Writing Lister

[lordvalerymimes.livejournal.com]

Sorry for posting so much on the group, but I have SO many questions.

So I'm still working on my "epic" and I've been going back and forth between writing Lister phonetically and not writing him phonetically. I want to be consistent throughout the fic and I can't decide which I prefer. Sometimes it just feels right writing Lister with an occasional dropped consonant and in' instead of ing. Other-times it feels... I dunno, forced? Maybe like I'm trying TOO hard to sound like Lister.

I know I've encountered both phonetic and non-phonetic Listers in my fanfic readings, and I was curious what everyone else thinks of it. Do you have a preference? Does it irritate you when you read, "smeggin' hell" instead of "smegging hell" or do you prefer it?

This has probably been discussed before, so I apologize if I'm dredging up a dead-horse to beat. :)

Comments

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

Please don't apologise - I often feel I'm posting too much, so to have others raising topics is fine by me. And I actually can't remember this specific one before. :)

For me, Lister is best when his accent isn't rendered phonetically, but that's my personal preference - people may disagree. He sounds most natural to me when he occasionally drops "g"s etc but not constantly. A little goes a long way.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Oh gawd, please don't apologize; this is one of my favorite topics. Sadly. :p

Y'know, when I started writing Rimmer/Lister with roadstergal, I would go through the drafts and change all of her Lister vocalization to match mine (not that she usually wrote it). She would then quietly change it back, and none of us would ever mention it. I'm telling you this to underline the point that this is very much a matter of personal preference.

If you'd like my advice, as an experienced fellow Lister writer? Don't worry about consistency.

The thing is, Lister's (and Craig's) accent isn't consistent throughout the shows. I think that's part of why I often feel like you do, that it sometimes feels right and sometimes doesn't. My advice is to go with what feels right at the time. Personally, I will happily go from "ye" to "you" and back again several times in a sentence. And I quite often find myself writing something like "You just don't understand what yer saying, do ye?" I just go with what feels right. I've not had any complaints to date!

(As an aside, I do think that various incarnations of Lister have slightly different accents and modes of speech, and I often use that in fic. For example, I tend to write Spanners totally un-phonetically, unless he gets excited. Hello, I'm Kat, and I'm a language geek.)

[rosecathy1.livejournal.com]

I prefer non-phonetic, mostly because his dialect (and anyone's dialect, for that matter) is more complex than dropped g's and h's. There are prominent features that can't really be rendered in written English, such as the vowels (as in "son" "funny" "first" "chair" etc., etc.), the hard consonants ("k" becoming "khh") and the trilled r, although we hear less and less of the latter two as Craig's accent gets softer. I think people who are familiar with the character can read non-phonetic dialogue and hear him speak the way he's supposed to sound.

The only thing that occasionally gives me pause is the me/my alternation, but I usually avoid writing that out too because it doesn't seem to be systematic in Craig's/Lister's speech, at least not anymore. In general, though, I think a different approach is needed when the actual words vary. For example, if a character uses "nowt" instead of "nothing," it would be weird to make them say "nothing."

I promise I'm not saying this to slag anyone off or to be self-righteous, but it almost seems unfair to portray, say, Rimmer's speech as a standard/norm and therefore not in need of any changes to the transcription.


Also, I may be biased because faithful phonetic rendering in books like Wuthering Heights drove me insane.

[kronette.livejournal.com]

Hiya! I know I prefer to read and write non-phonetically, because I can hear his voice in my head as I'm reading and it adds the accent perfectly fine. I used to write for Highlander and I massacred the Scottish brogue in my first few stories, despised it after a few years and fixed it to correct spelling before putting them on AO3. It makes it harder to read, IMHO. If you have the characters down (and you seem to), then we'll automatically hear the correct accent/cadence in their voices.

[fantasysci5.livejournal.com]

I like Lister dropping letters and all that.

[felineranger.livejournal.com]

I tend to write Lister mostly unphoenetically, as we all know what he sounds like and I think focusing too much on the accent can actually derail the dialogue. I drop things in occasionally, but it's usually to show that Lister himself is playing up the more 'rough and ready' or 'cheeky scouser' elements of his personality. It's nice to make reference now and then to the fact that no, he doesn't speak like Rimmer, but you don't need to hammer the point home.

[jameta4all.livejournal.com]

I read an interesting thing discussing this (can't remember where) and it points out that the use of phonetic speech is often classist/racist/ableist in that it emphasises that someone is different to the other characters, particularly that they are incapable of "The Queen's English" or they have a stutter. The only way to make it equal would be to make all speech phonetic which would be insane to read. I can understand their point. I say barthe and my friend says baff for bath, but if say a Japanese person were to say it the writer would likely put down 'bafu', and leave our pronunciations as 'bath'.

I generally go by the rule of if it's relevant to point out someone's accent (for example, if you were going to do the "come in my house" joke by Mickey Flanagan) then it's fine, but otherwise leave it alone. If the speech pattern is different then that's fine too, as rosecathy1 pointed out, nothing is not really a satisfactory replacement for nowt.

[lordvalerymimes.livejournal.com]

Now I'm glad I posted this because what a lot of interesting comments and observations!

The whole classism thing never occurred to me before, but it's quite a fair point.

Also a very fair point to bring up how Lister's accent changed throughout the show too. I've started Red Dwarf over from the beginning again and Craig certainly plays him a bit differently in those early episodes. Series 1-2 Lister is sort of soft and fuzzy compared to later Listers.

I hadn't put too much phonetic dialogue in the story, but it was sprinkled here and there. I think I'm going to delete most of it and use it very smatteringly (That's not a word? too bad, I like the sound of it.) when I think it seems appropriate.

This fic grew from the tiniest little idea but it's turning into something of a monster. When I came up with the idea I never realized it was going to wind up being this long and difficult to write. These characters have completely invaded my brain though and I can't turn them out. Hopefully I can bring the whole thing to some sort of conclusion soon. :)