Drunken Dialogue

Does anybody have any experience writing intoxicated characters?

I'm working on a story where two characters go out drinking and one ends up pretty inebriated. I'm trying to decide how to handle the dialog. Part of me thinks that I should show the reader how drunk the character is with dialog like this:

"I luv you, man," he slurred. "Thiss guy... This iz th' bes' guy I know righ' here. He iz depen'able an' loyal an' he'd give you th' shirt off'a hiz back... Heez jus' th' bes' guy aroun'!"

I could introduce dialouge like this slowly as the characters drink more and more. But part of me thinks it's just muddled and confusing and hard to read. And maybe in this case it would be better to write the dialog with better grammar and use the narrative to explain how drunk the character is. Something like this:

"I love you, man" he slurred. His eyelids were heavy and he swayed on the bar stool as he continued his monolouge. "This guy... This is the best guy I know, right here. He's dependable and loyal and he'd give you the shirt off his back..." he declared, tripping on his consonants and lisping each S.

Any thoughts or insights into which is more effective?

Thanks in advance.

My ‘rule’ is: make it as easy as possible for the reader.

‘Iz’ and ‘is’ are both pronounced the same way – so why mess with the spelling? Same with ‘heez’ and ‘he’s’. And dropping the ‘e’ off ‘the’ doesn’t further your cause one iota either.

By all means, drop in a bit of ‘inebriated’ dialogue. But only enough to suggest that the character is inebriated.

Good luck.

Underdo it, don't overdo it, and as SamScribble says, don't make it hard on your reader.

There's no reason to replace "love" with "luv." They are pronounced the same.

Don't feel you have to mimic in writing every tic in the person's slurred speech. A little goes a long way to convey the speaker's drunkenness.

A few dropped "ts" or an extra "s" or two at the end of "this" should do it.

Your second example is much more effective.

The first example sounds like an actual drunk, meaning it`s far more realistic.
The second example describes and actual drunk.

You just have to consider the following question: How long do you think you can stand listening to an actual drunk before you move on to someone else to talk to? If the answer is 'pretty short', you can imagine how people reading the slurring speech of a drunk can also stand it for a short time before they move on to another story.

Still, I think you can use the slurred speech, as long as it`s sparingly. No entire paragraphs of drunken dialogue, but a couple of them doesn`t hurt. It will create a proper atmosphere for your setting at least.
Your remark that they are getting drunk probably means that the speech will only detoriate more and that would mean trouble because you have to decide when to cut it off before people walk away. You might want to cut back on the drunken dialogue by letting one of them fall asleep in a cab or so, allowing you to focus on describing events and thoughts instead of having to work your way through a long slurred conversation.

Another thing you can do is picking a couple of words that detoriate. So instead of

"I luv you, man," he slurred. "Thiss guy... This iz th' bes' guy I know righ' here. He iz depen'able an' loyal an' he'd give you th' shirt off'a hiz back... Heez jus' th' bes' guy aroun'!"

you could opt for:

"I love you, man," he slurred. "This guy... This is the bes' guy I know right here. He is dependable an' loyal an' he'd give you th' shirt off'a his back... He's just th' bes' guy around!"

You can still feel his intoxication, but it`s far less tedious to read. And I'm only stripping 3 particular words here ('the', 'best' and 'and') besides the obvious contraction for 'off of his back' (which sounds about right in this particular context).
But if you handpick a couple of words to detoriate and keep that consistent throughout the drunken phase, that should do the trick. You could even start with 1 word, then moving on to 2, 3 and 4 words to indicate the state of intoxication, but like Simon said, don`t overdo it. In the above example I picked 3 very common words and although it`s a lot better to read than the original, they are too common and will annoy a sentence pretty fast.

Agree Simon, the same second example works fine. I think you just sow the seed of drunkeness in a little bit of dialogue, and maybe use description to do the rest (remember how I set up the alien voice in my last story?). Give the reader's imagination something to work on.

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I don't personally have much experience writing drunken dialogue but I can see that becoming distracting quickly. There are cases where I've enjoyed colloquialism, slang, and jargon (Zazie at the Metro!) but I think it would work against you in this context. A sprinkle here and there might be a nice touch, but I'd keep flourishes like that to a minimum and focus more on the descriptive text as in your second example. Sounds like it will be a fun task, good luck!

And another thought …

Many years ago, I was working on a radio script in which one of the characters was a serious lush. I thought that I had written him pretty well. But then the script editor said: ‘Maybe just keep in mind that no drunk ever sets out to sound drunk. They’re normally doing their very best to sound sober.’

Thanks everyone for all the great advice. I've got the scene written with a lot more confidence now than I had before.