Unusual speech patterns: how much is too much?

[Penpilot]

Surely it's better to write the speech of the character as difficult to understand rather than just describing them as having a confusing way of speaking?

There's a fine line to hold here. Remember the reader has to endure this "accent" for a whole book. Being confused for better portions of a book flows right into being down right annoying. EG Jar Jar Binks. And will probably lead to the book having more flight time than a 747 because people will be throwing it against the wall in droves.

 

[Steerpike]

There's a fine line to hold here. Remember the reader has to endure this "accent" for a whole book. Being confused for better portions of a book flows right into being down right annoying. EG Jar Jar Binks.

But on the other hand, you get books that are successful by most standards, like Trainspotting or A Clockwork Orange, that are full of difficult to understand dialogue.

 

[Ireth]

But on the other hand, you get books that are successful by most standards, like Trainspotting or A Clockwork Orange, that are full of difficult to understand dialogue.

Case in point: Brian Jacques' Redwall books, full of virtually-unintelligible moles who sometimes have to have other characters translate for them.

 

[Mindfire]

Case in point: Brian Jacques' Redwall books, full of virtually-unintelligible moles who sometimes have to have other characters translate for them.

I mentioned Jacques in passing before, but I'll give my full opinion on his accents now. I think he gets away with it. Barely. The moles and sparras (sic) stop just short enough of annoyance that it's endearing. But the northern birds, hawks and eagles and so forth, I don't have a clue what they're saying most of the time. What makes the accents work? Well authorial skill mostly. Jacques is always careful about walking the line. But for another thing, the accents, for the most part, feel authentically part of the universe. In reality, everyone in the Redwall universe has an accent, some are just subtler than others, so the moles feel right at home. They don't stick out like a sore thumb, unlike a certain despised Star Wars character. But another thing I notice- accented creatures, moles, hawks, etc., are usually not part of the core cast. I can't think of a single mole or other accented creature who was ever a main character in the Redwall series. Even the various Foremoles have usually been side characters. I'd never given consideration to it before, but this is an extremely clever way of making sure the accent has just enough presence to justify its conclusion while at the same time making sure the reader doesn't have to endure it nonstop. If Jar-Jar's role had been smaller, would he have been as hated as he is now? I wonder. So perhaps outlandish accents are less risky if given to characters with smaller roles.

 

[Penpilot]

But on the other hand, you get books that are successful by most standards, like Trainspotting or A Clockwork Orange, that are full of difficult to understand dialogue.

True enough. But for me, I haven't been able to get up the courage to work through something like Trainspotting, yet.

I also think there's reasons for why in those books, the accent worked for people. If memory serves, Trainspotting's author Irvin Welsh is a Scot writing a Scottish accents, so the maybe he's able to capture the rhythm and flow of the accent in a genuine way, so that if a person is willing to give it a go, it becomes easier and easier to read as they get used to it.

Compare that with someone trying to fake it. For most, they probably don't have the knowledge to capture the genuine flow and rhythm of an accent.

As for A Clockwork Orange, didn't Burgess invented the slang in that book and the slang was a part of the world? To me, it's something deliberate and very well though out, not just something the author thought would be cool and just inserted.

Which kind of gets me to my point. Accent's can definitely be done, and done well for an entire book, but IMHO it requires intimate knowledge of the accent and baring that, a lot of hard work to make it work right.

 

[Ireth]

I can't think of a single mole or other accented creature who was ever a main character in the Redwall series.

Didn't Martin have friends who were moles, and were fairly major characters? Grumm from Martin the Warrior, for one, and Dinny (I think?) from Mossflower.

 

[Mindfire]

Didn't Martin have friends who were moles, and were fairly major characters? Grumm from Martin the Warrior, for one, and Dinny (I think?) from Mossflower.

But that's my point. Moles are always part of the supporting cast. Some of them are more important than others I grant you, but the moles who are upper-tier characters are the exception rather than the rule. In any case, what I was getting at is that AFAIK a mole has never been the hero of a Redwall book.

 

[Ireth]

But that's my point. Moles are always part of the supporting cast. Some of them are more important than others I grant you, but the moles who are upper-tier characters are the exception rather than the rule. In any case, what I was getting at is that AFAIK a mole has never been the hero of a Redwall book.

Fair enough. It's a shame we'll never get to see a mole hero, either. :/

 

[BWFoster78]

So, I think we can sum this up by saying: dialects can be done well, and, when they're done well, they do add something (my favorite example is The Help). They are, on the other hand, difficult in the extreme to do right, and, when you screw up, it pretty much ruins the book for a lot of your audience.

 

[Mindfire]

So, I think we can sum this up by saying: dialects can be done well, and, when they're done well, they do add something (my favorite example is The Help). They are, on the other hand, difficult in the extreme to do right, and, when you screw up, it pretty much ruins the book for a lot of your audience.

That sounds accurate.

 

[wordwalker]

Absolutely nailed it on Redwall; it's an author able to use more accent than almost anyone, but he still respects that they can't be for the central characters.

So, I think we can sum this up by saying: dialects can be done well, and, when they're done well, they do add something (my favorite example is The Help). They are, on the other hand, difficult in the extreme to do right, and, when you screw up, it pretty much ruins the book for a lot of your audience.

Agreed. Especially summed up by:

See, the thing with accents is that they're generally high risk, low reward. "Sure as shootin'" may just help you make your character a bit more unique, but it's also very likely to make me hate that character in the process.

And (although it could lead to overused expressions like the above), I think the best way out is to work more with what words people use:

I think you'll get more mileage out of *what* she says than by giving her an accent. Perhaps she's rude, prone to insults or swearing, acts juvenile, makes bad/dark jokes, has a short attention span, says inappropriate things, and overall has no regard for acceptable social behavior (like not discussing her sex life in public as you said). To contrast, her brother might be obsessed with propriety, a grammar nazi, aloof, passive-aggressive, careful about how he treats others, more articulate, considerate of other's feelings, and hold grudges.

(Yay Mindfire!)

 

[BWFoster78]

As I said in my blog post today, writing something that people actually want to read is freaking hard. Just getting the basics of character, tension, and emotion into a readable form is pretty darn challenging. I understanding wanting to experiment and that experimenting can lead to you elevating your game, but try not to make choices that are going to torpedo your novel before it ever gets out of the dock.

Maybe I'm off base with the above advice, but I'm struggling so much to truly compel and engage my readers even without imposing constraints that make it more difficult.

 

[Feo Takahari]

She'll definitely have a different vocabulary than the other characters (since it wouldn't really make sense if she spoke like the protagonist), and she definitely won't be mean-spirited or cruel. It's just a matter of degree.

 

[Mindfire]

She'll definitely have a different vocabulary than the other characters (since it wouldn't really make sense if she spoke like the protagonist), and she definitely won't be mean-spirited or cruel. It's just a matter of degree.

What story is your story a Take That to exactly? And what does this have to do with your protagonist? IMO, a chaotic personality doesn't really go without some cruelty, even if it's unintentional. Someone "touched by Chaos" is likely to have a wonky if not completely twisted ethical system. They may not go about kicking puppies, but they're probably going to casually offend people quite often.

 

[Feo Takahari]

What story is your story a Take That to exactly? And what does this have to do with your protagonist? IMO, a chaotic personality doesn't really go without some cruelty, even if it's unintentional. Someone "touched by Chaos" is likely to have a wonky if not completely twisted ethical system. They may not go about kicking puppies, but they're probably going to casually offend people quite often.

It's a little off-topic, but I guess I ought to explain. It's to an obscure story about a boy raised by a dragon. The story began by establishing distinct personalities for all the characters, but ended by forcing the dragons (and the boy, who now counted as a dragon) to fit into certain behavior patterns, refusing to allow its characters the depth they started out with. By way of response, I'm writing about characters who're to some degree forced to act a certain way, but whose individual personalities shine through this control. (Tabitha in particular is a very kind and generous person, albeit rather irreverent and not always law-abiding.)

(A lot of my stories are responses to something in particular, though the tone varies--Dulling the Pain is quite bitter towards Anne McCaffrey's Petaybee, whereas At Arm's Length is a polite alternate perspective to Morpheus's The Day the World Changed.)

P.S. As for the protagonist, she's a small-town girl whose only exposure to the outside world comes from Tabitha and Tabitha's stepbrother Keith. She lacks Keith's military-school background and his tendency towards preciseness, but neither has she acquired any of the slang Tabitha has picked up in her travels. (She'll have a little local slang, but I'll keep that to a minimum to emphasize how foreign Tabitha sounds to her.)

P.P.S. Keith has picked up a lot of Tabitha's slang, too, but he initially can't use any of it--order and all that. He starts picking up a bit of it after Order is accidentally purged from him, but for a while he half-expects a voice in his head to correct him every time he slips and uses it.