Writing Visual Dialect in Fiction

by Tony Burton

Dialect in fiction can play a powerful part in creating the mood and tone of the story, setting the location, and establishing the relationships between the characters in the story.

Many writers and editors hold with the idea that dialect is an undesirable thing - that it has been done, and overdone, and badly done. Within some stories or books, all those are true. But a little dialect can go a long way toward establishing the mood and locale of the story. Consider it to be like garlic in marinara, or sage in turkey dressing - a little can add to the flavor of the dish, but too much will definitely ruin it. And putting in the wrong spice (garlic in an apple pie, for example) is truly nasty.

First of all, what is dialect? The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "a form of a language which is peculiar to a specific region or social group." From the viewpoint of dialect speakers, their speech is standard. But from the viewpoint of an outsider, it may appear unlettered, backward, quaint, or even incomprehensible.

Let's look at some examples of dialect from fiction, both classic and contemporary, before going on to the mechanics of writing dialect in your own stories.

Charles Dickens gives us this bit of conversation from The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices:

"Is there a doctor here?" asked Mr. Goodchild, on his knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination of Mr. Idle's ankle, with the aid of a candle.

"Ey, my word!" said the landlady, glancing doubtfully at the ankle for herself; "there's Doctor Speddie."

"Is he a good Doctor?"

"Ey!" said the landlady, "I ca' him so. A' cooms efther nae doctor that I ken. Mair nor which, a's just THE doctor heer."

"Do you think he is at home?"

Her reply was, "Gang awa', Jock, and bring him."

Mr. Dickens lays it on pretty thickly here, and most modern readers would be hard pressed to understand exactly what the landlady is saying - something like, "Oh! I call him that. He is better than any other doctor I know. More than that, he's the ONLY doctor here!"

Here Dickens is probably making a very accurate representation of the landlady's manner of speech, but it is used so heavily that even with Dickens' wonderful skill at storytelling, the meaning of the conversation becomes obscured. In other words, he uses a little too much garlic in the sauce. Sometimes this can be caused by the dialect being so regional that no one outside the "group" recognizes the words; however here it is more the effect of the passage of time. Probably all of Mr. Dickens' readers of the period made perfect sense of the conversation, but many modern readers would not.

Here is another example from the classics, an excerpt from Samuel Clemens' Huckleberry Finn:

"GIT up! What you 'bout?"

I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too. He says:

"What you doin' with this gun?"

I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:

"Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him."

"Why didn't you roust me out?"

"Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you."

The dialect in this passage tells us much that the content doesn't say. We know from "listening" that neither character is well-educated. We can also tell that the characters are rural, probably American, and probably from an earlier time than our own.

Also, both here and in the example from Dickens, the authenticity of the characters is established. The poorly educated landlady of a rural inn in Edwardian England would not speak the King's English. The contrast between her speech and that of Mr. Goodchild shows us that he is not a local, and probably much better educated than she.

What about modern writers? Here is an example from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:

"So," said Hagrid, rubbing his hands together and beaming around, "If yeh wan' ter come a bit nearer -"

No one seemed to want to. Harry, Ron and Hermione, however, approached the fence cautiously.

"Now, firs' thing yeh gotta know abou' hippogriffs is, they're proud," said Hagrid. "Easily offended, hippogriffs are. Don't never insult one, 'cause it might be the last thing yeh do."

Ms. Rowling displays a masterful use of dialect here. She uses it consistently, and goes beyond strange forms or pronunciations of words - she also uses characteristic speech patterns, such as "Easily offended, hippogriffs are," and incorrect grammar like "Don't never insult one...."

It is clear that dialect is not only a tool for the classics, but for contemporary writers. But you may be wondering, "How do I write dialect that is that well-done?" If you have decided to use dialect in your story's dialogue, here are some steps that should help you to do a better job of it. And as with anything, practice will improve your use of visual dialect.

1. Know which dialect you are trying to write.

Does that sound obvious? It should be, but it isn't. Often a writer will be creating a story with a nondescript dialect, and when asked what the speaker should sound like, says something like, "a country hick", "a Yankee" or "British". Right away, the problem is apparent. How can you imitate something you haven't even identified? In the state of Georgia alone, there are at least nine distinct dialects. In England, there are Cockney, "public school," Cornish, Yorkshire and more. When I was in Jordan on business, a taxi driver commented to me that the doorman of the hotel sounded like he came from "down around Al Karak" and not from Amman. If your character is from Britain, narrow your focus a little. Is the person well-educated or not? Is he or she from Cornwall? Is this modern England or 17th-century England?

2. Listen to the dialect.

"But I can't go to England!" you may protest. Fine. Do the next best thing. Locate your own Brits, or Texans, or Chicagoans. Talk to them but more importantly, LISTEN to them. Or find some tapes of BBC television shows, or movies set in 1920s New York or wherever your story is set, and listen to the characters. Don't, however, make the mistake of thinking that a forest bandit in Merrie Olde England of the 14th century would sound like Kevin Costner! Get some authentic accents, and make sure they represent what you want to portray. Watching Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None from the 1940s isn't going to prepare you to write Cockney dialect, no matter how many times you watch it.

When you are watching these movies, or listening to audio tapes read by actors, listen to both what is said and how it is said. Get a feel for the rhythm and cadences of the language, not just the words.

3. Try to find characteristic terms or turns of speech.

If you are listening to an uneducated Southerner in an attempt to imitate that speech pattern, you might hear not only strange pronunciations of words, but also terms that are puzzling to you. "Ankpin" (inkpen) is a characteristic Southernism, used to differentiate a writing pen from a straight pin. Both "pin" and "pen" are often pronounced the same way, ergo Southerners have learned to specify an "inkpen" when asking for a writing implement, so they will not be handed a piece of tailor's equipment.

A person who grew up in Brooklyn probably will not say, "I'm goin' to the loo." He or she would be more likely to use "the john" or some more colorful word for "restroom." And to turn it around, a Brit would not say he hauled out the trash. He or she would have "taken out the dustbins." To use these terms incorrectly will immediately invalidate your dialect, and may form a mental speedbump that will jolt the reader out of the story.

4. Repeat what you hear, both vocally and on paper.

Say aloud the unusual phrases you hear. If you are listening to someone from New York, repeat the phrases aloud and make your "Yo! I ain't gonna wait on ya no longa!" or your "Fuggedaboutit!" sound like the one you just heard. Then, write it down. Think about how it would look, if you wrote down exactly what you hear, instead of unconsciously translating it into your own local version of English. Spell phonetically, if necessary.

5. Pick and choose the best parts.

After you have an idea of the things that are most representative of the dialect, choose a few which are very distinctive and easy for a reader to understand. Use those to establish the idea and ambience of the dialect. Too much dialect gives a caricature of the local speech rather than the flavor of it. Just as in writing ordinary dialogue it is not necessary to repeat every grunt, throat clearing, "hmmm," "huh," and inapplicable word of a conversation, it's not necessary to totally mimic the sound of the dialect speaker.

"Y'all come on back now, heah?" is good enough to let us know that the speaker is Southern. If you were to listen to the same speaker, you might very well hear something like, "Yawl come own back nayow, y'heah?" If you put this in your story, the dialect overload will turn off some readers, and others will spend too much time trying to figure out what was being said, at the expense of enjoying the storyline. It's a lesson I learned from writing a story featuring a black housekeeper in 1905 Georgia.

I faithfully represented how she would most probably sound, and people from outside the region couldn't understand it. So, I cut out two-thirds of the dialect, keeping only the strongest and most-easily-understood parts, and it became much more readable and enjoyable, yet retained the flavor of the deep South of the early 1900s.

One thing to mention here is the possibility of offending your readers. I had one reader who was greatly offended by the story containing the black housekeeper, even though she was a positive and heroic figure. Why? Because I made her sound ignorant and uneducated. Well, the truth of the matter is, the character was both of those things. It was difficult for a middle-aged black woman in 1905 Georgia to be anything but ignorant and uneducated, by conventional standards. She simply would not have had the opportunities to become otherwise. But she was a good person, and a strong person, and a great deal more admirable than the white male in the story. Though proper in his speech, he was a disagreeable and villainous drunkard.

There you have it - a simple, five-step process for writing good visual dialect.

1. Decide what dialect you are going to represent.


2. Familiarize yourself with that dialect.


3. Identify distinctive words or phrases that a person of that group would use.


4. Practice the dialect, verbally and on paper.


5. Finally, pick the best and most representative parts for your character to use.

After a little practice, you may find that you enjoy writing dialogue and narrative in dialect. It will add spice to your story that standard English will not convey.

And y'all be sho' to come on back now, y'heah?

---

©Tony Burton

Tony Burton is a freelance writer who lives in northwest Georgia with his lovely wife, Lara, and their dog, Buddy. He is the editor of the Crime and Suspense e-zine and owns Wolfmont Publishing, a small-press publishing and creative company. His writing background includes over four years as a newspaper columnist, over ten years as a technical writer and curriculum developer, many years as a closet poet and short-story author and finally, two published novellas. When he isn't writing or editing, he is working alongside his wife at creating their new home on 16 acres of mountain land.

His short story "Bluetick" was published in the March 2006 issue of Reflection's Edge.