Use of Dialect

Dialogue is one of the most powerful elements of fiction. What constitutes the proper balance between narrative and exposition can be argued, but no matter to what degree a story contains dialogue, what characters say enriches the story. But, dialogue is not just what a character says, but how the character says it.

A dialect is how a person pronounces words or uses certain phrases, but should not be confused with accent. Americans speak English, but depending on the area of the country, the same English word may sound drastically different. Take, for example, the word wash. The dictionary will tell you this word is pronounced wahsh, but in rural or southern regions of the country, it would more likely be pronounced worsh. Creek, crick; roof, ruf; dialectic examples are everywhere you look.

When writing dialog, the question becomes, how much dialect should be included? Part of the answer lies in the character himself or herself. Is the character deeply rooted in a region of the country where English is spoken with a strong dialect? Does the character have an education level or cognitive level that would render the character more inclined to mispronounce words? Mispronunciation is not exactly a dialect, but for the purposes of writing dialogue it can be considered in the same vein. If the character would be inclined to use dialectic language, then his or her dialogue should reflect that.

But the question still remains, how much dialectic dialogue should be written for a character? A mistake many writers, both rookie and veteran, make is to have a character speak with a dialect in every sentence. For the reader, this becomes very tedious in short order. Dialect should never be used to the point that it becomes a struggle for the reader to read the dialogue. The character’s dialect should be considered part of his or her description. If the character has a scar on his arm, the writer would not describe the scar each and every time the character enters a scene. The first time of relevance, the scar would be described, and then references to the scar can be intermittently sprinkled throughout the rest of the story. In the same way, a character’s dialect should be in full force only as the character is developed for the reader. After that, the character’s dialogue should be sprinkled with just enough dialectic language to refresh the reader’s image of the character.

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