Kernel of Insight: Dialects and Experimentation with Dialogue

 Okay...been longer than I wanted.  I know I try to keep a weekly update schedule, though sometimes I stretch the definition of "weekly" but I've...just been wiped out since posting my last chapter.  Road trips in attempts to find a new job, working hard at my current job, stress, drama, and of course sickness...I've been prevented from doing much writing.  Only had time to support my gaming blog.  However, I want to try and get back into the swing of things...so, I'm starting on the next chapter now.  I hope to have it ready by the end of March.  Until then, we'll have more character spotlights and possibly one or two more Kernel's of Insight, like this one.

I have to apologize for all the delays...I'm not as young/motivated/with as much free time as I once was...and I hate the delays as much as anyone who has stuck with me.  But, I am dedicated to this.  If you stick with me, I'll get to the end of this book eventually.  That's my promise

Anyway, enough being a downer.  Let's get into this week's Kernel of Insight.

 Kernel of Insight: Dialects and Experimentation with Dialogue

            With my most recent chapter being posted, I felt it important to speak a little bit about a curious little thing called literary dialects.  See, more often than not, any variation of speech we see incorporated into a character, whether stiff, proper, and robotic, like Aeon who refuses to use contractions when in his skeletal form, or a bit more rustic, where slang and shortened words are more common for the sake of convenience, like Yuka and the neeg seen in last chapter, comes from real life.  We use our own experiences, be they first hand or not, to fill in the gaps.  We write to what we know.  Sometimes, this can lead to interesting leaps.  Brian Jacques created a new type of dialect for an entire race in his Redwall books, where the moles speak in a sometimes hard to understand, somewhat rustic and often slow paced manner of speech.  Things like "Oi ill ake thee a deep'r than earth poi as big as oi" (forgive me, but I'm typing from memory.  No offense meant, mister Jacques.  You were an amazing writer.)

            Anyway, in an interview with mister Jacques I saw, he talked about how he adapted molespeak from a very rustic breed of retired British men, whom he'd sometimes hang out with.  He wrote from his own experience and fit it into the slots in his stories that most needed it.  Now, this can be both a good and a bad thing, in my opinion.  For those of us who have limited experiences, it could just be a reinforcement of stereotypes, good or ill, and lack any originality.  Worse, it can be quite offensive.  So, care needs to be given when you're creating a dialect for a group.  Sometimes even something made with the best of intentions can be taken as offensive, if only because they sound similar.  My thought on this is the neeg might sound uneducated and either inner city or country bumpkin, depending on your perspective.  Part of that is intentional.  In the land of Serano, of the five great races, the neeg are considered the lowliest.  They have fewer opportunities for education or for being around people who will speak to them slowly and deliberately.  From birth to death, most of them are forced to work at a rapid pace in a foundry before moving on once business dies down or their supply of resources runs dry.  They don't get time to read or play or talk leisurely.  That's why they sound a bit undereducated...because in some classical schools of education, they are.  However, mechanically, they are miles ahead of the other races.

            Now, I bring this up because I have found that there are two overriding rules when creating a dialect.  These aren't necessarily set in stone, but from what I have read and what I have written, they seem to hold pretty firm towards making a dialect work.  The first is, consistency.  The neeg often remove the H from the beginning of any word that has it, creating 'as for has, 'ey for hey, and so on.  Now, if you only do it for some words, that can also be fine, though phonetically it might not make all that much sense.  HOWEVER!  You need to have consistency with which words you use it with.  Otherwise, you'll just seem like an amateur who is grasping at straws.  More than just letter or word choice, if you have a style of editing to show off the difference in speech, that too much also be consistent.  Whenever a letter is omitted, for me and the neeg, I put an apostrophe in front of it to indicate the loss.  Proper grammar?  Almost certainly not...however, for the sake of a unique type of speech with a unique race in a unique world, a lot can be forgiven.

            That brings me to the second overriding rule.  Experiment.  Okay, so I lied...it's not so much a rule as a suggestion.  You want to put dialogue in italics to indicate a difference in tone?  Do it.  Brackets?  Go nuts.  You want to add Japanese honorifics to them?  Why not?  The thing about dialogue is that, while there are some proper rules for writing them, in your world, people can, in theory, speak any way you want.  Classic rules of English are less important than keeping consistent and making sure the audience understands the meaning.  And making the audience understand the meanings of your literary editing choices is important, perhaps not through exposition, but through context.  Going back to Japanese honorifics, it doesn't make much sense in a western composition...but if your characters are in feudal Japan...maybe.  If you're doing inner thoughts, then brackets or italics make more sense, especially if you end the dialogue with a tag that says "he thought, she thought, ____ thought."

            This is more evident in graphic novels/ comic books, due to the ability to edit and warp dialogue without having to change the editing.  Neil Gaiman's fantastic Sandman series, for example, features the title character who speaks in white text and black dialogue boxes, whereas other characters use the reverse.  This gives our titular Sandman a unique trait about him and it changes how we perceive his speech.  More deliberate, more dark, more whatever the audience alludes to the change in dialogue boxes.  Deadpool the mercenary has multi-colored dialogue boxes to represent voices in his head.  These are all valid ways of showing different ways of speaking, dialects, thoughts, experimentation.  If it weren't a comic book, I'd say Deadpool could get the same effect by having one voice speak in brackets [ ] and another speak in italics.

            The thing about dialects, and dialogue in general, is that if you're going to experiment, have a reason for it and don't second guess yourself.  This isn't like the works of Law or Philosophy, where you want to have a precedent set.  Writing is something that is personal to you...so you can set the precedent.  Terry Pratchet was, in my opinion, a trailblazer in satirical writing because his limited narrator, as well as his characters, were self aware that they were in a parody.  I'd never seen this before and I don't know if he pioneered it or copied it or whatever.  But, doesn't matter.  It worked for him because he ran with it.

            So, I'm running with the dialects for the neeg and for other characters.  Those who've been paying attention have noticed a few people who speak differently in Chronicles of the Frozen Shade.  You have to.  Aeon's stiff speech, Nerise's child-like demeanor, or Deminos's bravado all lead to different manners of speech.  For me, I don't see a need, yet, to include a more radical form of dialogue editing, like brackets or what have you, though I might bold or italics something to give emphasis.  But that's me.  That's my choice.  And any would be writers should not be discouraged from at least trying something new.  Will it make it into the final draft?  Maybe, maybe not...but experiment, see how things go for you after running with it for a bit, and learn.  In my opinion, a writer learns even without an editor, because their style changes as they experiment and try different things...until they find what they like and run with it.  So don't be afraid to experiment.  Just remember to keep it consistent where it counts and to make it match the tone/setting/whatever of the piece.