Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
You know, it's funny you bring this up...dialect is one of my hot buttons, in fiction. Drives me NUTS, especially (and I think this was the original trigger for me), Scottish. So help me, if I read one more "och aye, lassie" or "dinna ken," I'll scream.
I mean, they're fine, sprinkled throughout for "flavor," right? But when a character's entire dialogue is phonetically rendered, line after line after line...AGGGGH!!
I doesn't seem to matter if it's Low Country, "Texan" (don't get me started), Irish, Scots, Russian...it's just grinding. Yes, I know, there are good-selling books that have this in them; but there are bestsellers with idiotic crap like sparkly vampires and "heroines" with the character depth of a piece of paper, too. No accounting for tastes. But once a character has been drawn, and we've "heard" his voice in our heads, OMG, give it a REST! To me, doing every single line of dialogue phonetically is the writing equivalent of exposition--telling, not showing.
If your writing is so pathetic that you have to remind me, line after line, of how your character sounds, then maybe you need to go back to the drawing board and create a character that comes alive for us, ya know?
Hitch
|
But luv! Are yer saying you'd not be enjoying a read of Thomas Hardy.
One of the characteristics I cherish about Hilary Mantel's writing is her dialect free dialogue. It's in the phrasing and unwritten timing.
BR