Speech Impediments - Yay Or Nay?

[SFCTaleSpinner]

I've just got a story back from an editor and I'm beginning to notice a pattern.

One of my dialogue lines, in which I tried to capture the drunken slurring of my character by removing some of the vowels, has been edited so that now the words are spelt correctly.

It occurs to me that I've encountered this before, all the way back to junior high English. I have a tendency to phoeneticize my characters' lines when they have thick accents or distorted speech. But now I realize that pretty much every time I've had a critical eye run over these stories, the editor always reverts my dialogue to proper English. (Yes, it's only sinking in now. Yes, I am slow on the uptake. )

So, is this the way it ought to be? Just write the line the character's trying to say and just ignore the exotic phonetics?

 

[AwkwardMD]

That's a choice. Dialogue is dialogue. You don't correct someone elses quote when you quote them. That's why we put it in quotation marks. You as the storyteller are relaying what happened and who said what to whom. Nobody can tell you what your characters said.

I have a story with a dwarf, and as a stylistic choice, I have phoneticized her dialogue with a faux-Scottish accent. She pronounces I as Ah, she doesn't pronounce any standalone h's, and she tends to drop off letters at the ends of words that form a glottal stop ("Ah 'aven' 'ad my breakfas' ye'.") I even make fun of myself by having characters mock her for having an inconsistent accent, which is really my fault for not writing it uniformly.

There are no wrong choices. Do it how you want it.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I'm sure some would argue that clarity is more important, and that obfuscating words in a literary piece of work is counterproductive, but for me this is a classic case of "show don't tell".

 

[sr71plt]

Think it best to use just a smattering/hint of them to get the speech impediment across. If you use one it should be used consistently throughout--and that immediately points out that they should be used sparingly so that they don't intrude on the read too much.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My rule of thumb for this sort of issue is to ask myself: what do I want the reader to know and feel?

If I'm writing a story about a city slicker who gets lost in the backwoods and I want to emphasise the fish-out-of-water angle, I'll play up the accents. The POV character is having trouble understanding what anybody's saying, so I put the readers in the same boat.

On the other hand, if my POV character can understand what's going on, I'll tone down the accents so the readers don't have to work for it.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

My rule of thumb for this sort of issue is to ask myself: what do I want the reader to know and feel?

If I'm writing a story about a city slicker who gets lost in the backwoods and I want to emphasise the fish-out-of-water angle, I'll play up the accents. The POV character is having trouble understanding what anybody's saying, so I put the readers in the same boat.

On the other hand, if my POV character can understand what's going on, I'll tone down the accents so the readers don't have to work for it.

This. The one time my POV character was dealing with a drunken roommate, I gave a paragraph of slurred speech, and then the POV character broke the 4th wall to the extent of explaining that she'd translate the speech from that point on because retelling it was annoying.

Foreign language speakers with english as a second language are interesting to write - I learn the very basics of their native language's grammar and then occasionally permute their English to suit. So a Romanian character might in a moment of distraction say "I so much hate it!" I did have one reader complain my Japanese college student in the US was a little too good with her English at points, so it's possible I'm cutting them too much slack.

 

[Nezhul]

It's perfectly normal to use speech impediments in your work. Take Pratchett, Rowling - hell, any sucessful writer. They use it when they need to. To the point where it's sometimes hard to understand what the character wanted to say, but that makes for a good feel of how drunk he is.

Your editor is just not very good at writing and the feel of expressive tricks, priding himself mostly on grammar and spelling. I would confront such edotor and push for my own expressive freedom as an author if I feel that the scene benefits from such style.
Readers are not dumb. They will understand. If we start to reduce every book into grammatical and stylistic perfection - we can just go ahead and stop writing alltogether.

 

[Nezhul]

.....
double post

 

[Bramblethorn]

Foreign language speakers with english as a second language are interesting to write - I learn the very basics of their native language's grammar and then occasionally permute their English to suit. So a Romanian character might in a moment of distraction say "I so much hate it!" I did have one reader complain my Japanese college student in the US was a little too good with her English at points, so it's possible I'm cutting them too much slack.

If I'm trying to establish an ESL character who has good English, I'll sometimes do that through over-correct/over-formal English - they know the rules but they don't know when it's OK to break them, or they're used to being given less slack than a native would.

For less-fluent characters, yeah, idiomatic grammar is often a good way to convey that foreignness without confusing the reader.

 

[jehoram]

I think there's a box called "Notes to Moderator" or something like that, which you encounter when you're submitting a story. You might want to put an explanatory note there, signaling that the "misspelling" is intentional, and part of the story. Has anybody else gone this route?

 

[AwkwardMD]

I have not, and in hindsight I'm surprised that my scottish dwarf didn't get my story rejected.

 

[jburton042]

I don't think the OP is having an issue getting stories submitted. It's the editor making corrections.

I'd suggest talking to your editor and explaining what you're trying to accomplish with the dialogue. That way the editor understands your intentions up front. Hopefully with the result that they can let you know if you're overdoing it on the inpedement rather than flat out correcting it all.

 

[Handley_Page]

I've just got a story back from an editor and I'm beginning to notice a pattern.

One of my dialogue lines, in which I tried to capture the drunken slurring of my character by removing some of the vowels, has been edited so that now the words are spelt correctly.

It occurs to me that I've encountered this before, all the way back to junior high English. I have a tendency to phoeneticize my characters' lines when they have thick accents or distorted speech. But now I realize that pretty much every time I've had a critical eye run over these stories, the editor always reverts my dialogue to proper English. (Yes, it's only sinking in now. Yes, I am slow on the uptake. )

So, is this the way it ought to be? Just write the line the character's trying to say and just ignore the exotic phonetics?

You only have to do it once or twice. Afterwards a reference to "his accent got very think " will suffice, I think.

 

[Athalia]

Thorny subject. On the whole, it's best avoided in direct dialog, although it's accepted that the impediment can be specified when the character is introduced: "In her speech, 'r' sounds would come out pronounced as 'w' sounds, a trait that some found endearing and others found annoying."

But unless you want the character to invoke Elmer Fudd every time she opens her mouth, you'd best leave it at that.

The only exception I can think of offhand is when a character's normal speech changes under stress, and you can use that as a device to convey the character's agitation.

 

[NoJo]

A yeth from me

 

[Handley_Page]

A yeth from me

Oh Vewy

 

[sr71plt]

A widdle bit would be all wight.