Help me?

[cookiejar]

I hope I can phrase this right...I am writing a story about a bank robber and in his dialogue I use slang, "woulda, gonna, shoulda,etc." My question is, do I carry this over to the narrative part? Or do I use proper English? The story is told from his POV. This may sound trivial but it's bugging the hell out of me. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[whispering_surrender]

WARNING: Ambiguous answer to follow....

I've seen it done both ways. And some of either have worked. The only "really" bad one I saw that I can think of wasn't consistent. I think choose one way or the other and stick with it. See if it works. Hammer out the details in the editing. But, what do I know? *grin*

Whisp

Ps. Raph says, "If you're being a narrator narrator use proper english. If you're doing stream of consciousness narration, use his "slang" english. That's how I do it."

 

[NoJo]

When writing a screenplay, you should rely on actors to provide the pronunciation. But the Coen brothers ignore this, as they do most rules of screenwriting.

For fiction, I "woulda, coulda, gonna" to my heart's content. I've trained my spellcheck to accept slang.

 

[cookiejar]

Thank you WS...I have looked at both ways and the "slang" should work.

Thanks to Raph too...that makes perfect sense.

BTW I think you're pretty smart and cute too...


Thanks to you too Joe, I'm gonna go for it. I shoulda went with my first instinct.

 

[NoJo]

cookie, who's that incredibly beautiful av? louise Brooks?

 

[cookiejar]

cookie, who's that incredibly beautiful av?

The late silent film star Clara Bow. Her eyes were incredible huh?

 

[NoJo]

Clara Bow. Of course.! God, I'm born 80 years too late...

I'm going back to an old AV...

 

[raphy]

Expanding on what I said earlier ('cause I didn't want to make poor whisp type too much, and you all know I ramble)

Even when you're writing in the strictest 3PL PoV you have moments when your narrator voice is simply that, a narrator, and you have moments when your character's personality shines through. FOr me, it depends what you're describing - Here's an example.

Wayne knelt by the locked door. He gingerly felt around the edges then inserted his lockpicks into the lock. The lock looked big and simple and should have opened at a touch, but for some reason it was giving him some trouble. He frowned, then realized what the problem was. A Manning lock. That needed his other set of picks. Idiot. Shoulda spotted that straight off. He dug around in his pockets, fished the other set of picks out and had the door open in ten seconds flat. Much better

I change from descriptive narrative to stream-of-consciousness narrative in the same paragraph there (which is something I personally do a lot, and I'm not saying that you should do it - I just did it so that I could fit both examples into one paragraph)..

You can see how I switched from should have to shoulda. The 'shoulda' emphasises the stream-of-consciousness feeling of the second half of the paragraph, even more so if your character is strongly developed.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Hey cookie

I think it depends on how closely you want to tie your narrative POV to the character. Ou can like raphy suggests move closer and back off through the story or you can tie it very closly to the character.

I try to use proper english with my narrator, but I also tend to have the narrator specifically so i can tell what both charcters are thinking, feeling, etc. If your narrative POV stays very close only to the protag you are probably better off infusing the narrator with the charaters vernacular.

-Colly

 

[raphy]

If your narrative POV stays very close only to the protag you are probably better off infusing the narrator with the charaters vernacular.

-Colly

Now I come to think of it, I think my lit story "Well, Goddamn" has very protagonist-influenced narration - But that's a first person story, so it's expected.