Since you're waxing eloquent on Nick already, here's a question I've been trying to figure out on my own, but would prefer your insight. Nick has a difficult time with written words because demons don't use them. But (thankfully for us) his sense of sarcasm and humor is quite well developed. Why are spoken words so much easier for him?
The short answer is, I don’t think spoken words are much easier for him. Nick has problems with words in every capacity.
Even Nick’s PoV (the way he sees the world) is affected by this: the sentences in Demon’s Lexicon are shorter, choppier, the rhythm off, the word choice different and simpler, than in any of my other books. (Of course… since it was my first book it was not immediately clear that this was a *thing* I was doing. This may have been poorly thought out of me: give El Dummo a prize. ;))
But more on Nick and speech! I have actually been asked this before, which is I think a compliment for Nick’s sarcastic charms. ;)
I remember being puzzled about it at first, until I worked out that I was being asked why Nick was *good* with words–and I could totally understand why people thought he was, even while I didn’t think he was.
Nick learns to speak at age four, and in a way that human children don’t. So it was quite a struggle to get him to talk at all.
Once he could talk, he went with Cold Hard Facts and using words as weapons.
Nick is a guy who uses most things as weapons. His own body, actual weapons, a drop-dead stare: he is unconsciously hostile to pretty much the entire world he’s living in, a world not his own. Once he could use words, they became another thing in his arsenal.
And he does have certain advantages, when it comes to using his words–he’s much less conflicted about words than most of us are: he doesn’t want people to like him, the way most of us do. He doesn’t want to look cool or smart or kind. He doesn’t feel self-conscious in the same way other people do. He definitely doesn’t have any interest in big declarations, or indeed in meaningful interactions. He doesn’t care about being too mean. Shakespeare said ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ and Nick certainly doesn’t babble, obscuring humour or meaning with too many words. All these things can make us stumble and second-guess our words, and none of those things are obstacles for Nick.
But I still don’t think of Nick as good with words, in anything but a very limited way.
In Demon’s Covenant, Alan and Nick’s father Daniel Ryves writes in his diary: ‘I have a theory Nicky developed his smart mouth to stop Alan beaming at him every time he spoke. Nick doesn’t like it when we make a fuss.’
Nick’s dad could see Nick using words to deflect something Nick is even less comfortable with: human feelings. The rest of us use words to express those feelings, at least sometimes. Not Nick! At certain points of great emotional turmoil in each of the three books, Nick is literally at a loss for words.
The Demon’s Lexicon: ‘He couldn’t seem to find any words, just a hollow feeling where words should have been. He opened his mouth and an odd sound came out, like a croaking bird’ and ‘As usual, he could not find the words to say what he meant.’ and ‘Nick shook too, but not from horror or grief. He just felt cold, empty of the right words. He knew how to talk, but he did not know what to say. He could not give Alan what he did not have.’
Nick is not crying or anything: there is no physical reason for him not to be able to speak. He is not struggling with how many things he has to say. He is past capacity: he has shorted out and lost his grip on words completely.
I personally find it much easier to be funny than to be sincere, and I think I gave that to Nick (though of course I have a much easier time with words than Nick does!). Again, it’s a method of deflection. Being sincere is terribly difficult. Nick doesn’t want to be sincere, and he can’t lie. Nick is in a tricky position, even if he had a natural facility for words… and he does not. Sarcasm is an escape hatch out of being sincere.
Words go wrong for all of us occasionally, and they do for Nick, too. Nick does try to be sincere sometimes, and even helpful and supportive: usually when he tries, he horrifies Mae, Jamie and even Alan. Honestly sharing his worldview does not go well for Nick. ‘Did he just tell me “well done” for KILLING A GUY,’ Mae must think at one stage. What a horrorshow. Someone stop him!
Nick is a guy who does have a snappy retort a lot of the time, but his humour is largely reactive: he would never tell a funny story. He takes verbal cues from people who are better verbally than he is, i.e. almost everyone: Alan, Mae, Jamie, even Gerald and Black Arthur. He is verbally cruel to shut down people when they talk about things he finds uncomfortable and upsetting, and verbally cruel to drive people away, but he doesn’t know how to use words to draw them closer.
Nick has learned to use words as weapons, and he can be good with words in this one way, on a fairly shallow level.
We all use words as shields, and sometimes as swords. But the best way to use words is as tools: words as ways to clearly communicate what’s going on with us to others, words to build a bridge from us to someone else.
Nick’s not great at that. But he is like the rest of us in one way: he’s learning. We all have to work out how to tell people the truth of us, how to convey real meaning. I spend all my time trying to think of better ways to tell stories. ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words.’ (We were almost out without a Taylor Swift quote! But I would never do that to you all.)
We’re all learning how to say it better, all trying to finally, finally reach the point where we can say it right.
It takes a lifetime to learn how to really use your words.
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