Let’s Talk Process: Dialect

Dialect.

Dialect is a tricky thing.

On one hand, it’s a great way to differentiate character voices and allows for a lot less “he said, she yelled, blah blah blah.”  Different people speak different ways in reality, and they should, of course, do the same in books.

One the other, it’s very easy to fall into stereotyping mode once you’ve locked a character in to such a specific speech pattern as, “Kentucky Ozark” or “British Aristocracy,” or “Argentinian Cowboy.”  People make connections between dialect/accent and other characteristics; we shouldn’t, but we do.  Humans like neat little boxes and grouping traits together allows for far fewer storage bins and a lot more closet space in ye olde brainpan.

So.  We want to give cues without pigeonholing, hints while letting the character speak for herself, and we, as authors, don’t want to inadvertently file the characters we work so hard to individuate into the wrong box.  Or ANY box.  We want them to stand apart, not get lost amid our fat jeans and fifteen year old Chuck Taylors.

Fair play.  Difficult but not impossible.

image via cartoonstock.com

There’s the writer bit of it then: don’t overuse your tool (heh heh).

Let’s move on to the reader bit, shall we?

In my entry on cliches and similes, I expounded (read: ranted) upon the topic of show vs tell, something to the effect of not wanting to know what a character is like but rather knowing who they are.  And writing an entire book, or even a single character’s dialogue for the duration, in dialect poses a similar problem.  It also, for some reason I’ve never understood, makes my brain look like this:

Why?  I feel that too much dialect force feeds the reader elements of story and character at the expense of solid world building and character development.  It also takes one of the huge joys, the imagination, out of reading.  If you want the reader to know your character has an accent, give us a few lines at the beginning to set the stage then let the reader run with it.  I’m not saying a scullery maid should have the same speech pattern as the Dowager Countess, but I don’t need to read a whole novel in Oliver Twist-speak either.  The setting will clue the reader in, the way people move, the way they’re dressed, how calloused their hands are, what their shoes are made out of.  I don’t want symbolic representation; I want an individual and an individual life.

Yinz goin’ dahntahn na’at?
image via beyondhollywood.com

I’m not saying one should never utilize the tool of dialect.  But, like so many other things, it’s just that: a tool.  Not the end all, be all of character development and expression.  Change the flow, the sentence structure.  Keep the speech pattern steady but avoid the trap of absolutes.  Play with punctuation.  Let the reader play too.

That’s how I do it, baby.  How about you?