WRITING: Language Text

A thought occurred to me this morning regarding the simple act of writing down in text the different language or accent nuances to bring the voice and tone in line with the setting of a story.  That said, I hope I don’t offend anyone from here on…

As writers, we may have a character who may say something like, "No, I cain’t do that anymore.  I jes plain don’t wanna."

Now this may give you a sense of the characters conversing in their own space in their own natural style of speech, but if you had one of these same characters sit down to write a letter instead, you’d most likely show it as, "No, I can’t do that anymore.  I just plain don’t want to."

So how much is enough to set an environment, culture, or social or educational standard, and how much is too much?  I once read a story with a heavy Irish brogue and while it was pretty accurately (as best I could tell) done, it was a bit annoying to read until I read it a few times.  Most often within a novel-length story you would get used to it (even McCarthy’s lack of punctuation in dialogue was wearying until you got into it).  But I think that there must be some standard for a writer to go by, some compromise that doesn’t distract from the flow nor from the flavor of the story.

Interesting though, how we revert to phonetic spelling to accomodate speech that is based on perfectly properly spelled-out language.