Reading aloud in a "fake" accent

[Dan Jones]

Apologies for being facetious, Dave.

Especially as this is a thread of some relevance to me: the vast majority of characters in Man O’War are people of colour. If/when I get to do a reading (and I’m working on it) I’ve oft wondered whether or not to attempt a Nigerian accent (despite having many Nigerian friends at school and Uni, I am and remain not Nigerian) or simply read everything in generic English and just alter the tone for each character. For The Goddess Project this seems pretty easy as most characters are an analogue of Edwardian Britain, so with a little dramatic heft you could infuse any of your characters with the correct voice.

But what of those characters whose accents are not naturally one’s own? If I were to secure a reading somewhere, should I attempt a Spanish/ French/ Nigerian etc accent? It looks fine on the page but I’m not sure I’d want to give it the full Manuel on stage, if you catch my meaning.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

You're all angsting too much.

Me, reading Abendau - they all have lovely NI accents
Inish - lo! Lovely NI accents
A short story set on Cygnus Alpha? That'd be a small suburb in Belfast.

I do one accent

 

[Dan Jones]

Maybe I am angsting too much, but all the stories you’ve just mentioned, Jo, are set in fictional worlds, where accents don’t matter. The only one that isn’t is IC, which is set in Norn Iron, which is pretty sweet when you’re from Belfast!

But for me the cast of characters in MOW was reflective of the London I grew up in. That means that for the characters with a thick East London / Essex accent, I’d be more than happy putting it on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d be happy putting on a Nigerian / Algerian / Spanish / etc accent. Or should I just throw caution to the wind and say it as I see it?

 

[Phyrebrat]

@Dan Jones - Definitely don't; it's the verbal equivalent of blackface. Also millions of your billion-readers wouldn't be able to identify a Nigerian accent; bsides, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba will speak differently anyway. When people read in their heads, I often wonder if they differentiate accents. I'm ashamed to admit when I read I have a non-voice-voice. Thought seems transcendant to issues like voice and accent to me.

When someone writes dialect it breaks my flow in what I'm reading because I have to stop and familiarise myself with the words and the stresses and whatnot. I really struggled with this in my WIP when I wanted Henry to sound Dorset/Somerset-ish but writing it so was ludicrous. In the end I just signaled it by changing his "you" to " 'ee" and his "yes" to "yar" I felt that was enough; and Dorset folk don't even say 'yar', but it was enough.

pH

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Maybe I am angsting too much, but all the stories you’ve just mentioned, Jo, are set in fictional worlds, where accents don’t matter. The only one that isn’t is IC, which is set in Norn Iron, which is pretty sweet when you’re from Belfast!

But for me the cast of characters in MOW was reflective of the London I grew up in. That means that for the characters with a thick East London / Essex accent, I’d be more than happy putting it on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d be happy putting on a Nigerian / Algerian / Spanish / etc accent. Or should I just throw caution to the wind and say it as I see it?

But you're the author not the audiobook narrator or cast of thousands. It's a reading not a play. They are two different things - and any author readings I've been to (a lot!) don't have the author reading in loads of voices. It's the author people have come to see.

 

[Dan Jones]

@Dan Jones - Definitely don't; it's the verbal equivalent of blackface.

Yes, exactly, that’s what I was getting at. I don’t think I would anyway, it would just feel wrong.

I think, with the proliferation of TV shows and movies with talented actors who have a full range of accents in their range, that there is a temptation to perform aforementioned full range of accents - despite not possessing said accent. Were I to secure a reading of some sort I think I’d have to differentiate between characters through tone alone (that’s a Macauley Culkin film, right?) rather than attempting an accent.

Unless it was Geordie. In which case...

 

[Dave]

Even apart from the blackface question, this:

When someone writes dialect it breaks my flow in what I'm reading because I have to stop and familiarise myself with the words and the stresses and whatnot.

I can't agree more. It may look good to differentiate your characters by having them speak in different accents i.e. the yokel tenant farmer saying "Traaa..ctors" and his toff landowner with heirs and graces and his raised aitch's, but it is very difficult to follow when reading. Making up your own language is even worse. Clever though Iain M Banks Feersum Endjinn is, it was tiring to read that text-speak, phonetic transcription. Though I'm a Geordie myself, even the comedic Larn Y'sel Geordie books are difficult to read.

Far better to describe the character to the reader and then to let them think of him speaking in whatever way they imagine that character would speak like. It might not be exactly how you imagined the character to speak, but unless you have written pages and pages of description, each reader is unlikely to imagine the room and furniture, or the character's clothes, hairstyle and skin tone in the same way either. That is the very nature of the medium of books.

 

[Dan Jones]

I have to agree with all of that, Dave. I have never written accents, but will throw in the occasional "regional" word, if that makes sense, but hopefully not so much that it becomes "more" than the text. Readers are more than able to fill in the gaps. But the OP wonders not about reading but listening, and therein lies the element of performance.

I really enjoyed Feersum Endjinn too, but found it a slog. Worth persevering with, though. Probably easier to get away with when you have Iain M Banks written on the spine of your book.