On Writing Dialect, Part 2
In Today's Journal
* A New Short Story
* Bradbury Reminder
* Find & Replace
* On Writing Dialect, Part 2
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
A New Short Story
"Racing to the Corner" went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It's free.
If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else.
Bradbury Reminder
Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your Bradbury Challenge story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
Find & Replace
One writer mentioned never having thought about using the Find & Replace function in Microsoft Word to help him keep up with dialect.
To see a good rundown of that function, click Find & Replace.
That's one post in my free series, Microsoft Word for Writers.
Writing Effective Dialect, Part 2
First, read Writing Effective Dialect, Part 1 either
Phonetic Spellings
Yesterday I mentioned that staying on track with phonetic spellings is difficult, but you can manage it.
I also said that Word's Find & Replace feature can help in that regard. Just use it carefully.
For example, if in conversation Character A says "have" and Character B pronounces the word "haff" (the A is like the A in Cat) or "hahf" (the A is softer, like the A in All), when you search for "have" to be sure you're on track, make sure you replace only those uttered by Character B.
For some words, it's useful to add the space before and-or after the word too, to be sure you get only that word (for example "_try_") so you won't get all instances of "try," as in "country."
Also take care with Character B's use of contractions.
For example, whereas Character A says "have," he might also say "should've" or "should'nt've." But if Character B pronounces "have" as "haff," she would also say "shoulduff" or "should'ntuff."
She wouldn't suddenly be able to pronounce the V sound that she couldn't pronounce in "have." She would also probably say "seffen" and "twelf" instead of "seven" and "twelve."
See what I mean about phonetic spellings being labor intensive?
It's also a good idea to create a style sheet to help keep you on track with specific phonetic spellings.
For example, when pronouncing "have," Character B above wouldn't say "haff" one time and "hahf" another time.
Of course, be sure to let the POV character describe the character who will be speaking dialect so the reader can 'see' that character as s/he is speaking.
When I write a story in which I use a lot of phonetic spellings, especially for a major and/or recurring character, I usually create a separate list of phonetic spellings the character uses in place of normal spellings.
I recently created two stylesheets for use in a few different novels to keep me on track with two very different characters.
One stylesheet was for a large, gruff man who is also an authority figure and whose native language is from a tropical island. He appears in Blackwell Ops 30: John Quick Returns.
The other is for a petite woman, a Blackwell Ops contact whose native language is French. She appears in
Blackwell Ops 31, then returns in
Blackwell Ops 33, and
It was great fun writing the dialect of those two characters, but as I said earlier, it was also labor-intensive. Hence the style sheets. But both lists are far too long to insert into any of these posts.
If you would like to see those two stylesheets (lists of phonetically spelled words), email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com and I'll send them to you.
When you spell the character's pronunciation of a particular word phonetically, you have to do so in a way that both
conveys the intonations of the character and
does not interrupt the reader.
For example, take the word "since": A character from a country whose language is based on Latin would probably say "seence," whereas a character from another country might say "sinz" or "seenz."
Or take the word "hungry." One character might say "hongry" (long O) and another might say "hahngry" (the second H ensures a soft A).
Or take the word "will." One character might say "weel" and another might say "whill."
Or take the word "yes." One character might say "Jes" or "Jace" and another might say "Yayss" (the extra S drags out the S sound).
As you can probably tell, the possibilities are practically endless for using phonetic spellings to indicate dialect. Listen to the character, and spell the word the way s/he pronounces it.
Writing dialect is a valuable skill to have because it brings such great depth to the character and pulls the reader much deeper into the story (and does so much more quickly).
But again, if you want to write it, you have to be able to hear the intonation in your mind as the character speaks. And then keep up with it.
Next up, Writing Effective Dialect, Part 3. In that post, I'll talk about writing dialect using truncation.
Of Interest
We're Entering the Age of the Artisan Author THIS. IS. A. MUST. READ.
7 Tips to Build a PR Strategy that Works for YOU Just in case you find something of value in this.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 880
Writing of "But There Is No Corral"
Day 1…… 2056 words. To date…… 2056 done
Writing of Blackwell Ops 40: John Staple
Day 1…… 3397 words. To date…… 3397
Day 2…… 1651 words. To date…… 5048
Day 3…… 1960 words. To date…… 7008
Day 4…… 1777 words. To date…… 8785
Day 5…… 1310 words. To date…… 10095
Fiction for March…………………….. 57867
Fiction for 2025………………………. 243698
Nonfiction for March……………........ 19300
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 73230
2025 consumable words…………….. 308228
Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 2756
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 6
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 11
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 110
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 281
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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