Question!

[beetle-breath.livejournal.com]

Lord knows I must get annoying, asking you all for favours and answers. Stop me if I get annoying, please!

Anyway In fanfic, which is better: Dialogue written as is, or as the character sounds?


Does that even make sense?

And while I'm at it, I need a beta. The fic isn't done, but it's one that I'm determined to finish, if not share. So if anyone wants to volunteer, I'll be more than indebted to you & your time.

Comments

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

You can err too much on either side. Too little dialect written in, and they all look like they sound the same. Too much, and it's incomprehensible. I like to just put in a few dropped 'g's, a few ehs, a few ois, and a few yehs for Lister, and mostly leave the rest to the imagination.

That's just my take. In the books, I don't think you'd know Lister was a scouser if you didn't see the show. But maybe that was intentional. I kinda go the Hagrid route.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Scouse is so damned unreliable. You hear three different people speak it, and you'll hear three different variants. And even a single person's accent seems to vary! Craig's changes throughout the series, but it does not - as one might expect - get less and less pronounced; (all right, it does a little, but not ONLY this) it just changes. I've heard him pronounce the word "work" with an "o" sound and an "eh" sound within minutes of one another.

Erm. Babbling. Sorry. Language geek. ;)

[beetle-breath.livejournal.com]

Ah, but that's why I asked. =D

I'm just wary of it coming off as boring (I hate writing long bits of dialogue with no action, but this fic calls for it) or as really forced.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Well, if YOU think it's boring or forced, assume your reader does too. But it doesn't have to be. Dalogue can be fun - Connie Willis writes some excellent stories that are mostly dialogue; it's not about it being dialogue or not, IMO, but how it's written. And of course, you can intersperse dialogue with rather lengthy bits of thinking, even if nothing is acutally happening.

My advice is, try it out. If it sounds/looks odd to you, drop it. If not, keep it. :)

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Ja, you're definitely the right one to answer this one! :)

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

You know, I can't think that was anything but atypical, but the books were the reason I found out that Lister was a scouser! In Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, there's a passage where Rimmer imitates Lister, which is written out in exaggerated dialectizing, followed by "he said, in an exaggerated version of Lister's scouse accent" or something like that. And I, having been 12, and still unfamiliar with the nuances of BrE when I first saw the show, went "Lister has an accent?" I remember thinking the word "scouse" sounded particularly silly. But then I sounded out the line, and went, oooooooohhhhh...

And so began a life-long lingual love-affair. :p

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

No, I got ya. :) There's a word for it, which I forget. Anyway; my opinion:
There's a balance. I need a little hint of how Lister sounds to make him feel right on the page for me. That said, I would rather have nothing at all, than too much of it.

Opinion, of course. :)

[day221b.livejournal.com]

I'm with the others. I've seen it done both ways in stories and both styles succeeding in making me believe that I was reading about a particular character.

Different strokes, different folks with all different writing styles, but it's very easy to go overboard on the accents. I'd say less is more in most cases.

[zekkass.livejournal.com]

I agree with everyone else with this. You need a balance between the two. If you do too much, it's a pain to read. If you do too little, you have to rely on what the character's saying to get himself across.

And while you're at it, I'll volunteer for beta work. I generally look for grammar errors, but if you need me to look up characterization, I can. My email's cena@ringwald.org if you're interested.