Being a Better Writer: Accents · 9:01pm Nov 13th, 2017
Hopefully this will be a short one. After the longer-than-average posts the last few weeks, I’d like to get a quicker, shorter Being a Better Writer post in so I can jump back to closing up Jungle once and for all!
Granted, every time I say that I end up writing a post that’s multiple times longer than I expected, so hopefully I’ve not jinxed myself here. But let’s get this underway. Let’s talk about accents.
Thankfully, I feel that I have a bit I can contribute on this topic, as it was a hotly contested one during one of my college English courses, with the classroom dividing into three sides (for, against, and non-determinate) on the issue. Granted, the non-determinate faction really doesn’t come into play here, except to let you know that there are those who don’t mind either way, but … Well, let’s back up. Why were there two groups?
Well, because there are two ways of handling accents in fiction. Well, writing in general, rather (you could do this in a non-fiction work as well). You can create an accent that is phonetic—as in, written out the way it sounds—or you can not do that and simply tell the reader what the accent is. Okay, and there’s technically a third option, which is to blend to two, but most consider that going the phonetic route either way.
Both of these, naturally, have strengths and drawbacks, so really, it’s up to you—and on a smaller scale, up to your audience—to decide which of these you prefer.
Ooh, very nice.
Personally, phonetic accents annoy me while reading, but they are preferable to simply telling me the accent because I will forget it and just make up my own. I guess, basically, I like making up my own accents while reading.
You're missing the third (or is it fourth now) option, and a far superior one even though it's much more difficult: accent through word choice and diction.
Take these examples:
"It was maybe winter. I am not knowing how you expect me to say about it."
"Now, son. Let me sit you down and tell you, I don't rightly know whether it was winter or not, but the point of the thing is..."
"Winter you say? How I supposed to know if it's winter? You make me wait in store for three hour to ask me if it winter? You soft in head! My mother always say so, and she right!"
"Winter? Winter? Ha! Winter, he says! Let me tell you about winter. Where I'm from, we don't pay it no mind at all. We say winter, what winter?"
"What was that now, winter? I say, how dreadfully dull. You cannot seriously expect me to bother myself with talking about winter, now can you?"
... Now, in all of those examples, there are no phonetically spelled words, and also no explanations of what accent they're in ... but unless I'm way off my mark in writing them, I bet you can hear the accent in each one as you read it, and you'd be able to tell me not only the place on Earth where that person is from, but maybe even their age and gender, too. It's a very difficult technique to get right, but extremely powerful when you can pull it off, and it blows the whole 'phonetic vs. externally noted' accent debate out of the water.
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That was mentioned in using dialogue and colloquialism (though I should have said dialect as well) and counts as phonetic, technically, since it revolves around breaking from standard English rules and convention to do.
Thank you for the nice examples, though.
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Honestly, as a nonnative speaker, I have no idea what those accents are supposed to be, so that method isn't perfect. They are unique and I could tell the characters apart based on them, but really, not because of any "accent." The only exception, I guess, is the last one which for some reason I instantly read in Rarity's voice.