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odd_buttonsAh, this is an entry very applicable to LotR fanfic, Dialect, and I heartily agree with it. Here -- the first line:
"First a warning: Do not attempt dialects with which you are not intimately familiar and for which you have not, in some way, paid your dues."
As a person with a distinct accent, I cringe when I hear my native accent butchered in movies or on TV, and I find it annoying as hell when people write it phonetically. There's a comic strip that does this on a regular basis, and it has always annoyed me to no end because I learned to read by sight, not phonetics, and if a word's look is messed with, my eye comes to a screeching halt -- which is one of the very problems Stern brings up.
Dialect in LotR, hobbit-fic in particular, makes me very reluctant to write Sam, and Sam sometimes suffers in stories because of a lack of understanding or sensitivity about dialect. I sense, but haven't grasped fully, the differences in speech patterns between Gondor and Rohan. That doesn't mean I never have written story with men from Gondor or Rohan or Sam in it, nor am I going to suggest writers leave out any character they want to write -- quite the opposite. My view on fanfic has always been that fanfic is fun -- jump in and do it -- have fun, learn, make friends, write -- and have FUN. Just do be aware that dialect is a powerful tool of characterization, so become aware of it, learn about it, use it well.
Okay, one personal mini-rant -- Pippin was not Scottish!!! If any one of the hobbits was going to have an accent, it would have been Merry: people from Buckland had "strange words" and such that had come from Bree. And there could be a long bit inserted here about the use of dialect in RPS. But . . . that is a post for someone else to explore fully. *smile*
*
The following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Dialect
First a warning: Do not attempt dialects with which you are not intimately familiar and for which you have not, in some way, paid your dues. Otherwise, you are likely to make a fool of yourself and seem to be a bigot as well.
For dialects you do know well, it is better to concentrate on rendering the rhythms, the architecture, and syntax of the dialect than to try to indicate pronunciation of individual words by changing spellings and using apostrophes. There are several reasons for that. English is orthographically too imprecise, so the misspellings often don't indicate how the word is pronounced. Also misspellings seem to caricature the speakers, 'n fillin' yuh tawk wit' 'postrophes 'n stuff's tew hahd ruh read. A particular offense is eye dialect, like writing enuff for enough, since it doesn't change the pronunciation but implies that the speaker is ignorant and inferior.
Look how beautifully Toni Morrison or William Kennedy handles dialect. Twain's Huck reflects on prayer, "So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind." In Bernard Malamud's The Assistant, Morris tells his wife, "Nobody goes in the night to buy a story. The time to go is in the day to see how many customers. If this man comes here he will see with one eye the story is dead, then he will run home." What you can learn from such passages is how delicate touches and the understanding of the subtler movements of speech will create the dialect in the mind of the reader.
See Dialogue, Local Color, Profanity / Obscenity, "Write What You Know."
"First a warning: Do not attempt dialects with which you are not intimately familiar and for which you have not, in some way, paid your dues."
As a person with a distinct accent, I cringe when I hear my native accent butchered in movies or on TV, and I find it annoying as hell when people write it phonetically. There's a comic strip that does this on a regular basis, and it has always annoyed me to no end because I learned to read by sight, not phonetics, and if a word's look is messed with, my eye comes to a screeching halt -- which is one of the very problems Stern brings up.
Dialect in LotR, hobbit-fic in particular, makes me very reluctant to write Sam, and Sam sometimes suffers in stories because of a lack of understanding or sensitivity about dialect. I sense, but haven't grasped fully, the differences in speech patterns between Gondor and Rohan. That doesn't mean I never have written story with men from Gondor or Rohan or Sam in it, nor am I going to suggest writers leave out any character they want to write -- quite the opposite. My view on fanfic has always been that fanfic is fun -- jump in and do it -- have fun, learn, make friends, write -- and have FUN. Just do be aware that dialect is a powerful tool of characterization, so become aware of it, learn about it, use it well.
Okay, one personal mini-rant -- Pippin was not Scottish!!! If any one of the hobbits was going to have an accent, it would have been Merry: people from Buckland had "strange words" and such that had come from Bree. And there could be a long bit inserted here about the use of dialect in RPS. But . . . that is a post for someone else to explore fully. *smile*
*
The following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Dialect
First a warning: Do not attempt dialects with which you are not intimately familiar and for which you have not, in some way, paid your dues. Otherwise, you are likely to make a fool of yourself and seem to be a bigot as well.
For dialects you do know well, it is better to concentrate on rendering the rhythms, the architecture, and syntax of the dialect than to try to indicate pronunciation of individual words by changing spellings and using apostrophes. There are several reasons for that. English is orthographically too imprecise, so the misspellings often don't indicate how the word is pronounced. Also misspellings seem to caricature the speakers, 'n fillin' yuh tawk wit' 'postrophes 'n stuff's tew hahd ruh read. A particular offense is eye dialect, like writing enuff for enough, since it doesn't change the pronunciation but implies that the speaker is ignorant and inferior.
Look how beautifully Toni Morrison or William Kennedy handles dialect. Twain's Huck reflects on prayer, "So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind." In Bernard Malamud's The Assistant, Morris tells his wife, "Nobody goes in the night to buy a story. The time to go is in the day to see how many customers. If this man comes here he will see with one eye the story is dead, then he will run home." What you can learn from such passages is how delicate touches and the understanding of the subtler movements of speech will create the dialect in the mind of the reader.
See Dialogue, Local Color, Profanity / Obscenity, "Write What You Know."
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 01:13 pm (UTC)Thanks!
EG
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 04:50 pm (UTC)I think the 'shapes' described in the first section work well as writing prompts. Not that I've managed to write anything, but . . . !
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 02:13 pm (UTC)This is one of my big pet peeves, and I couldn't agree more with this entry.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 04:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-26 11:06 pm (UTC)I have admired your writing since I began lurking in LotR fandom about a year ago, hence my flipping through these entries. I intend to read through all of what you have to say about this book, as I find this process quite fascinating. Thank you for posting these entries for us to see.
Catherine
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-27 03:52 pm (UTC)I'm also delighted that you find helpful these snippets from Making Shapely Fiction. I've read a few books on writing, and this one is pretty good. I do like the set-up, with an index of entries with related topics listed for each subject.
And thank you for such nice words about my writing; you're so kind -- thank you very much!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-27 05:25 pm (UTC)Catherine
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-27 11:50 pm (UTC)