Writing Accents

[Gawian]

Writing my first Fantasy short story, and I'm suddenly struck by the realisation that I tend to always write properly, meaning that all my characters talk as such.

However, Fantasy voices always tend to vary, so I'm wondering, if a character has a strong accent, do you still write properly, or write how the accent sounds.

For example, in my story, there is a group called the Inquisition. Mean ol' blighters.
And I have the following sentence from a drunken individual, trying to save his own hide:

“At's enuff o' that girl. 'At little tart is gonna bring the Inquisition down 'ere, then we're all [CENSORED].”

Now I don't expect this story to get published or anything, I'm just asking to help improve my own writing. Is this format acceptable, or would people prefer it all be written properly, and I just mention the man has a heavy drunken accent??

 

[MemoryTale]

As long as it's still obvious what he's trying to say, write the accent. Every time. It's alright just saying someone has an accent, but writing the accent out allows me to hear the character and really brings them to life.

 

[Ihe]

Accents are doable, but dole them out in small doses. Specially for characters with extensive dialog, like your MCs. Readers don't usually welcome the extra effort it takes to decode what's on the page, and it can put a lot of readers off if it goes on for 400+ pages. The occasional strange word/slang or the missing last letters and contractions are ok up to an extent. Clarity is one of the most important elements in any writing endeavour, so keep an eye out for it. Also, readers tend to project themselves on certain MCs, and it will undermine the immersion if the MC's language is worlds apart from the average English speaker.

 

[Phyrebrat]

It's okay as long as it doesn't go too far as to become distracting or pull the reader out the story.

(I'd also change 'enuff o' to 'enuffa' as o is often pronounced oh instead of uh when written down.)

pH

 

[Gawian]

(I'd also change 'enuff o' to 'enuffa' as o is often pronounced oh instead of uh when written down.)

pH

Ohhh.... I like that. Ta much

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I write accents a fair bit in my Norn Irish stuff. I find that it's easier to just use the odd word for flavour and not go ott about capturing it exactly - which becomes wearisome to read after a while. So, in my case, colloquial language and the odd NI word like wee and eejit dropped in gives a flavour.

 

[Brian G Turner]

“At's enuff o' that girl. 'At little tart is gonna bring the Inquisition down 'ere, then we're all [CENSORED].”

I have no idea what accent you're trying to write.

 

[Montero]

Me neither. Are you aiming for a particular regional accent, or just "rough speech" ?

And if you can avoid apostrophes as much as possible it is a good idea. For me
'ere and o' is OK,
but 'At lost me - is it supposed to be That?
“At's enuff o' that girl. 'At little tart is gonna

Without the context, also wasn't sure if this was "That is enough of that girl" - as in don't want to see her again. Or an address "That is enough of that, girl" as in "Girl, that is enough of that". So was pondering whether there was a missing comma.

 

[Gawian]

Me neither. Are you aiming for a particular regional accent, or just "rough speech" ?

And if you can avoid apostrophes as much as possible it is a good idea. For me
'ere and o' is OK,
but 'At lost me - is it supposed to be That?
“At's enuff o' that girl. 'At little tart is gonna

Without the context, also wasn't sure if this was "That is enough of that girl" - as in don't want to see her again. Or an address "That is enough of that, girl" as in "Girl, that is enough of that". So was pondering whether there was a missing comma.

Oh yeah, I missed the comma out when I rewrote it here. It is a form of address.

And it's a rough northern province. Think Winterfell from GoT. But mixed with a little bit of Skyrim.

And yeah, 'At is supposed to be THat. But the guy is drunk as balls, and from this area, so it's lost.

 

[Montero]

I think I'd convey the "drunk" bit by a small bit of tell/show
tell as in "slurring badly" or "they'd been boozing for hours"
or
show as in burping and spilling his beer

Drunk in terms of speech, you get slurring on consonants and people losing the thread, so you'd have him saying "Thaz enuff o' that, girl." He glared at her, struggling to focus/pausing to burp/waving his tankard etc. After a moment he remembered what he was trying to say, "Don't want that little tart around 'ere." etc
But of course in your own words in your own way.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

It's a tricky tightrope to walk between readability and authenticity. If in doubt, always err on the side of readability.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree with Stephen. Writing accents is tricky for a lot of reasons. Obviously you can get it wrong and it looks wrong, but you can also get it right and it looks cartoony. I think I would try to get as much information into description of the accent rather than the accent itself. “He had a strong local accent” sounds better to me than a literal attempt to replicate that on the page.

 

[Aquilonian]

Two different things are being discussed here. There's accents- people can speak just as clearly in a regional or foreign accent as in the "official" form of the language e.g. "BBC English". And then there's indistinct speech, due to drunkenness, speech impediments, or just very poor diction, where the consonants are not formed properly. The latter is almost impossible to put down in writing- if you do it will be incomprehensible, so its better to describe it than to transcribe it. I hear plenty of conversations between people who seem to be close friends or relatives- certainly using the same accent or dialect, but who cannot understand one another and have to constantly repeat themselves- usually in the exact same words which were incomprehensible the first time and still incomprehensible the second time.

 

[chrispenycate]

I enjoy writing in local dialects - which doesn't, obviously, that my readers enjoy it too. Still, neither of the have openly complained. I generally start with thick enough accent that it interferes with comprehension, dropping into standard English pronunciation as the POV character started to absorb the distortions and hear them as 'normal', so I don't need to go the entire chapter in almost furrein.

 

[Gawian]

The thing is though, it's set in a Fantasy land. So I can't say "He had a gruff Scottish accent" (is there any other kind of scottish accent though?? lol) because in this land, there is no Scotland.

 

[HareBrain]

But you could briefly describe the feel of the accent: sing-song, rolling, twangy, drawling, clipped, cut-glass, flattened vowels etc. Even if readers don't know exactly what you mean, it might give an impression.

 

[Abernovo]

The thing is though, it's set in a Fantasy land. So I can't say "He had a gruff Scottish accent" (is there any other kind of scottish accent though?? lol) because in this land, there is no Scotland.

Yes, there are plenty of other kinds of Scottish accent, thank you.
But, in seriousness, perhaps that is part of your problem. You sound like you're viewing people as an amorphous mass.

Falkirk accents are different from Edinburgh accents, but more similar to them than Aberdonian accents (and, within Aberdeen, Torry has a bad, and mainly undeserved, reputation for being broader in accent and more uncouth in behaviour). Where I am now, Gloucester has a slightly different accent from Tewkesbury, very different from the Forest of Dean, and completely different from Bristol. Look them up on a map - they're possible to travel in a day on horseback, walk even, with possible exception of Bristol. In Bulgaria, accents again change slightly from town to town, the same in other countries I've stayed/worked in, so it is, I suspect, global.

I'd agree with HareBrain: describe the feel of the accent. You can say it's different from how they speak in X, but wasn't the lilting song of Y, or the refined tones of the capital, where the courtiers (there are always courtiers, and see, that's another sub-group with their own speech codes) hid behind their eloquence and never said what they meant. Et cetera...

Finally, and apologies for the length of this, even people from the same town have differences in voice and speech patterns. Some are higher-pitched, others lower; some nasal; many have speech impediments to some degree; or colds which obscure words; or tiredness causing them to slow or stumble words. Make your characters human (or not, perhaps elves get runny noses), with lots of things that are similar, but little quirks of individuality.