Acting on Caro's advice, I'd like to know how everyone reacts to the use of accents and dialect (what's the difference?)with minor but still important characters? Some novels use hardly any but I've read some where I've felt bogged down with trying to read - and understand.

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I should say my characters are very much working class

Dialect is the words used and the order they're used in - vocabulary, grammar and syntax. It's that Scots say 'outwith' and my Brummie ex-mother in law 'five-and-twenty to one'

Accent is the sounds the real, live speaker makes. In old-fashioned books they do awful things of "'ow meny 'arf pahnds in a n'undridwait, guv'nor", to try to reproduce it. Eddicated talk - RP as it's known - of course, is pronounced exactly as it's written.

The more non-standard spelling, vocabulary, grammar and syntax is used in a piece, the harder it is to understand. And these days the phonetic spelling horrifies the anti-snob in all of us. So the trick is to use enough to enable the reader to 'hear' the accent, but not so much that they struggle to understand the meaning. Obviously this will vary from reader to reader, so this is where your trusted readers can be very useful. Sometimes kicking off with something very characteristic 'Bonjour' or 'Oy!' can give the right 'accent' to an otherwise fairly standard bit of dialogue. But in the end, it's all sleight of hand, the illusion of authenticity is what you're after.

Emma

I'd say if you are trying to establish an accent, be consistent and signal it up-front. You know how annoying it is when you're half way through a novel and the heroine you'd decided in your mind's eye is blonde turns out to be dark? It's the same with accents. If someone has a strong Irish lilt to their voice, mention it at the outset, then you can put in Irish dialect words or constructions and the reader will happily go along with it.

But as Emma said, clarity is all, so don't use constructions or spellings that will confound the reader. And you don't have to render the pronunciation of every word - a light indication here and there will go a long way.

Thank you, Emma. I suppose my problem is that my characters are Brummies and as an ex-Brummie I can 'hear' them talking yet the words I seeon the page -with no accent - sound artificial.

Thank you, Lammi, for your reply. I understand what you are saying. However, there is a world of difference between referring to 'a lilting Irish brogue' in the intro and 'a Glum Brum drawl'. To identify my accent straightaway would make the reader feel just as glum, I'm sure. Mind, there is a murder in due course.

Hi P.J.,
Personally I find it really irritating when accents are painstakingly 'written out'. It makes reading really difficult and has put me off reading some books at all - Trainspotting is a case in point. I don't really see the point anyway, once you've established where your characters are from and what 'class' they are if that's an issue. If the reader is familiar with the accent they'll be able to imagine how the characters speak - and if they're not, it's meaningless anyway because I don't think they'll really be able to 'hear' it simply from spelling it out phonetically.

ClodaghX

Alreet. PJ? I've just created a minor character who's a Geordie, and i try to just slip in the odd word,like, that people know is used by Geordies.

Eee, i cannot say it is easy, pet, it's so tempting to over- do it - but at least my husband is a Geordie and i can get him to read over my work, like.

So, in conclusion,i use dialect, but wouldn't change too many of the spellings. Eee, pet, good luck with it.

Ahem. YOu get the picture. I know,i've still got to polish a bit! And i do sprinkle those Geordie words a bit thinner in my actual work. I think the key is not to overdo things, otherwise it can be irritating and too much like hard work to read. IMO, the reader just needs a gentle reminder now and again..like

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BTW, anyone who is a geordie and reading this, any tips appreciated:):)

I don't see that your reader would necessarily react like that to a Brummie accent, PJ! ;0 As long as you establish early on that the voice you hear are Birmingham-flavoured, and then use a few local words early on, (eg bostin'), your reader should get the idea. There must be Birmingham-style sentence constructions that you would naturally use, too.

I should add, PJ, that two of my novels were Lancashire-based, and the third featured a Lancashire family, so if you want to see how I approached it, have a look at my work. Some sections of my first novel were in full dialect, with a degree of phonetic rendering.

I think Kate is right, a few local words and relevant sentence structures can go a long way.

Scots writers like James Kelman, Tom Leonard et al. have grappled with the representation of 'voice' (accent, dialect, register). There was an interesting piece in the Guardian six or so Saturdays back on the subject by Kelman.

Let's here it for Wales too - Niall Griffiths for example ("Sheepshagger" - pub Jonathan Cape, and Vintage)

Try this for the Kelman piece:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2146056,00.html

Okay, time to grapple with a funeral scene set in Sighthill cemetery, Glasgow.

Jim

Thank you for that Guardian link, I was fascinated and very tempted!

Hi Lammi,
Thanks and everyone else for the advice. Much appreciated.
One small point,Lammi, your example of 'Bostin'' was slightly out by a few miles. That's Black Country.
P.J.

This is a really interesting thread. It's so hard to get the balance right. James Kelman is about the only author I know of who can write phoenetically and still be readable but that's because his stuff's so good (IMO) it's worth transcribing in your head.

I write a fair few Geordie characters, but find it so hard to know how to put their voices on paper. In Geordie, the word 'don't' is sometimes 'divvent' - that's dialect so it would be OK to write differently. But if you're writing 'don't know' do you put 'divvent na' which is a phoenetic transcription or 'divvent know' which is faithful to dialect but not accent but looks awful? I've ended up putting the beautiful dialect words back into plain English in some pieces because the ugliness of phoenetic spelling is distracting but the blending of dialect words with RP spellings of other words also looks wrong. Anyone know of an author who pitches it right?

Hmm, i had the same problem, Cherys.

To be honest, i don't really feel skilled enough to tackle such a broad accent, but my book is a romantic comedy, the Geordie character is minor and fairly farcical, so i'm hoping my genre will be slightly more tolerant if i don't do a perfect job.
It did help having my Toon husband read it, and he did say that some of the words should be spelt differently, but, like you say, it can be distracting.