Regional accents in dialog

My book takes place in a small city in West Texas in 1972. Contrary to stereotypes, not all of us in the South have thick accents. Plenty of perfectly intelligent people do. Don't get me wrong. But some of us don't. When I'm on a voice chat with folks from around the country, I'm often told I don't have one at all.

Some people here, on the other hand, speak with quite an accent, and, at least in my head, my characters cover that spectrum. Several of them are supposed to have fairly thick accents, and I want them to sound correct in the reader's mind. In a couple of cases, I described them as having accents, but for the most part, I just want it to show in the dialog.

The problem is, I don't know how much I can mess with the spelling and punctuation before it becomes tiresome or even difficult to read. I listen to audiobooks almost exclusively, so I haven't seen this done much in print. So far, I've been dropping Gs from the ends of words and writing darlin' instead of darling and using a couple of contractions like wanna and gonna, instead of want to and going to. Y'all doesn't count, because everyone here, regardless of accent, uses the word frequently.

That's all fine, but I feel like I should be doing more. Especially because, in some cases, a character doesn't use any of those words for a while in dialog, so the accent doesn't come out until the reader is halfway through the conversation.

I'm going to write the same few sentences a few different ways. Most paragraphs wouldn't have this much to play with, but I'm making a point, of course. Anyway, if you would, tell me what sounds right and what's unreadable, and if you have any suggestions for devices I'm not using, please let me know. (Oh, and by the way, most of my characters use better grammar than this.)

"Alright, here's what I think about it: If I was you, I wouldn't tell them what you told me the other night. You're going to wind up in jail, you keep flapping your jaw like that. You've got to start thinking about that little girl of yours and what might happen if you up and disappear."

A'ight, here's what I think about it: If I was you, I wouldn't tell 'em what you told me the other night. You're gonna wind up in jail, you keep flappin' your jaw like that. You gotta start thinkin' about that little girl of yours and what might happen if you up and disappear."

"A'ight, here's what I think 'bout it: If I's you, I wouldn't tell 'em what ya told me th'other night. Yer gonna wind up in jail, ya keep flappin' yer jaw like 'at. Ya gotta start thinkin' 'bout that li'l girl a yers an' what might happen if ya up an' disappear."

 

As long as they don't become caricatures, you should be fine.

 

Occasionally is good, but I do have to be consistent. If a character drops a G, they have to drop them all. Otherwise it looks like their accent comes and goes. I don't use an accent for most of my characters, so if I can find the right balance, it shouldn't be too cumbersome. I just need to figure out which words I can mess with without tripping people up trying to read it. I don't want to annoy anyone or pull them out of the immersion.

 

Granted, some people’s accents do come and go, though a lot of that’s code switching, which is more likely to show itself across multiple conversations rather than in a single one.

Personally, I think the best way to demonstrate regional accents in dialogue is through word choice and grammar instead of phonetically. So stuff like “fixing to” or the use of done as an auxiliary verb or multiple modals, plus classics like y’all and ain’t. The Wikipedia pages on Texan English, Southern American English, and maybe Midland American English (depending on where exactly in West Texas) have a lot of good stuff on this.

Looking at your samples, I think the second does the best job. Ya and yer as phonetic spellings are distracting. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Lovecraft, but he’s fond of that kind of thing, and it makes extended passages from some New England farmer or whatever real chores to read.

Dropping g’s is fine, but can feel almost like the apostrophes are poking you in the eye if you have a bunch of them close together. And if you’re able to nail the word choice and grammar, it’s likely your reader will be hearing the accent in their head, so it’s not strictly necessary.

Gonna, woulda, coulda, shoulda, wanna, kinda, etc. all work just fine, I think, and so does ‘em instead of them.

It’s possible there are also some little dialectical quirks in your writing already. Like, I had a novelette accepted a while back with one line in Deep Third Person narration where “drug” was used as the the past tense of “drag”, and the editor (a New Yorker) was utterly bewildered. Meanwhile, drug vs. dragged wasn’t something that had ever crossed my mind before. Made perfect sense to me and for the POV character, who has the same dialect. But it wasn’t worth fussing over, so I ended up revising it (to “hauled”, I think?)

You may need an outside perspective to identify those quirks, but once you’ve found them, they can help with setting the tone.

 

Yes, and a couple of my characters speak in dialect, but the vast majority don't for the most part. Lots of people have deep accents and decent if not flawless grammar. Having everyone say "ain't" is highly unrealistic. I'm from Lubbock. I've lived here for 45 years. My story takes place 30 minutes from here. I spent years working in the real city mine is based on. I know how people speak in this region. My thickly accented cousins, one with a Masters in Engineering and the other who taught middle school English for years, for instance, doesn't say things like, "I done told ya, son, I ain't gonna do it."

See, dialect and accent are different things. Sometimes they go together; sometimes they don't. Even people without thick accents are somewhat likely to say "fixing to," and absolutely everyone says "y'all," as I mentioned. My characters do speak accordingly.

I'm on at least my third draft of this 164K novel. I'm already well into beta and heavy editing phases. Let's assume that my dialect is correct, because, myriad of other flaws aside, I'm actually quite good at dialog, including personalizing speech patterns, dialect, quirks, etc.

These specifics are very helpful. Thank you.

Okay. Any thoughts on the second example, because that's the one I think I like. Keep in mind, I purposely put together a paragraph to include all these devices. In normal application, they would be fewer and further between.

 

If one insists on viewing accent as purely phonetic, then the answer to the question of how to write regionally accented dialogue is (in most cases) this: don’t. Readers tend to find more than occasional g-dropping and the like obnoxious at best. At worst, it risks coming across as an offensive caricature.

 

I see what you're saying, and maybe the wise solution is to forget the whole thing, but to one of your points, and I could be wrong, but I would think atrocious grammar would create a more offensive caricature than some punctuation. Personally, I don't mind some authentic dialect, but I could see how someone might feel made fun of. As a southerner, I definitely find over-done hick grammar to be offensive stereotyping. I don't think any of mine is over the top, though. I hope not. It's all observational. Of course, I've come across more of the uber-hick thing in TV and Film (especially for children) than in novels.

Thanks for the help.

 

IMO, the key is moderation. Sprinkled across a long-form work, the occasional use of a-prefixing or done as an auxiliary verb or fixing to/reckon/yonder/etc. does a good job of evoking the feel of the language. Pack them all into just a few paragraphs and it’ll either feel like the author’s trying too hard or is being offensive.

And to be clear, I think it’s more the phonetic misspellings of words that are an issue than punctuation stuff like dropping Gs.

 

I see what you're saying, and I don't entirely disagree, but I have a pretty strong mind's ear. I "hear" the voices when I read. I mostly listen to audiobooks, though, like I said. I don't get to see how it's written when the performer adopts an accent.

Stephen King uses "ayuh" (I had to look up how he spells it.) when an old-timer from Maine is talking, but I don't know if he plays with any of the other words when he's doing Maine dialect. I do know that sometimes he outright says "He pronounced the word X as Y." I've come across that in several of his books. Incidentally, we have a word very like "ayuh," but it ends with a glottal stop, so I don't even know how I'd spell it. It's pronounced like "yacht" (the boat) with a stop instead of a hard T.

Anyway, I looked up the only book I could think of that I knew used seriously thick dialect, Their Eyes Were Watching God. And you're right. It's effing hard to read. I think one could probably get used to it, but damn. This is how the dialog starts just after the first page or so:

“Humph! Y’all let her worry yuh. You ain’t like me. Ah ain’t got her to study ‘bout. If she ain’t got manners enough to stop and let folks know how she been malkin’ out, let her g’wan! "

“She ain’t even worth talkin' after,” Lulu Moss drawled through her nose. “She sits high, but she looks low. Dat’s what Ah say ‘bout dese ole women runnin’ after young boys.”​

So, less is more, I'm thinking.

 

I think this is the way. Certain phrases, expressions, and word choices will elicit a dialect just as well.

I had a biker from Texas in my story, who I did help a little phonetically, but most of his accent came from word choice and other referring to his accent.

That said, for my story in Scotland, I went nuts with it. Almost all the characters were written in plain English, but there was one who needed to out-Scots the Scots, so I pulled out all the stops.

I think it helps if you hear them speak in your head.
For the biker I always had Sam Elliot in Roadhouse in my mind, so that made it easy. For the Scottish story, I went with Billy Connolly after a few drinks, and a bit of James McAvoy. It just makes it easier to figure out how to write something if you can hear it and then dial it back until it's readable.

 

i mean... there are some pretty famous works that go all out with dialects and accents.

She heard men's voices in the distance and glanced at the dollar clock on the dresser.
"Humph! Ah'm way behind time t'day! Joe gointer be heah 'fore Ah git mah clothes on if Ah don't make haste."
She grabbed the clean mealsack at hand and dried herself hurriedly and began to dress.
-Zora Neale Hurston, "Gilded Six Bits" (1933)

Your music should be abou' where you're from an' the sort o' people yeh come from.———Say it once, say it loud, I'm black an' I'm proud
-- Roddy Doyle, The Commitments (1987)

​

i say, its inthe drafting stage right now. have fun with it. see what you can do, then pull back if you feel its too much.

 

I feel I'm pretty solid on the dialect at this point. After multiple drafts of this 164K monster, I'm not really playing with the dialog much anymore. I grew up around these characters. I'm confident in my word choices. All I was considering doing or not doing was messing with punctuation and maybe a couple of spellings to make the accents of a handful of characters more obvious.

I'm making an executive decision. I'm going with the punctuation in my second example.

I only have six characters with thick enough accents to worry about, one from the ensemble main cast and five tertiary characters with one to two scenes each. As @J.T. Woody can attest, that accounts for a small fraction of my book, so I don't think it will become tiresome.

These characters' dialects vary from deep to practically nonexistent, but the accents are as important to me as is a character being a redhead or a car being an old Chrysler or the day being windy. These things don't change the story much. They're just choices. But they flesh out the world with detail and lend verisimilitude.

 

I agree going light on accent markers, but the thing for me is that if a book has any accent marks/trends, I put it down. I don't have the time to decode what the author is trying to have the characters say. I read a whole pirate book set in the time era and have personally disliked written accents since. Mark Twain did similar in the Prince and the Pauper. I chucked that out the window and am never again going to read Twain. Also, the Manga Hellsing when the writers do 'German' accents in the dialogue. I had some scenes I couldn't tell what the characters were saying.

If it were me, I would just write the dialogue normal and add so and so had a thick Texas accent, or whatever.

 

@Rzero , I'm from Amarillo.

That first one doesn't sound thick at all. The third one sounds more rural southern, like southeast Texas or Arkansas, over to Georgia, than anything else.

I agree with those mentioning word choice. I would offer up something like this:

"Well (or Yeah), what I think is were I you, I sure as hell wouldn't tell 'em what you told me t'other night. You keep flappin' that jaw, you gonna wind up in jail. You gotta start thinkin' about that little girl of yours and what might happen if you up and disappear."

That sounds more West Texas or Panhandle to me, especially for 1972.