Dialogue and Dialect, Part 2
Last week I wrote about American English dialects and why we need to write
good, realistic dialogue for our characters. To show what I mean, I examined
the way some characters in
Secret Lives speak. Now I’ll write about three central characters.
Emma Clare, one of the founders of the circle, speaks an ever-variable
Ozark dialect. She comes from a traditional of Celtic witches, and her
grandmother, Mammy Annis, lived in the Ozarks. In Chapter 11, “Daughters
of the Powers of Fire,” I retell the family story. That’s where real library
research is useful. The works of Vance Randolph were helpful, as were other
books on Ozark customs. That’s how I learned, for example, that when you’re
making hominy you have to rub the corn to get the ash mud, hulls, and eyes
out. I wanted Emma Clare (who is 97 years old) to speak accurately, but
I didn’t want her to sound like a cartoon hillbilly or a refugee from
Hee-Haw. When she talks about her grandmother (below), I had to make
sure her speech is not too countrified. Readers have to understand her!
“Methody” is a real word (but not much used today) and the lottery is an
allusion to Shirley Jackson’s unforgettable short story. (I give the link
to the story in the FREE READER’S GUIDE on this site).
“Well, then,” Emma Clare began, “Mammy
Annis kept her people rooted in the land and the old religion. They prospered
and ever’thing done well. But as the circuit riders found their ways into
our hills, some believed that modren gospel they brung. Baptist or Nazarene
or Methody or whatever, the people allus came back to Mammy Annis, though,
when they needed real help. For mule races,” she laughed, “and important
things like luck in the lottery. For birth control and impotence, too.
She really knew how to bring in a good harvest.”
In a later story, when Emma Clare conducts the croning ritual for her
granddaughter, Marie, her Ozark accent disappears. This is to show that
she can speak standard American English if she wants to. She just doesn’t
often want to.
Two characters speak languages all their own. Frances J. Swift is the
compleat bureaucrat who manages the Center Towers. Madame Blavatsky is
the talking cat. I heard their voices—like the voices of all the characters—speaking
in my head and wrote down their dialogue. I tried to spell and punctuate
it so the readers of Secret Lives would also hear their voices. It’s important
to remember, however, that even when we’re reading silently, there’s a
voice in our head reading aloud. That’s why the voice of each character
has to be both distinctive and comprehensible. If the dialect is too thick,
the reader’s mental tongue keeps getting tangled and the reading slows
down, and if the dialogue is bad enough, the reader may just throw the
book across the room. (At 650 pages,
Secret Lives weights 2.4 pounds. That’s a dangerous weapon.)
When we first meet Frances in Chapter 2, as Bertha is sneaking the cat
into the Center Towers, Frances assume a faux-cordial voice. “Well, Miss
Bertha! How are we this lovely evening? Did we have a nice visit with our
nephew? He’s such a fine young man, isn’t he, so good of him to take such
good care of you.” In the story about Coyote the bag lady, Frances is highly
suspicious of what “those women” are doing. She doesn’t want any homeless
people in her domain. “Now, you are surely aware of the rules and policies
of this establishment,” she says, “wherein guests, invited or not, are
concerned. No unauthorized overnight guests are permitted without specific
authorization from the authorities … that is, ah, from me.” You see? She
speaks like every awful corporate memo we’ve ever read. And it gets worse.
In the next story, Frances accuses Bertha of stealing food from the lunchroom.
“Now, as you must know, we cannot tolerate wasteful habits
and practices here at the Center Towers. Our esteemed management, that
is to say, our highly trained culinary dietician, plans our culinary menus
with the greatest possible care to fulfill the daily nutritional needs
of our elderly senior citizens who reside here with us, such as yourself.
And we hope and expect that all meals will be taken in our luxurious dining
room, except in the case of unavoidable illness, that is … of course unavoi—”
“I eat there every day” [Bertha replies]. I’m almost always
nutritionally and culinarilly satisfied.”
“And you … er … carry purloined food away.” She leaned toward
Bertha, peering at her as if to detect evidence of a guilty conscience.
“I’ll come plainly to the point, Miss Bertha. Are you … ahem … saving,
collecting, or hoarding food to save? So many of our elderly residents
feel such a need to hoard, to clutter their … now you must be aware that
hoarding is unnecessary and unsanitary. It betrays an exhibition of poor
citizenship here at the Center Towers, as it could lead to inexact and
imprecise planning and significant overexpenditure from our already generous
nutritional food budget line. And hoarding can … ahem … also lead to infestations
of noxious insects, which would lead to the further monetary expense of
fumigation.” She took a deep breath. “This is only a teensy hint, Miss
Bertha….”
See how it works? Lawyers and other bureaucrats write extremely redundant
prose to—they say—avoid ambiguity. During the 1990s, I did temp work in
offices. Frances talks just like people I worked with. What comes out of
her mouth is convoluted nonsense. It's hard to write, too, until you get
into the flow. Then you kinda can't help yourself. And pretty soon, she
keeps hearing someone saying, “Off with her head!” It’s Madame Blavatsky
in disguise as the Cheshire Cat.
Yes, that cat. I hired PumpUpYourBook to organize a blog tour for
Secret Lives, and one of my assignments was to either interview a
character in the book or have one character interview another. I couldn’t
help myself. My interviewee was Madame Blavatsky. The first words out of
her mouth in Chapter 2 of the novel show her personality. She’s talking
to Bertha and the others who are discussing what they want a familiar to
do. “Youse girls know yer stuff,” she says “Yeah, ya know what yer doin’
here. I wasnt so sure at first, ya know. Dint know if Bertha here was typical
or not. But now I’m satisfied. Yeah, youse girls know how it works.”
Why does a cat who was a famous 19th-century occult author talk like she
used to live in New Jersey? I have no idea. But that’s what she really
sounds like. I can still hear her in my head even as I write this blog.
(Oh, gee—now she wants me to erase all the foregoing and give the whole
blog to her.) This cat helps Bertha turn a psychic fair into a vaudeville
show, drives poor Frances into a nervous breakdown, and shows up in a four-footed
Ghostbusters costume when the crones decide to do a reversing ritual.
Writing her dialogue got tricky, too. I had to remember to take the apostrophes
out and spell words to match her pronunciation without going overboard
and making her dialogue look incomprehensible. I’ll let her have the last
word today. Here’s the opening of the blog interview. “Hiya, dearie,” says
Madame Blavatsky. “It’s good ta be here. This here innerview is gonna help
the author of that novel we’re in.” After considerable braggadocio, the
interview closes. “I done a lotta good in that novel. Our author was really
smart ta put me in her book. I’m the star!”
Posted by Barbara on Friday, October 28, 2011 | Read Comments
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