WRITING TIPS - Writing Dialect and Accents in Dialogue

What do your characters sound like? 

Do they have their own characteristics? Or do they end up like the teacher in Peanuts? 

I started looking at dialect in a previous post, but wanted to go into more detail.

So, you may have deduced I'm British. What gave it away? ;-) 

I therefore write in 'British' English. I spell words like colour and aluminium. 

There is a whole debate on this, but I'm British and so are most of my characters, so the (bearskin) hat fits 💂

However, this doesn't tackle what my characters sound like. 

To the rest of the world, the English accent is akin to the old BBC one, I think. Haw haw haw, what what, jolly good show - pah!

We have many different accents in our beautiful country. And I will admit, even I don't understand them all (*blushes*). 

The good folks of Glasgow have a very strong Scottish accent. Have you watched Trainspotting? Hmm...Ewan McGregor...

(*coughs*) Sorry, where was I? Oh, Trainspotting. Right. So you've maybe watched the film. 

But have you read the book? 

OMG what?? It's actually written in "Scottish". 

Now, this hasn't harmed that, has it? 

Good old Thomas Hardy, author of novels such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles, wrote obviously in his ye olde English style but also used some local dialects from the countryside. Again, very popular. If a little hard to follow sometimes. 

Mark Twain is an example of an author who used the Southern American vernacular. 

We're a diverse world, so don't be afraid to show it. 

Now, a word of caution. This can very rapidly become overdone. Although the examples above are very popular books, a lot of readers are put off by them. So, we want to use it sparingly. After all, we don't want to end up sounding like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, do we? Cor blimey! 

e.g. Cerys in my own Darkness & Light Duology is Welsh. 

This is a hugely sweeping generalisation. Of course, there's many parts of Wales and many dialects and accents. But I didn't want to write in Welsh, and wanted to keep it broad so people didn't locate the elinefae 😉

Some of her dialogue has a note, such as...

“Hmm…you are new.”

Shakira noted the sing-song lilt of the woman’s Welsh accent. But instead of the usual cheeriness that went along with that association, there was a gruffness too. 

In other places, I added some key Welsh words e.g. cwtch

He lifted his arm and wrapped her up in a proper cwtch; the most comforting type of hug you can find anywhere.

I even snuck in a 'popty ping' - which is a bit of a standing joke. Supposedly an alternative word for microwave. It's not really used with any seriousness in real life.

I digress. It's not like I'm saying I'm wonderful, follow me. I'm merely giving you an example. There's many ways to approach it. I happen to think less is more. The aim is to add flavour, without labouring the point.

Adding accents/dialects is a fun way of differentiating 'character voice'.

Have a play! Writing should be fun.

btw, a distinction between terms:

Dialect - is when vocabulary/grammar changes e.g. Hampshire, England uses "nipper" as a term for child. "Alright, nipper?" is "Are you OK little one/kiddo?" 

Accent - is the pronunciation of words e.g. the different way Americans pronounces vase as opposed to English personages

So there we have it, another wonderful blog post which will enlighten you.

Or just some TL brain vomit 😁

As always, feel free to comment below with your opinions and/or suggestions for future blog posts. 

Always in love and light,

TL

WRITING TIPS - Common Mistakes Writers Make

I am an indie author. I think you know that.
You have probably also noticed I read and review a lot of other indie authors.
What you do not see is all the books I read, and merely send a polite email to the author as they need to remedy some mistakes.

So, today I am sharing some of my "wisdom" with you.
There are two main errors that authors make.
I do not claim to be an expert. This is just my opinion btw.

1) Mixing up past/present/future tense - this has actually become my pet peeve as I see it so often
2) Not punctuating dialogue correctly

Let's start with tenses:

Simply put; keep your past in your past. 

I'm going to keep to the 'simple' tense, as this is most commonly used in novels. 

Past: Rachel bought a book

Present: Rachel is buying a book

Future: Rachel is will buy a book

What I often see is:

Rachel went to the shop and is buying a book. She paid at the till and left with her treasure in her grasp. 

Did you spot it? Rachel isn't looking, as the sentence is in the past tense. It should read:

Rachel went to the shop and bought a book...

You can write dialogue in the present tense, and keep the narrative in the past tense. 

But keep that narrative in the past. 

Of course, you may choose to write your book in the present tense. Absolutely your choice. Just stick to it when you choose one. At least in the same sentence and/or paragraph. 

There is the possibility of mixing tenses, but these need to be carefully done, and split with a scene change and paragraph. 

I know this advice is really basic. I've not really started delving underneath the surface at all.

There's perfect tense (basically using 'has'), progressive, subjunctive, verb forms, passive voice, all sort of things you can bring in. 

But for now, I'm sticking to the basics. You'd be surprised how many people get confused with this. 

It's easily done. But at least now it's hopefully in your mind for you to consider when writing.

Writing Dialogue:

This is something I often see authors getting into a mess with. 

And even I (yes, I'm human and make mistakes) had inadvertently made errors with something which should be very simple. 

Basically, use a comma if you are introducing a "s/he said" type statement (a dialogue tag).

The dialogue tag can be at the start or the end. 

Lowering his voice to a whisper, he told her, "I'm ready to tell you now."

"I'm ready to tell you now," he whispered. 

There is nothing wrong with using "said". It's simple and unobtrusive. Just don't overuse it. Everything in moderation.

Please do not overuse dialogue tags, full stop. Just once in a while to illustrate who is talking, or to emphasise a point. 

"I hate you," he yelled.

This does not require an exclamation mark. You are saying the character is yelling. 

Generally, you should avoid exclamation marks in novels. Your writing should speak for itself. 

You can link two sentences together with a tag, by the way. You use commas for this:

"I feel so stupid," she said with a sigh,"I fell for his charm." 

You can even give them new paragraphs. Do use this sparingly, as dialogue should generally be short and snappy to increase readability. But when the same character is speaking, do not close the quotation marks at the end of the first paragraph. Just open them at the start of the new one.

"Character 1 is saying something, but is going on a  bit. This paragraph comes to a close, but they need to say more.

"A new paragraph has started here, and closes as normal." 

This looks odd, but I'm assured this is the correct way of laying it out.

Remember, dialogue is conversation.

People do not stick to rigid formality when they speak. 

"Hello. It is very nice to meet you. How are you today?"

Do you hear this when you speak to your friends, or when you're people watching? I suspect not. 

Is it more like..?

"Hi, what's up?"

"Hey, how's you?" 

You can use slang and incorrect grammar in dialogue, just as long as it fits the character.

"I dunno."

This should technically read I do not know. But come on, who says this?

Dialect - don't forget to give your characters their own speech patterns and quirks. 

We don't all sound the same. We all have our little nuances when we talk. So your characters should too. 

How do they sound? Which time period do they live in? Do they have any key phrases they use repeatedly? Do they swear? 

There have been great books written entirely in regional dialect.

• Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles uses a lot of West Country dialect, which can be tricky to follow. This hasn't stopped it being an incredibly popular book though.
• Irvine Welsh uses Scottish phrases and phonetic spelling of them in Trainspotting. Specifically, the Edinburgh dialect. But again, this has been an incredible success. There's not really much I can politely quote on my blog from that ;-) 

If you choose to do this, just be aware your readers may struggle a bit. 

A deeper blog post on writing dialect and accents can be found here.

Be wary of putting in too many hesitations.

"I...umm...I'm not really...err, like, you know, not really happy."

Some hesitations can be useful and paint personality, but when overused they make it difficult to read.

There's a phrase which gets used a lot: "Show don't tell"

You can show points in narrative or speech, by the way. But please don't do both. It can be really tiresome to have a point explained by the narrator and then again by the character.

Phew! I've gone on a bit here. But hopefully this helps with some of the basics. 

I don't claim to be an expert. These are just things I've picked up along the way.

And I accept there's actually a few ways of laying out dialogue, but I just wanted to cover the basics here. 

All of the above is just something for you to bear in mind next time you sit down to create.

Always in love and light,

TL