things feel incredibly limiting in my writing. Like I'm missing thousands of references, details and attitudes that can bring a story to life.
no subject
It's not the grammar (or word choice or "school English") that bugs me, I'll trust my beta to fix that. It's just the way that I feel extremely limited when it comes to my possibility of expression, in two ways: a) on the language level and b) on the cultural level.
a) I have dictionaries and a thesaurus - but I can only get so far with that when it comes to the language of a Chicago flatfoot with experimantal hair. I always have the feeling that my Kowalski sounds incredibly laboured. Or I find something that sounds perfectly him - and then find out that I just used a very "Southern" expression he wouldn't use - or if he woudld I'd need a backstory like an aunt from Mississippi who always used tht phrase... well, it's exhausting, really.
b) references to television series every American aged 30 to 50 knows. Quotes from great authors, so common everyone uses them. Growing up in the Midwest of the 70's. Junk food brand names. Common knowledge, urban legends, collective subconscious... all of those things and a couple of thousand more are completely foreign territory to me. Of course, there are always many things about a character one has to develop a feeling for/do research, but if I were writing about a German character It'd be far fewer. And I don't just have to learn and read about many things, in the process of writing there are so many details I don't even consider, like... it'd feel strange to me to let a character get some groceries after 8 p.m. Stuff like that is like... out of my mental reach, as long as I don't specifically do research. Know what I mean? And all those things feel incredibly limiting in my writing. Like I'm missing thousands of references, details and attitudes that can bring a story to life.