Character accents, necessary to type?

I think it'd be best to just say they have one, because books I've read in which the author tried to actually convey what the accents sounded like were some of the hardest books for me to read. So it'll save you confusion as well as your readers. :)

I be Shadow! Fear me. >:D

I would enjoy writing in a known accent myself but my characters are speaking in a totally made up language so some of my tricks to convey the "foreignness" of their speech may be of use to you:

Avoid contractions and vernacular idioms.
Use formal or awkward sentence construction.
Replace common nouns with slightly more obscure or formal versions.

Those will help identify a character unused to English, but not Irish, Australian, British, Canadian, etc.

Remember that highly skilled people will lose a lot of the "foreignness" of their speech, especially in word usage, when speaking in the jargon of their field.

Irvine Welsh wrote Trainspotting in completely phonetic Scottish dialect of varying degrees of intensity... but his grasp on those accents was incredibly strong, and the novel was very, very tied to its setting, so it worked (although it was damn hard to read short of actually sounding it out aloud). On the other hand, J.K. Rowling wrote out accents for Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum for effect and occasionally for comic relief. It really comes down to what you're comfortable with and what you think works. My suggestion would be to just say they have an accent and follow the guidelines above, and to only type out their accent if they're having trouble with a particular word (like Hermioninny!). Maximum effect, and minimum confusion for readers :)

If you suck with accents and don't know how to type them, then don't! Many authors just say the character has an accent and leave it at that. It's like dialect--if you're not really good at it, you're likely to wind up confusing your readers.

The one thing you can do is find out a prominent characteristic of those people's speech, and just use that--for instance, you'll see a lot of German characters in books replacing "w" with "v." Gives the feeling that they're foreign and have an accent without being too obtrusive. But I don't think that's necessary unless you're trying to make a point about how strong their accent is, and besides, some accents don't lend themselves easily to transcribing. I don't think anybody could convey my accent in Spanish just by typing what I say; I get the words and letters right, just sound foreign when I'm doing it.

I agree with everyone else in saying that it really depends on the character(s), as well as how many of them there are, but for the most part I'd leave it out.

One important note, though would be word choice. Without phonetically spelling out English accents, if they say "mum" instead of "mom" and "loo" instead of "toilet," most people are gonna be able to figure out that they're English. Same, if they're Irish, or Scottish, "aye" could replace "yeah," or if they're Canadian "ey" could replace "right?"

But, be careful with these, as well, because sometimes they can turn badly-prejudiced. Not all Canadians say "ey" at the end of every sentence. Some do, some don't, some say it more than others. It really depends on the person, and what part of the country they're from. Every country has different dialects in different places (i.e. North vs South in the US, London vs Cockney in England, French-Canadian vs . . . not).

2007: FM: Lord Rising (still writing)
2009: Somnium Mundi

I think, generally, you don't type them unless you want to emphasize that someone is saying a word odd. For example, if their accent causes word confusion, that should be typed in the accent.

Leaders, show us how to love each other, it could help us to recover.

hmm I don't know I'd say if you're not sure how to type it I'd leave it out and just mention they're speaking in an accent. I want to say Jack Higgins does this. Usually he just says they're speaking an Irish accent or a Dublin Irish accent to be specific but mostly it's written plainly.

Now if you read Terry Pratchett Wee Freemen he's done their words so you can read the accent as well. Also, I'm currently reading Battlefield Earth and the Scots have a readable accent and one of the characters goes back and forth. Some of it is written plainly but when he's stressed it goes into a written dialect. Also the Brigantees are written with accent because it's a mumbled English. However for when they speak Pschlyo to English the accent is just mentioned or they say they are speaking with a Chinko accent and leave it for you to decide what they sound like.

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

Thanks c:

What I've received in feedback from editors is that they do NOT like dialect typed into a story. I'd agree with the others above, that word choice can indicate heritage/cultural background and that's fine. Good luck!

NaNo 2007 In Search of the Lost Chord: A transdimensional adventure!

NaNo 2008 Mindshade -- If someone takes your mind, how do you get it back?

NaNo 2009 Love Me Touch Me Kill Me -- His love could bring her life or take it!

I have an accent in my novel that I've described as lilting and lisping. I don't show it, but I've had character remark on it - such as a character telling a friend that the friend's fiance sounds somewhat ridiculous because of his lisp (I hope that made sense). I've also mentioned people from this nation having trouble with a particular character's name because it has an 's' right in the middle of it. But as far as it spelling it out: no. I've read Huck Finn one time too many to try that.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everyone else.

- Umberto Eco

Good question! I was just pondering the same thing. My FMC is Cajun and I definetely type it out when she's talking but the thought hadn't occured to me that I might have to do the same on the parts where she's narrating D: I'm wondering if its gonna be over the top or not realistic or too hard to follow or annoying or what...

Caffiene? Check
Comfy chair? Check
Cookies? Check
Crazy Characters? Check
(word) Count? ......

Moving to Writing 101

Heather Dudley
Forums Moderator
Liquid Story Binder, on sale for 50% off during November!
A Dragon Writes

The best way to convey an accent, IMHO, is to pay attention to the words and phrases they use rather than trying to spell phonetically. Irish speakers, for example, use different sentence constructions than Brits. But that may take more research time than you want at this point. ;-)

What comes after NaNo? National Novel Publishing Year! http://www.nanopubye.org

Yeah, wonderer put it best think. Words, phrases, and sentence construction. I've been fortunate because I've been exposed to a lot of different people from different cultures with varying degrees of proficiency in english. So I've got a good (I think so anyways) feel for portraying a non native speaker without having to resort to accents.

Of course... I've done the complete opposite as well. I wrote up a complete language just so I could use it in the story I was writing to make the characters in the story seem more... exotic I suppose. It was great for filler but I got very tired of writing one character saying something in the foriegn language, another character going 'what did he say? and then a third character translating. It became tedious to say the least. Never again. Ever. I mean it this time. Heh.