Um, yes. Took me a couple of reads the first time.
A new book chat video regarding reading books in dialect in which, for no reason I can understand, I suddenly transform into an elderly farmer-pirate, and never quite recover.
In my defence, the cat did manage to convince me that it was 6 a.m. rather than 5 a.m. when she woke me this morning, so I’m claiming feline-induced sleeplessness.
But back to the book chat.
What are your thoughts on books written in dialect, lovely people? It’s such a difficult thing to do well, and I’ve read far too many books where, well. Elderly farmer-pirate. I mean, if that’s who the character’s actually mean to be, then perfect, but they’re normally not, and the next thing I know I’ve fallen out of the story and, quite likely, out of love with the book.
On the other end of the scale, though, you have the absolute masters of it, such as Irvine Welsh and Alan Duff. I remember really struggling the first time I read Trainspotting, because I wasn’t at all familiar with the dialect and it took me a while to get my head around it. Once I did, though, it turned the reading into something immersive, giving the whole book an entirely other dimension. I loved it, and I can honestly say that I’ve not read anyone else that does it as well, with the exception of Alan Duff.
It’s certainly not something I’d be in a hurry to try myself, not least because I don’t even know what my own dialect is these days, and I’m not about to try writing anyone else’s…
(NB – there is not actually a dragon sitting on my shoulder. Not that I’d complain if there was, but just so you know that I have not embraced my new elderly farmer-pirate personality and started walking around with a dragon on my shoulder.)
And now tell me your thought on dialects, lovely people! Do you enjoy it in reading? Just in dialogue or in the narrative also? If you write, do you use dialect in your writing? Let me know all below!
Michelle Louring says
I much prefer if a character is described as having a dialect instead of it being spelled out in the dialogue itself.
I’m currently reading a book where one character has a speech impediment and all his dialogue is written to reflect this. It’s so hard to get through his scenes, because I have to read the words several times.
kimwatt says
That makes for such hard reading! I’m the same as you – I prefer it to be suggested in word choice and dialogue tags rather than trying to write it phonetically. I think the books where I’ve seen it work have either only used certain words to suggest dialect (like using “bairn” and “hen” in Scottish books), or have been written entirely in dialect, so that there’s no disconnect between prose and dialogue. It’s a tricky thing to do!