Dialogue And The Times
Terry Odell
We are warned to take it easy with dialects in dialogue, because they make things harder to read, and the last thing we want to do is slow things down for our readers. These are a few snippets showing how I handled it years ago in Where Danger Hides.
“Well, what do we have here? You want to come on out, darlin’?” The voice was deep, warm, and decidedly Texan.
***
From her brief encounter with Texas, she was certain he’d be dressed like every other man here—in a tuxedo. She’d never pick him out in the crowd. Unless, of course, he opened his mouth, and that slow, honey-rich drawl flowed out.
I left it up to the reader to fill in the blanks as to what they heard while reading.
Or, in Rooted in Danger, where my protagonist was an Aussie, I used expressions rather than try to spell out the way he sounded when he spoke.
The man’s soothing tone penetrated her fog. He didn’t try to take the gun away, but he walked her to the kitchen and, guiding her hand with his, opened a cabinet.
“How about in here?” he asked. “Or shall we toss it down the dunny?”
Finally, his words registered. “Dunny?”
“Loo. Head. W.C. Toilet. Although that was more of a figure-of-speech question because it would ruin your plumbing.”
***
“Told you it would be a bucket of piss.”
“What?”
“I think you’d call it a piece of cake.”
“I definitely like that better.”
***
“Thanks, Wally. You’re a right fine bastard.”
“You got no call to say that about me,” Wally said with a scowl.
“Sorry, mate. Where I come from, bastard means a damn good friend.”
***
We’re also told to watch profanity. But there are always exceptions to everything.
(Note: I am not going to get into book banning or censorship in this post. Nor am I going to give spoilers for Everett’s book.)
But language evolves. Tastes change. Conventions change.
Our book club voted to read James by Percival Everett for this month. We meet tomorrow, so I don’t know what the other group members will have to say about it, but this is my take.
James is based on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, a book I read countless times as a child—I’m thinking it was in my elementary or junior high school days. I thought Huck was cool (although that wasn’t the slang in those days.)
It was also assigned reading in high school English. (Can we get away with that today?The “N” word was used extensively in both Huckleberry Finn and James, as appropriate to the times.) Good old Mr. Holtby had us discussing whether we’d rather be a raft or a riverboat. He was all about symbolism. But he made us think.
At any rate, after reading James, I went to the library for a copy of Huckleberry Finn, because I’d been under the impression that James was a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view. There were so many things I didn’t remember, given the elapsed time between high school and today, but—duh moment—it didn’t take long to realize that Huck and Jim weren’t together through the whole book, so seeing what transpired for Jim while he was apart from Huck made for a very different story.
Huck’s grammar (or lack thereof) was prevalent in both books. Likewise for Jim. True to the times and the vocabularies of the characters. I wonder if Everett blew up spellcheck and any grammar checking software. I’m not going to try to transcribe passages from Huckleberry Finn. Instead, here are two image. (Sorry about the quality. I took it from a very old, yellowed paperback.)
This is Huck:
Here, Jim is talking to Huck.
Did you have trouble reading either passage? Did you have to slow down? Was it more the spelling, grammar, or vocabulary? Would you try writing that kind of dialogue today to show a character’s accent or dialect?
What are your thoughts about dialect in dialogue? Everett’s book was not only published (Sorry, I didn’t think to grab a picture or two before I had to return it to the library, but a lot of the dialogue was very much the same) but won the 2024 Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. It’s also been optioned for a movie, and I’m curious to see how it’s handled.
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Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”
Oh… I get to be first and what an interesting topic. Dialect, slang, and idioms can set a tone. They can also beat the reader over the head. Some English cinema beats you up being “authentic” it can be hard to watch. My wife could never get the enjoyment out of “Waking Ned Devine” because she didn’t understand most of the dialog.
The Superbowl played this out with a back beat. People used to hip hop heard the words and loved it. My oldest child was waiting for TV Off but settled with Not Like Us. Almost all of the hate on Kendrick Lamar I heard was pretty thinly vailed racism. The fact that hip hop is now over 50 years old seemed lost on many.
Thanks, Alan, and happy ‘being first day’ to you.
I admit I couldn’t understand a single word on the halftime show, so I wasn’t much of a fan.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of my favorites. It’s not often you can read a book that makes you laugh out loud while teaching you a few things about the human condition.
I don’t have any problem reading Huck’s dialogue. Jim’s was harder, but I understand why Twain did it, and I think he made the right decision to use the dialogue the way he did.
Thanks, Kay. I can’t wait to hear what my book club peeps have to say about James, which dove far deeper into issues that–sadly–don’t seem to have lessened since Huckleberry Finn was written.
Terry, you handle accents, dialects, and idioms really well. When you first introduce a character, you capture the flavor of their speech pattens. Once those are firmly established in the reader’s mind, they’ll hear them throughout the story whenever that character speaks, with only brief reminders from time to time.
Makes for easy reading yet captures the essence of the voice.
Thanks, Debbie.
I tend to give a character one or two characteristic words/phrases which (I hope) reminds the reader who they are, where they’re from, etc. For Dalton, it was darlin’ which was (as I recall) about the only time I showed the dropped final g
I find that when I see (hear?) a dialect coming, I sort of stumble through the it first time it shows up, but find I get into the rhythm of the contractions and “misspellings.”
I know trying to maintain that throughout the story can be a real challenge when “wrahtin’ hit out…” – having to stop and “sound out” or “phoneticize” each and every single word of a character’s dialogue can break the flow of the overall writing and get in the way of meeting word-count goals… and trying to edit it in on revision can lead to missing some words (not to mention corrupting Spill Czech – which I have done already with words like “y’all” and “y’all’re” and “y’all’ll” 😋)
I does seem to come easier in verse or songwriting – not sure why… could be the rhythm or scansion, or the “forced” rhyming… and I tend to BE the character in these instances instead of the character’s story teller…
I agree that having to sound out words slows the read. And I agree with your thoughts that musical lyrics use the rhyme and rhythm, although I don’t think too many songs require listeners to figure out which of many “characters” is singing.
I had a lot more trouble reading Jim’s passage. To me, it’s illegible. And I certainly wouldn’t read an entire novel written that way. I remember Huck from my early school years. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t have any trouble reading the first passage. It also brought back fond memories. Thanks, Terry.
I’m with you on Jim’s dialect/spelling. I just reread Huckleberry Finn, and he talked the same way then!
Every time the idiots come after HUCK FINN, those of us who have actually read it remind everyone that it was a blistering condemnation of slavery and Jim was as close to a loving father as Huck had. Idiots.
I have used a tiny bit of dialect, but I try to stick to the arrangement of the words as much as possible to show it’s not a native speaker.
“Your father he has been swallowed by the god of this place.”
I also use an occasional phonetic spelling.
“You go home now. If your people give ye any trouble, you just tell them to talk to Patrick. I’ll speak to the constables about these ruffians, too. Me sarvant called them.”
Good examples of how “less is more”, Marilynn.
There were a lot of surprises about Jim in James
Interesting! I write in very Brit dialogue, but posting my ‘authentic’ archaic North Pennines speech here was eye-opening. One of the editors said that the word ‘tha’, meaning ‘you’, ‘drover her crazy’. I cut my thas. I wanted to get a feel of an isolated community, but alienating the reader isn’t worth it. Now I remember I thought readers would say, ‘If they’re so isolated, why do they talk just like everybody else?’ but now I realise nobody will be bothered by that.
It was work, reading both Jim and Huck’s dialogue, yes. But I didn’t mind, and got into the flow after a bit.
I remember reading ‘Swing, Hammer, Swing’, by Jeff Torrington – Glaswegian dialect and vernacular, from start to finish. Loved it!
But would it be published today, and, actually, was it a stunt-publish then? You know, the ‘slice of life’ publication.
When we learn to read as children, we progress from phonics to “sight words”, something we worked on building when I was tutoring for the Adult Literacy League in Orlando. Having to sound words out really slows the read, and if the words are unfamiliar, then it’s a challenge.
My former son-in-law gave me a “Suffolk Dictionary” to help me understand the people when we visited.
It’s not really dialect, but another language in my case. My romantic suspense books are set in San Antonio, where the demographics are 55 percent Hispanic. I usually have characters who sprinkle some Spanish or Tex Mex into their dialogue. I try to make sure the reader will understand the meaning by the context. In my Amish romances Pennsylvania Dutch is sprinkled throughout. My publishers have chosen to include a list of those words and phrases w/translations at the beginning of the books to help readers out. Usually context helps. I’m not a huge fan of thick dialect. I like your way of letting readers know in other ways. I would quibble a bit, though, with the drawl as a way of identifying someone from Texas. If they grew up in East Texas (or from Dallas eastward than yes), but Central/South Texas, nope. It’s a huge state and the demographics vary greatly. You don’t find a drawl in San Antonio much (unless someone is a transplant), but you will find accents from a number of different ethnic groups. Just food for thought when drawing your characters from this state.
Thanks, Kelly. This reminds me of “My Fair Lady” and Henry Higgins’ ability to pinpoint where someone came from by the way they spoke.
After our instructor warned against dialect, I wrote “Mountain Where Rain Alltime,” half Pidgin. It’s the story of a missionary, Rev. Burke, who left for Parangatoa over two years before and has not been heard from since. A recent tape recording has been received from another missionary and is being played at Burke’s home church, with occasional interruptions to translate the Pidgin:
[Sound of water splashing, followed by scraping noise] “Take hand! Joseph help white-fella get outa boat. Aieee! You Big-Jesus-Fella!”
(I’ll stop the tape momentarily and explain that in Parangatoa pidgin English, “Big-Jesus-Fella” means a bishop. This is because of the large pectoral cross that our bishops wear. The natives refer to priests, who wear smaller crosses, as “Little-Jesus-Fellas.”)
With breaks to explain Pidgin terms, such as Big-Man-Up-Top = God, kai-kai = eat, belong-him = his, the story unfolds a bit at a time, telling how Rev. Burke makes life increasingly difficult for Joseph and his people, until at last the priest is induced to take the Gospel to a remote tribe, Him-fella-live-Mountain-Where-Rain-Alltime.”
[“Yes, Burke-fella go ‘way. But Faddah-Henry alltime say ‘Love enemy-belong-you,’ so us-fella no forget Burke-fella when make pray-talk. Us-fella pray: ‘Big-Man-Up-Top! Keep Him-fella-live-Mountain-Where-Rain-Alltime safe from Burke-fella. No let Him-fella-live-mountain get tummy-ache when him kai-kai Burke-fella’!”]
Because so much of this uses words easily connected to English, I had no trouble reading it. Authenticity vs readability is always a fine line.
Much of this piece was based on an account by Don Coates, one of my sister’s boyfriends, called “Long-fella” by the natives, who warned him: “No go mountain. Him-fella live mountain. him kai-kai Long-fella.” Don never went near the mountain.
The instructor handed it back to me marked “A. Outrageous.”