Story's set in the UK, but I'm American. Do I need to account for British English?

Well if it's set in the UK, unless all the characters in it are expat Americans, yeah, British people say 'lift,' not 'elevator,' and 'loo,' and 'chips,' and 'boot,' and etc., etc. I'd think it quite odd if I were reading a novel with, say, English characters, running about London, saying, 'do you want to stop at my apartment before we go get in line for the movie? We can grab some fries on the way, and something for dessert.'

Same as if you were reading a novel about people in Iowa who were wandering about Des Moines looking for a petrol station and asking if they could charge their mobile.

If your characters are Brits, they should sound British. I'd suggest getting British beta readers once you're finished to help you with the language.

I'm in the same boat. I agree with the above posters that British characters should sound British. The good thing about this is there's a ton of info online re: American English vs. British English.

I gave myself a little wiggle room on this by making my MCs mother an American expat. So Mum is comfortably American, and my MC has some American tendencies of her own as a result.

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Oh, and watch a lot of British reality TV.

Get a British beta reader. It is not just straight noun substitutions. The same words have different meanings (e.g. holiday, kindergarten, college, first floor), common activities and cultural references differ, even grammar and certainly speech patterns. People actually live and act differently in a million subtle ways that will be important--at least to a UK or UK-knowledgeable reader. My first attempt at writing an American story was very amusing to my editor, and that was after actually living in the US for several years.

Agree with the word usage. But how about the spelling? If it's for an American audience, I'd think you could, maybe even should, dispense with some of the spelling differences.

IE, keep it "tire" instead of "tyre," and leave out the extra "u's" otherwise it's a never ending rabbit hole of small differences that can make it much more difficult for the average American to read.

You should also consider reading books from British authors and watching BBC. One thing I picked up from Marie Phillips' book Gods Behaving Badly was the frequent use of "C of E" for Church of England. When watching "Broadchurch" (with closed captioning, btw) had to look up wth "bollocking" was. Thought maybe it was an Olympic sport, but was slightly off. It only should be an Olympic sport.

MythMonger said:

IE, keep it "tire" instead of "tyre," and leave out the extra "u's" otherwise it's a never ending rabbit hole of small differences that can make it much more difficult for the average American to read.

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Surely American readers can cope with different spellings.

The first part of my main WIP is set in England in 1732. I researched the language online and sprinkled my manuscript with Briticisms - range = cooker, layer cake = sandwich cake, washcloth = flannel. Also put some jolly, bloody, and such. The British advise me it isn't British enough and Americans say it's too British. I'm sure there's some Southern US in there, too. I put a heads up about the language in the disclaimer. Here's a link to a site I just found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English#Vocabulary that might help you.

Yes, please get a UK beta reader.

One of the main things I hate about VE Schwab's Darker Shade of Magic books is how cringingly "american teenager" all the supposedly British adults sound.

Culturally, the UK is very class divided. Jolly and bloody are somewhat old fashioned, and/or the remit of posh Southerners. Meanwhile, cockney and northern dialects get used for dumb villains with irritating frequency.

The UK is an odd mix of crude and polite. Things that would have an American raging elicit only tight lipped frowns here. On the flip side, the amount I swear is shocking to most Americans, but totally normal here (in fact, I'm quite reserved compared to the norm).

You are not only going to have to account for British English, but also for a different culture. There are many pitfalls here. Brits aren't Americans with a funny accent.

As everyone's said, it seems to be very hard for American writers to make this work. You can be enjoying a story, and the next thing you know someone's putting creamer in their tea, then walking a few blocks with their kid in a stroller.

Stephen King's Crouch End is probably the worst example I've ever had the misfortune to read, which messes up dialogue, slang, and geography in literally every paragraph. Use it as a good example of what not to do. It's particularly prone to overcompensating in a hilariously tone-deaf way, with dialogue like, "‘you think I’m a dotty old prat, I suppose."

ETA: just seen that you've posted that you're not going to set it in the UK after all... going to leave this reply here anyway in case anyone in the future searches on the same question.

cornflake said:

Well if it's set in the UK, unless all the characters in it are expat Americans, yeah, British people say 'lift,' not 'elevator,' and 'loo,' and 'chips,' and 'boot,' and etc., etc. I'd think it quite odd if I were reading a novel with, say, English characters, running about London, saying, 'do you want to stop at my apartment before we go get in line for the movie? We can grab some fries on the way, and something for dessert.'

Same as if you were reading a novel about people in Iowa who were wandering about Des Moines looking for a petrol station and asking if they could charge their mobile.

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Totally agree with this. I'm kind of surprised that the questions even being asked to be honest. British people have our own set of cultures (cultures plural, because the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish and others are very different from each other) that are different to American cultures (also plural, because America isn't culturally or ethnically homogenous either). Point being that you can't just write a story about British people set in Britain and have them talk and act like Americans, just in British English and making a few vocab substitutions.

If I was to write a story about Americans in America and they all had tea while they watched the cricket and/or rugby and then went down the pub, that would be just.......... wrong.

Also, words in both dialects aren't direct substitutes for one another (sometimes they are, but you can't assume that they are). Take cookies for example. In British English, we have the word "cookie" and the word "biscuit" and they don't mean the same thing. Here's a picture of a cookie I just ate. Well, not the same one I just ate, same kind lol... I'm not even sure if I could really say that the cookie is a kind of biscuit or a different thing altogether (the British can be very particular about these kinds of things... the debate as whether or not Jaffa Cakes are biscuits or not causes more controversy than Brexit). AFAIK Americans use "cookie" to mean what we call cookies and what we call biscuits and even Jaffa Cakes. So it won't be enough to just change "cookie" to "biscuit" right across the manuscript.

To continue from cornflake's example of what not to say, here's how the phrase might sound in British English:

American English: do you want to stop at my apartment before we go get in line for the movie? We can grab some fries on the way, and something for dessert

London/Estuary: come round my flat and we'll go down the cinema after and get chips on the way. (It wouldn't sound right to talk about what you're going to have for pudding (i.e. dessert) in this context. Chippies don't really do desert, unless you live up North and are partial to deep fried mars bars.)

RP: why don't we go to my flat first, and then get the cinema tickets? We can pop into Marks and Sparks on the way and get a sandwich and maybe a cake or something.

(Posh people don't go to chippies very much; if they do they'll call it "the fish and chip shop" and it'll probably be a fancy one like Harry Ramsden's, but I just wanted to throw in a "Marks and Sparks" because that's just soooooooooo middle class.)

what is guaranteed to sound wrong: do you want to stop at my flat before we go get in the queue for the film? We can grab some chips on the way, and something for pudding............... because Brits don't speak like that. You need to first decide what dialect they speak (based on where they're from and their social class) and know how to write that dialect.

Note: I speak London/Estuary, not RP. I'm not even going to try to write any other dialects. People from the other parts of the UK might want to chime in and say how they'd say the phrase. (Including anyone who wants to correct my RP.)

Harlequin said:

Yes, please get a UK beta reader.

One of the main things I hate about VE Schwab's Darker Shade of Magic books is how cringingly "american teenager" all the supposedly British adults sound.

Culturally, the UK is very class divided. Jolly and bloody are somewhat old fashioned, and/or the remit of posh Southerners. Meanwhile, cockney and northern dialects get used for dumb villains with irritating frequency.

The UK is an odd mix of crude and polite. Things that would have an American raging elicit only tight lipped frowns here. On the flip side, the amount I swear is shocking to most Americans, but totally normal here (in fact, I'm quite reserved compared to the norm).

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"Bloody" (pronounced "bladdy" if you're a working class Londoner ) is still very common in London and thereabouts. I wouldn't say it's old fashioned. "Jolly" is so ridiculously posh though. And I agree with everything else you said! And then some! (Not familiar with the specific book but I have come across what you describe and it is so very cringeworthy!)

You have to know British culture very well to write British characters well. (And that would apply to writing people from any culture that's not your own, not just British!)

I read a book fairly recently that was written by a Canadian and set in London during WW2. While all the historical details were correct, the characterisation was subtly off, and I couldn't really grasp why for the first half of the book, and then I realised I couldn't say what social class any of the characters were*. Compare that with Harry Potter... I could tell what social class the Dursley's were within the first couple of lines.

*for the non-Brits: social class doesn't bear as much relation to how much money you have as you'd think it ought to. It's a whole set of characteristics such as accent, mannerisms and ways of living and doing things. And for upper class you have to be aristocracy/have hereditary peerage. (If you're in every other way like upper class people but lack the appropriate peerage/aristocratic status, you're upper-middle class.)

BTW I enjoyed the book by the Canadian writer and thought it was a good story, but there's always room for improvement and there's always a ton of things you won't be aware of when you write characters from cultures that aren't your own.

It isn't just social class cues/markers/whatever you want to call them that you'll miss, but a whole lot of other stuff. It's actually extremely hard to pull off writing characters from a different culture. Personally, if I'm writing contemporary or near contemporary fiction (as opposed to books set 40,000 years ago or thereabouts) I stick to setting the story in places that I know. My current non-prehistoric WIP is set in London and the MC's family is lower-middle class with working class origins (i.e. working class but with professional/managerial jobs and qualifications). Call me lazy if you want, but it would take a mahoosive pile of research to get settings that I'm not familiar with right, and yes, I'm too bloody lazy to do that.

MisterFrancis said:

As everyone's said, it seems to be very hard for American writers to make this work.

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To be honest, I think it's hard for anyone to make writing a character from another culture work. If I tried to write an American character, I would totally flamingo it up*. They'd be watching the rugby in a dodgy pub or eating fish, chips and mushy peas or driving on the left or some such completely wrong thing.

*like a cock-up only much bigger and more spectacular (I totally stole this from Red Dwarf)

You can be enjoying a story, and the next thing you know someone's putting creamer in their tea, then walking a few blocks with their kid in a stroller.

Stephen King's Crouch End is probably the worst example I've ever had the misfortune to read, which messes up dialogue, slang, and geography in literally every paragraph. Use it as a good example of what not to do. It's particularly prone to overcompensating in a hilariously tone-deaf way, with dialogue like, "‘you think I’m a dotty old prat, I suppose."

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I'm glad I never read that one.

laserkey said:

^ I think spelling is where copyeditors come in, and there are different versions of the book depending on the location. At least in the US versions of Harry Potter I've read, it was mostly Americanized spellings.

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The American English version of Harry Potter still reads very much like a British story with British characters. The spelling is American and there are a few places where they substitute one word of vocabulary for the sake of it being comprehensible (such as bangs for fringe) which would clash if you weren't aware you're reading an American English version, but it still reads like it's a story set in Britain with British characters because it retains the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the British.

this is a huge part of why I write secondary world

having always lived in various countries for a spate of years here and there, I can't do any of them well or convincingly >.>

Anyways, it sounds like OP is going for the American setup anyway. Good luck, OP! ;-)

I would say write what you want to write, as best you can. Learn as much about British speech, dialect, mannerisms, etc. as you can and like others have said, get some perspective. One of the joys of writing is writing towards an understanding of things that are outside your experience. It's never going to 100% accurate or representative, and no writing ever is.

Fail big. As Beckett says, fail better.

Good luck with your writing!

Helix said:

Surely American readers can cope with different spellings.

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Sure they can. But spellings are generally determined by the publisher's style guide, not where the story is set.

veinglory said:

Sure they can. But spellings are generally determined by the publisher's style guide, not where the story is set.

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Spellings are not really the issue. Word choice, however, is. I have books by British writers (e.g., Graham Greene, P.D. James) from American publishers, using house style American spelling and punctuation. But the syntax remains as original from the writers, with standard Britishisms.

caw

Helix said:

Surely American readers can cope with different spellings.

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We can and do. Some of my favorite authors have been British, ever since I was a kid. Most of the books by UK writers in my library when I was a kid had British spellings, punctuation (single quotes where we use double quotes, no serial commas etc), and British word use and turns of phrase. I learned jumper=sweater, not a little girl's dress (that one puzzled me initially) and that trucks were lorries and so on. And I liked that they spelled "color" as "colour" and "tire" as "tyre" and so on. Context makes things clear. Makes it easier to imagine the characters speaking with a British accent.

Note there are regional differences in word use within the US and UK too. They may not be as pronounced as they once were, but they still exist. So if I were setting a novel in, say, Maryland, I'd research how most people talk there.

I actually enjoy reading narratives by people who don't speak exactly the same way I do.

The only thing I don't care for is when writers go nuts trying to phonetically reproduce an accent by spelling words exactly how they're pronounced to the author's own ears (like spelling a Canadian's "about" as "aboot," which isn't even accurate). It's hard to do this well, and it can be rather insulting if it's done poorly (or even if it isn't, since the people in question don't spell the words the way the author chooses to spell them and they think you're the one who isn't pronouncing words as they're spelled).

neandermagnon said:

To continue from cornflake's example of what not to say, here's how the phrase might sound in British English:

American English: do you want to stop at my apartment before we go get in line for the movie? We can grab some fries on the way, and something for dessert

London/Estuary: come round my flat and we'll go down the cinema after and get chips on the way. (It wouldn't sound right to talk about what you're going to have for pudding (i.e. dessert) in this context. Chippies don't really do desert, unless you live up North and are partial to deep fried mars bars.)

RP: why don't we go to my flat first, and then get the cinema tickets? We can pop into Marks and Sparks on the way and get a sandwich and maybe a cake or something.

(Posh people don't go to chippies very much; if they do they'll call it "the fish and chip shop" and it'll probably be a fancy one like Harry Ramsden's, but I just wanted to throw in a "Marks and Sparks" because that's just soooooooooo middle class.)

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I just loved your examples, not to mention the social commentary, lol. I guess I must fall into the 'posh' category, because I go to a fish and chip shop maybe.... well, since going vegan literally never, but even before that I might have gone once every few years, if I happened to be out late at night (after the theatre, perhaps) and desperate for food and there was nothing else around. And no, I'd never call it a chippie - that's a carpenter in my southern lexicon. Plus, 'fancy' and 'Harry Ramsden's' is rather an oxymoron. The only acceptable fish and chip shop is an independent that has been rated top 10 in the Telegraph

And how would I say that line? Hmm. I don't think I ever would, but here is the nearest equivalent (south west middle class dialect):

'Do you want to pop over to mine first, then we can go to the cinema and get some nibbles on the way - Waitrose do vegan dolmades now, and we can pick up some Alpro hazelnut and chocolate icecream for afters.'

Or something like that

Roxxsmom said:

Note there are regional differences in word use within the US and UK too.

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This.

I'm from the north of England. It did not save me from being highly confused That Time I Worked As A Waitress In Sheffield (also in the north--ostensibly) And Everyone Kept Asking If We Did Teacakes For Breakfast. Because to me 'teacake' meant bread roll, the kind you could use as a burger bun. Apparently more or less everywhere but where I grew up, 'teacake' is some sort of fruitcake, which made a lot more sense as a breakfast item why did no one tell me. Googling it now, it's really difficult to delineate which areas use which meaning--online sources just don't go into that kind of detail.

And it doesn't always have to be as extreme geographically as different words used to mean different things counties over--the UK is packed with subtle differences in accent and word use to the point where people from my hometown can tell if someone is from there, or from the next town over without knowing them or their family.

I saw that you're changing the setting OP, so I guess this is just generic advice now, but I'd recommend not just a British beta, but a British beta from as close to the physical geographical location where your book is set as you can get.

There are two issues being discussed here, as far as I can tell.

The first is whether to use UK or USA spellings and punctuation (because yes, punctuation standards vary between the two countries as well as spellings). There's an easy answer to this one: use the one you're most familiar and confident with, and stick to it. Be consistent. If and when it's published elsewhere, those publishers will make the changes necessary to make it work.

The second is how to write a character who is from a country you're not familiar with. VERY CAREFULLY, is the answer to that one. Very few writers can do this well. As others have already said there's a lot more to this than adding in a few choice phrases and telling your reader where they live. You have to be aware of cultural differences, social status, and so on. It's embarrassingly bad when it's not done right. Write characters you know, inside and out. They work much better.

My WIP is set in 1732, so old-fashioned jolly and bloody it is.

Don't know if it's just me, but if a story I'm reading is good enough, the heck with the language and culture sins.