Concerning spelling

[Timesup]

Wondering what you would think. I’m writing a story where a couple role plays and the wife adopts a southern drawl. I state this in the text so the reader is aware. Is this adequate or should I spell each word out the way it should sound were she actually speaking? Example: instead of doctor, she would say doctuh, which in much of the south is normal pronunciation. Same with dropping the’ings’. As in ,” just don’t know what’s happenin’ to me!” You get it. What’s your take?

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Consistency will be the key.

You can either write the dialogue as it would sound, such as you describe, or use repeated references to the dialect in the dialogue tags.

Personally, I would like to read the dialogue as the character would say it. That's how I write it in my stories.

 

[Timesup]

I thought she would sound sexier written out the way she sounded. Her intention is to, after all, be sexy.

 

[Writer61]

Wondering what you would think. I’m writing a story where a couple role-plays, and the wife adopts a Southern drawl. I state this in the text so the reader is aware. Is this adequate or should I spell each word out the way it should sound were she actually speaking? Example: instead of doctor, she would say doctuh, which in much of the south is normal pronunciation. Same with dropping the’ings’. As in ,” just don’t know what’s happenin’ to me!” You get it. What’s your take?

It might depend upon the extent. I remember struggling with Iain Banks' Feersum Engine, which is largely written phonetically,

On the other hand, if you just wrote that she. spoke with a southern drawl, which I only vaguely know, it might help.

 

[MrPixel]

I agree on spelling as it is spoken as long as it is clearly demarcated as spoken, that is, within quotes. I use "'im" for "him" frequently, "messin' around" for "messing around", and similar to reflect how people actually blur conversational English. Don't forget regionalisms like "all y'all", a Deep-Southism that always made me chuckle when I lived in Georgia. Then there's "fahrty-fahr" (44), which would immediately identify the speaker as being from St. Louis.

As with all literary distortions like this, use sparingly.

 

[SimonDoom]

My take is "no." Don't do it. Or, if you do, do it very sparingly. It will be distracting and make your story harder to read.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Yes, use sparingly. If a person has a stutter, just say so, don't p-p-p-put it on every w-w-w-word they speak. If they speak a dialect/accent where -ing is normally -in, or h is dropped, just set up their accent and don't keep on distorting the spelling for an unimportant point. Show the variation where it's important or unexpected, not all the way through.

 

[Timesup]

It might depend upon the extent. I remember struggling with Iain Banks' Feersum Engine, which is largely written phonetically,

On the other hand, if you just wrote that she. spoke with a southern drawl, which I only vaguely know, it might help.

A Clockwork Orange was annoying to read. This won’t be anywhere near that.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I think of classic Mark Twain books and the more contemporary works of authors such as Winston Groom.

Reading the dialects of Huckleberry Finn and Forrest Gump can be challenging, but the stories are so much more rewarding of the effort.

 

[crookedletter]

My take is "no." Don't do it. Or, if you do, do it very sparingly. It will be distracting and make your story harder to read.

I agree with this.

I've seen it done well, i.e. Twain like @BobbyBrandt said. Twain, I'd say, is an exception in a lot of ways, and I wouldn't try to emulate him. In the hands of most writers it comes off as gimmicky and distracting at best, indecipherable at worst.

A descriptive introduction to a character's way of speaking will do just fine, i.e. "She spoke with a charming southern drawl." Maybe an occasional reminder or two later in the text if it seems warranted.

 

[Britva415]

I thought she would sound sexier written out the way she sounded. Her intention is to, after all, be sexy.

You can't write it out the way she sounds. I mean, you can, but it won't do what you want it to do.

If you really want the reader to pick up how sexy she sounds, you have to narrate that. Lots of people have that dialect and they don't all sound sexy. Hell, for all you know, that dialect might sound completely unsexy to some other reader besides yourself. So you have to narrate it and use your author story words to convey that it's sexy. You can't let phonetic spelling do that job for you. It can't work.

 

[Britva415]

there's "fahrty-fahr" (44), which would immediately identify the speaker as being from St. Louis

Only to a reader who already knows that. I wouldn't. If an author wants me to know that that's a St. Louis accent, they would have to tell me.

 

[Writer61]

If an author wants me to know that that's a St. Louis accent, they would have to tell me.

This is a good point. By all means, write phonetically, but early on, tell me what accent you are trying to represent.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I've seen it done well, i.e. Twain like @BobbyBrandt said. Twain, I'd say, is an exception in a lot of ways, and I wouldn't try to emulate him. In the hands of most writers it comes off as gimmicky and distracting at best, indecipherable at worst.

To a certain degree, I would agree with you, especially where readers on this site are concerned. They are frequently not the most tolerant of reading above a elementary school level even if they have the intelligence to do so.

On the other hand, I encourage writers to try things for themselves. I have one story here with a significant about of "gangsta" dialogue that I wrote specifically with the intention of being able to hear the dialect when the story was converted to audio. There were a few comments on the racist tone that some perceived from the dialect, but no one claimed that they found it challenging to read and comprehend.

If I can do it, anyone can.

 

[THBGato]

I would say do it. I use a lot of dialect in my stories - mostly Bristolian, but also Irish English, Welsh English, MLE, Spanglish, Kiwi English. As a reader I appreciate it too.

 

[Writer61]

I would say do it. I use a lot of dialect in my stories - mostly Bristolian, but also Irish English, Welsh English, MLE, Spanglish, Kiwi English. As a reader I appreciate it too.

In the spelling, or in the vocabulary? I try to vary the latter between characters of different backgrounds or periods.

 

[THBGato]

In the spelling, or in the vocabulary? I try to vary the latter between characters of different backgrounds or periods.

Both. And the grammar. So, for instance, a strong Bristolian accent adds an 'l' onto the ends of words ending in 'a'. IKEA becomes IKEAL. It's also common to substitute 'f' for 'th'. E.g. I doan fink that's a good ideal.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Concerning spelling​

I once wrote a Treasure Hunting novella here where one of the two main FMCs was a present day English Baroness, and the other was an American academic from the 1930s (hopefully neither Core Design nor Spielberg / Lucas will sue).

I tried to write the Brit’s dialog in BE and the American’s in AE. What I ended up doing was making the whole text even more transatlantic and confused than my normal messed up argot (I have a lot of professional and personal connections to the U.K. and lived there for a while).

 

[Writer61]

I once wrote a Treasure Hunting novella here where one of the two main FMCs was a present day English Baroness, and the other was an American academic from the 1930s (hopefully neither Core Design nor Spielberg / Lucas will sue).

I tried to write the Brit’s dialog in BE and the American’s in AE. What I ended up doing was making the whole text even more transatlantic and confused than my normal messed up argot (I have a lot of professional and personal connections to the U.K. and lived there for a while).

I think you have to be quite careful about this. A few of my stories have Australian characters (like your UK knowledge, it's a country that I have a lot of experience of), but I try to restrict my use of 'Strine to their speech; the rest is in BE.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I think you have to be quite careful about this. A few of my stories have Australian characters (like your UK knowledge, it's a country that I have a lot of experience of), but I try to restrict my use of 'Strine to their speech; the rest is in BE.

Yeah - me and careful don’t play nice

 

[FrancesScott]

I think you have to be quite careful about this. A few of my stories have Australian characters (like your UK knowledge, it's a country that I have a lot of experience of), but I try to restrict my use of 'Strine to their speech; the rest is in BE.

I was arrogant enough to try to write 20,000 words set in present day London, but with a 1900s vibe, and totally in BrE. Oh and aping the writing style, characters, and plots of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Much like Miss Miller above, I’m not always very careful.

 

[SimonDoom]

I would say do it. I use a lot of dialect in my stories - mostly Bristolian, but also Irish English, Welsh English, MLE, Spanglish, Kiwi English. As a reader I appreciate it too.

Dialect is word choice, not irregular spelling and punctuation. It's easy to follow the dialogue of a character that talks in a regional dialect when the spelling and punctuation are normal.

 

[THBGato]

Dialect is word choice, not irregular spelling and punctuation.

I would agree with you on punctuation. Not so much spelling. Consider words like "gonna" or "heid" or "yous" - these are dialect words that are, from the point of view of the dominant dialect, irregular spellings.

Hell, from my point of view all Americans speak a dialect and "color", "humor" and "thru" are all irregular spellings!

 

[Seurat]

Well now just look at you, aren't you special? I think that if y'all can sprinkle just enough southern 'words', as well as describing the person has having a southern drawl, y'all can convey your point without beating the horse to death.

My, quite the conundrum. I think that adjusting your speech patterns as well as the occasional addition of words and phrases known to relate to specific areas of the country, would be an effective way of conveying your desired effect without overwhelming the reader.

Yo, I can see youse got a fucking problem, know-whud-I-mean? Just fucking toss some bullshit from some southern states in; ain't nobody gonna complain unless youse sayin' too much, in which case they just gonna write you off as a fuckin' Cowboys fan.


Three quick examples. I think the first one is effective at doing what you are looking for. The second conveys a slightly higher level of education but is more non-site than site specific. I don't think there are many parts of the country where you would here somebody speaking like that, and to use that to denote a southern speaker would actually be distracting. The third might seem to be overload but, to a person familiar with that part of the country, probably not only doesn't sound overblown but possibly a little understated.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

As others said, use phonetic spellings sparingly. Maybe a little more in the first few sentences she speaks, then rely on word choices and the occasional in' for ing, y'all, hey or howdy, yonder, folks... (my knowledge of Southern US dialect is almost entirely from To Kill a Mockingbird)

Mark Twain could write 15 distinct dialects purely phonetically, though I bet most modern readers don't distinguish half of them, I sure can't, but if he weren't already famous, I bet not many people would bother trying to read Huck Finn. Similar to not many people outside Scotland trying to read Trainspotting until after the film came out.

If you're not Mark Twain or Irvine Welsh, and you want readers, less is more with the funny spelling.