On Writing Dialect -- and About a Bestseller

I just finished reading a book that has been immensely popular--NYT #1 Bestseller! Over a million copies sold!--and I am shaking my head in, not disbelief but more like puzzlement.

Since I'm going to say some critical things, I won't name the book--though with mega-sales and a movie deal, I doubt the author would be hurt by by my opinions.

Starting with the positive. The book has some truly lyrical nature writing-- evocative descriptions of setting and animal behavior. The protagonist is engaging and is faced with a threat--several threats, actually-- and an excellent hook. It's a textbook setup for a good novel. The reader cares about the protagonist and truly wants to keep turning pages to see how the problems are resolved, which is a key requirement of good story telling. 

But then it gets a bit melodramatic, actually, quite a bit melodramatic.  Nothing wrong with melodrama -- people love it. But for me, it turned what was looking like a serious literary novel into an excellent beach read. (And which sells better?) It will, no doubt, be a wildly popular movie.

But some serious inconsistencies and an implausible plot, much of the dialogue, cliched and clunky writing here and there, and especially the heavy-handed use of dialect made me cringe. Stuff like viz'ter for visitor, Saderdee for Saturday,  and ya/yo used  for you and your. Yikes!

Obviously it didn't bother the legions of readers who have made this book so popular.  (1.5 million copies sold at last count.) It hit a nerve with me though because when I was leading my class at Wildacres, at the request of one of the writers, I devoted some time to the use of dialect in writing. I did note that the people most likely to be critical of dialect are those who are intimately familiar with the dialect represented and that for most readers, just a vague approximation will suffice to let them know the speaker's dialect is Southern/Irish/Appalachian/Latino etc. 

Here's what I told the class -- far more information than most of you will care about. And, obviously, not critical in whether a book's a bestseller.

ON DIALECT

Dialect is tricky – it can add a lot to the richness of a story – or it can annoy, baffle, and irritate the reader till he or she flings the book across the room.

I had one critic call my use of dialect in one of my early books “demeaning.” At the same time, I’ve had numerous readers thank me for writing characters who talked just the way their grandparents spoke. I disagree with the demeaning accusation. I happen to believe that the language of my older neighbors, the same language I tried to reproduce, is musical and evocative. “I wouldn’t trust that man in my meathouse with a muzzle,” one neighbor told us when, during the Watergate hearings, we were discussing President NIXON.” Or, from another neighbor, “I was weedeatin down in the ditch when a great big gorf rat like to run up my britchie leg.” I almost swooned when I heard that -- the first time I’d heard ‘britchie leg” outside of the old song Cripple Creek.

You don’t want to turn your characters into caricatures; at the same time, I don’t see the point in cleaning up language – say, avoiding the use of ain’t, if that’s the way your characters talk. The way your characters speak can tell us who they are – think of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. He could probably listen to me and pronounce that I was educated, of a Southern background with hints of Alabama and Native Floridian overlaid by long time residence in rural western North Carolina. In my writing, set in rural western NC, I even differentiate between the speech modes of the older generation, their children, and their grandchildren. It’s easy for me – I just think of various people I know or knew – a lot of them are gone now) and ask myself How would Mearl say that? And what about her daughters Elsie and Delsie who have more education and more dealings in the outside world? And Mearl’s grandchildren, whose language is influenced by television?

The first thing to say is that, unless the reader is familiar with the people of whom you’re writing, you can get away with some flagrant misappropriations. BUT, if what you’re writing is being read by the same people you’re writing about, expect to get called on it. I can’t really speak to the authenticity of Dianna’s Irish and German accents, or Lindy’s Irish because I’m not familiar with them, beyond the popular representations thereof. But if Leah is writing about a place near me, I’m going to have a more critical ear.

That said, the important thing is to SUGGEST a mode of speech rather than try to replicate it. Use speech patterns – “Reckon why he did that?’ Or “Reckon why he done that?”

Mark Twain and others of his time wrote with an almost phonetic attention to the pronunciation of words. That really won’t work today. 

Try to get across the dialect or speech patterns by the phrases and sentence construction rather than oddly spelled words. You can also have an outsider comment on the soft Southern drawl, or Brooklyn accent, or Appalachian twang, or the fact that Miss Birdie pronounces chair as cheer. If English is your speaker’s second language, he may speak very precisely, no contractions, and sprinkle in bits of his own language.

‘Eye dialect’ is the term used for showing differences from ‘standard’ pronunciation by using alternate spellings (for example, writing ‘holler instead of hollow or using apostrophes to represent omitted letters y’all instead of you all or runnin’ instead of running. A little of this goes a long way – Over the course of my six novels. I used less and less. Often, I might use some once – As in Miss Birdie’s “Come on in and git you a cheer.” I spell get GIT and chair CHEER -just this once, hoping to have instilled in my reader’s mind, Birdie’s way of speech. Subsequently – and Birdie says this more than once - I use standard spelling.

Watch out for too many of those apostrophes to denote dropped letters. A standard one is an apostrophe instead of a g – ridin’, ropin’, shootin’ – absolutely standard and I used a fair amount of this in my first book. But it began to seem awfully cluttered lookin’ to me and in the secondary story – which is set around 1901 and in which everyone speaks in dialect, I dropped the G but omitted the apostrophe. And in later books, I generally didn’t drop the g at all.

Instead of eye dialect, the things to focus on are diction, synax, and idiom: word choice, word order, and characteristic turns of phrase.

DICTION – word choice: When we moved to our farm back in 1975, we found ourselves having to learn the language. You need to put some chat on that road so it don’t gaum up come winter. Finally, we realized we needed gravel on the road so it didn’t become a muddy morass when it snowed and melted. Traveling in England we had to remember that cookies were biscuits and potato chips were crisps and chips were French Fries.

SYNTAX --word order: This is really useful if you’re trying to convey a foreign speaker, It’s wanting to go, I am could be Irish or perhaps Welsh, while   Reckon what he meant by that? I’m ready to go everwhen you are  are some standard Appalachian twists of syntax.

IDIOM--characteristic turns of phrase: Brilliant! (current Brit) I wouldn’t give her air in a jar, He bowed up and wouldn’t go no further. She’s awful bad to talk. He got right ill at his wife when she burnt the biscuits.

Nothing can substitute for being as familiar with the dialect as if you had grown up speaking it. I didn’t start writing till I’d already been in Western NC for 25 years. I’d absorbed the sounds and had, on occasion, ‘passed’ as a native. But there are other ways of gaining greater familiarity with an accent – spending time with folks who speak like that, local radio, books by indigenous authors, recordings of story tellers using that dialect. Or a source – once I found myself writing that someone was ‘drunk as Paddy’s sow’ It sounded great but I began to wonder if it was something I’d actually heard – or something I’d read. I got up with (that’s some local idiom) Sheila Kay Adams – ballad singer and storyteller from my county and she said she’d never heard that but she had heard Drunk as an owl. Later I found the Paddy’s sow thing had come from the Patrick O’Brian books. Of course it’s not a big deal – the majority of readers wouldn’t have known the difference. But I would.

In my last book I have a character who’s English and as I wrote him, I realized my idea of Britspeak was somewhere between Monty Python and PG Wodehouse. So I enlisted the aid of a longtime English blog friend who agreed to read my attempt at this guy’s speech. He read and suggested a few minor changes. Here again, most readers wouldn’t notice. But for a few, there might have been some dreadful clangers.

Of course, if you’re writing about the past, you’ll have to rely on books of the time for the way of speech. I read Civil War letters to get an idea of the speech of the time. Mark Twain’s books are rich representations of a certain way of speech BUT the eye dialect is too much for modern day readers. The same for Zora Neale Hurston’s accounts by ex-slaves and many other writings of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. You can read them to get an idea of the way the speech sounded then ‘translate’ paying attention to diction. Idiom, and syntax. 

Here again, less is more. And here you won’t have anyone to call you on authenticity.

In the end, we do the best we can to represent our characters fairly, honestly, and with the dignity they deserve.