Please welcome author, Pamala Fagan Hutchins, who is promoting her book, Saving Grace. Enjoy her guest post about "Dialect in Dialogue". Make sure to check out the book trailer at the end of the post!
Date of publication: 2012
If
you're at all inclined to be swept away to the islands to fall in love with a
rainforest jumbie house and a Texas attorney who is as much a danger to herself
as the island bad guys, then dive headfirst with Katie Connell into Saving
Grace.
Katie escapes professional humiliation, a broken heart, and her Bloody Mary-habit when she runs to the island of St. Marcos to investigate the suspicious deaths of her parents. But she trades one set of problems for another when she is bewitched by the voodoo spirit Annalise in an abandoned rainforest house and, as worlds collide, finds herself reluctantly donning her lawyer clothes again to defend her new friend Ava, who is accused of stabbing her very married Senator-boyfriend.
Katie escapes professional humiliation, a broken heart, and her Bloody Mary-habit when she runs to the island of St. Marcos to investigate the suspicious deaths of her parents. But she trades one set of problems for another when she is bewitched by the voodoo spirit Annalise in an abandoned rainforest house and, as worlds collide, finds herself reluctantly donning her lawyer clothes again to defend her new friend Ava, who is accused of stabbing her very married Senator-boyfriend.
Dialect in Dialogue: A Little Goes a Long Way
Do you
ever pick up a book and seamlessly fall into the rhythms and idiosyncrasies of
characters from a part of the world you’ve never visited? I do. I loved Divine
Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood for drawing me into rural Louisiana and The
Last Picture Show for pulling me into a small Texas community in the
mid-20th century. With both books, effective use of dialect played a huge role
in my enjoyment of the setting and characters. But the opposite can happen,
too. A hyper-focus on authenticity can make the book inaccessible to readers
from outside that region, because it’s just too dang much work to read. I want
to turn pages, not turn backflips trying to work my way through.
So how
do the good writers immerse us in the sounds of a culture without making us
work for it? I had to answer that question for myself when I wrote a
series of books set in Texas and the Caribbean. I’ve lived in both places. I
know exactly how people sound and talk. In early drafts, I wrote dialogue just
like it sounded to me in my head. And when I wasn’t quite authentic enough, my
island-boy husband corrected me.
Here’s
an example from an early draft of Saving Grace:
“Dese hills are steep. Da sun is brutal. Dere are
centipedes as long as me foot.” Someone laughed. “I not jokin’ you,
ladies. You will see beautiful trees, blossoms and vines, but dey can
reach out with dare t’orns and stickers and tear your soft skin. Dey grow
t’ick togedder, at times I will be using dis,” he patted the machete strung
across his hip, “to clear a path for us to get t’rough. You aine gohne make me
sad if you decide dis hike is not for you. I can only carry one of you
out if you get hurt or are overcome with our tropical heat, so leave now if you
gonna be leavin’.”
I’ve
seen worse phonetic patois, but this is still hard to read. Compare it to
dialogue from the final version:
“These hills steep. The sun rough. There be centipedes as
long as me foot.” Someone laughed. “I not jokin’ you, ladies and gentlemen. You
will see beautiful trees, blossoms and vines, but they can reach out with their
thorns and stickers and tear your soft skin. They grow thick together, so at
times I be using this,” he patted the machete strung across his hip, “to clear
a path for us to get through. You ain’t gonna make me sad if you decide this
hike not for you. I can only carry one of you out if you get hurt or fall to
our tropical heat, so leave now if you gonna be leavin’.”
It’s
the same, yet different. I had the honor of Jane Friedman’s edit on this
passage back when she was with Writer’s Digest, and she felt the first version
was too phonetic. She encouraged me to focus on grammar, not spelling, to
create the sound.
It only
took me three more years to figure out how to use her suggestion, but I am very
happy with how it came out. Reviews from Caribbean readers are that the
dialogue in Saving Grace is authentic. Reviews from non-Caribbean
readers are that the book is a page-turner.
So
here’s what worked for me in creating dialect; I hope it helps you craft
authentic and accessible regional dialogue for your characters:
1. Explain
it early on. Think of movies that switch out of subtitles after the first
five minutes. What is the point of having everyone speak in Russian in the
first place if you’re just going to go change it to English? The point is to
show the viewer what it sounds like. So, writers, use your words to explain
what makes the sound unique. Here’s an example of how I tried used this
technique:
His Calypso accent was thick, much thicker than Ava’s, with
his “th” sounding like “t” and all the g’s and d’s dropped from the end of his
words, but he was understandable.
2. Focus
on grammar. To create the lilt of the tropics, I stripped out “be” verbs
(mostly) and had my characters speak in the present tense. It worked like a
charm. Is it 100% accurate? Of course not. But does it capture the essence of
the sound? I believe that it did.
3. Go
light on the phonetics. Nobody wants to be sounding out the big words,
right? It slows the reader down. If they stop turning pages, your book is about
to be shut. So pick the highest impact phonetic spellings, and then back off. I
used “bahn yah” several times, once I described how it sounded.
4.
Let your setting do some of the heavy lifting. By describing setting with
specificity and detail, you can get your reader’s imagination to fill in your
dialectical gaps. If my character drinks a Red Stripe beer instead of just a
beer, what sounds do you hear around you in the bar? Remember, the reader wants
to think and imagine. Those are fun things to do. Working to sound out words
isn’t.
5. Drop
in a few colloquialisms along the way. “Yah mon” and “irie” worked for me
in Saving Grace. I’ve had a lot of fun working simple yet lyrical
colloquialisms into my Caribbean-based books. This is also a great way to show
something about who your character is. Is she a worrier? Is he funny? Does she
cling to the old ways? Is he a sports-nut? All of these traits can be shown
through regional expressions.
I hope
these suggestions help you paint a picture, no matter what region or culture
you’re trying to illustrate in your work. If they do, drop me a note and let me
know at Pamela@PamelaHutchins.com.
Happy writing, y’all.
About the Author:
Her latest book is the mystery/women’s fiction, Saving Grace.
Thanks for having me!
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