Brits could compile a list in return, and the tone's a bit testy, but this is a good run-down of Americanisms UK writers get wrong when they try to make their characters talk American...

Emma

Yeah, well, posting the link's always a good idea:

http://akirlu.livejournal.com/100247.html?page=2#comments

Fascinating, Emma, thanks very much for that.

I see what you mean about the tone, though. Calm down, mate!

I could add a couple, as I've spent lots of time carefully picking through my American characters' speech line by line.

Never use 'shall' as in 'Shall we go?' And never use 'round' as a preposition - it should always be 'around'.

There are probably lots of others.

Ooh, she's locked it so you have to be logged on - that's rather drastic! What a shame, it was a good piece.

Emma

Oh, that's a shame. I wanted to read that.

I write American quite a bit, and the really funny thing is, I have no real idea how. I've been praised a fair bit over its authenticity, and I can only attribute it to reading things like Stephen King and such like, though my American is usually Deep South, so maybe it comes from the movies? It's a little mystifying.

Maybe I was trailer trash in a previous life?

JB

I haven't ever written American, but it's all a mystery - where do voices come from? It's probably the technical aspect of writing I can least analyse.

Emma

Actually, I think voice - as in appropriating language you don't usually use, such as American/Victorian, etc etc - is reasonably easy. Dorothea Brande, in her book, Becoming a Writer advises writers not to read anything immediately before writing, because they will almost inevitably end up writing in the style of that which they have just read. I agree. If I've been reading Victorian novels, I do end up writing in a very similar tone. So sometimes I think it's just a matter of absorbing the tone/style of something you have read, and which suits your writing.

Yes, it often is reasonably easy to do. What's not easy (for me, at least) is talking about how you do it, as I could talk about pace or plot or rhythm and language.

Emma

Actually, I find the whole thing quite difficult to analyse. I can't really say how I do anything.

Perhaps this makes me stupid. Oh, well.

What a shame this has gone or been hidden. I don't suppose anyone could possibly have copied it before it went because that would be an awful thing to do...

I like writing in American English, or at the very least setting stories in America, there's just that sense of being able to be a bit bolder and making use of the iconic - or maybe that's just a product of writing about something happening in a different country, it shakes you out of the domestic.

One thing to bear in mind is that Americans don't all speak the same, there's quite a lot of regional and subcultural differences. Just like here.

I can feel an exercise coming on: write a conversation between a gruff Yorkshireman and a Hip Hop gangbanger from Compton.

I meant to print it out. I work in UK/US English translation (um, localisation) and some of it was very useful. (Also, some of it wasn't, and some was wrong.) But instead of printing it, I bookmarked it, and it's gone.

Don't worry, I'm sure we could come up with a list here if we tried. We do all instinctively know these things, being speakers of English.

I like exploring the dream America. I mean, I've never been there, so I find it intriguing when people think I have. All my American stories take place on an imaginary continent that is comprised from movies, books, adverts and the odd news program or two...

I'm dying to see how it all compares to the real thing.

JB

I'm very impressed that you write about it and you've never been there.

When I first went to the States I was amazed by how familiar it all looked from television, etc. I found this particularly in LA. But there was a whole lot that I'd never seen on films or imagined before, too, of course - especially about the culture.

And I can tell you're in the mindset, JB, because you wrote 'program' and not 'programme'.

Luisa