Hi folks. After a bit of a discussion about my attempt to create an accent in a piece I recently uploaded -

http://www.writewords.org.uk/archive/4619.asp

- I thought it would make a good discussion topic on the forums.

In this case, the accent came about once I had most of the story written, and as such I don't feel it's always consitant with what I was trying to create. Basically I was thinking small town in a rural area, but some of the parts I'd already written don't always work with this.

Anyway, moving on from my piece, how do we feel about trying to create an accent in a story? Does it help to create a more believeable and interesting voice? What techniques do you use to ensure that it remains consistent throughout? In the past, I've attempted to read it in the voice I'm after, then words that don't fit stick out like a sore thumb - though in this case, I didn't do that.

Another think that worries me a little about doing this kind of thing, is that it often means writing thats that clearly aren't gramatically correct - but as it's the character speaking, that's okay, isn't it?

I'll be interested to see what you think of this topic.

I'm a bit ambivalent about replicating accents in writing. At one time I would do it religiously. That wasn't a problem so long as I was writing about Scots, because I speak it, but I've read enough stories by (mostly) Americans who fondly imagine they can replicate Scottish speech in their writing, to be aware that it's not always the best thing to do.

As soon as you start writing anything in a non-standard variety of English then you are putting up a barrier to comprehension. You are also setting yourself up if you don't get it right, because there will always be somebody who knows. That having been said, I think it's equally ridiculous to produce Standard English dialogue for a character that we all know would speak in a non standard manner whether through use of slang or in another dialect altogether. What I try and do is give a flavour of how they speak. I'll choose one or two words that they would say differently and always use them. For example, if writing a Scot, instead of writing not in the character's dialogue I would always write no', because that's what we say. I would use several grammatical constructions characteristic of the dialect, but not too many - don't want to make it incomprehensible.

And then there's always the old fallback - The old man's Lancashire accent was so thick, Tom could hardly understand him.


Cas

I agree with Darkstar. I believe that accents can be well written as long as they are understandable to the reader. I also follow your rule of reading out loud in the accent that you write. In fact I try to read all of my dialogue out loud if possible.