Hi, everyone! It's me again. In this oportunity I want to know what's your opinion about how do you write an accent in the dialogues their novel. Well, I do this question because I'm writing my story and in it there are some characters (a Northern Irish boy, a Scottish girls, etc.) and I don't know how do I writing these accents. Any advise?
There were long bits of conversation in accent in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Gone with the Wind' that I struggled with, though I have read these books many times.
I have tried using different kinds of English in my novel, so the sentence formation can be a little different reflecting the background of the characters, but the words are written in plain English. So its not accents, but expression that I have resorted to.
Accents and other traits do make characters more real.
Many critics, editors, publishers and authors of creative writing books, advise against writing with accents.
The author understands the accent but will a person from America, Russia, Europe, Africa, India or South America.
Even if a foreign reader can read English it can be hard going trying to understand an unusual British accent. At worse it will slow the pace of reading, when your aim is to keep the pages turning.
I'm not saying don't do it. But only if it's necessary.
Younger readers would struggle, but I believe the mature reader would better understand the voices in novels by Mark Twain and Flannery O'Connor.
I love writing accents. Have a look at my shared work, be interesting to see what you think.
I would also advise watching film of folk with those accents. Try it out yourself, noting turns of phrase, stresses and truncations. Read book like Trainspotting, which is written entirely in a Scottish dialect.
And practice :)