I know there's a STICKY up ^^^^ there about writing accents, but I came across this yesterday and found it helpful.
Dialogue in Fiction.
Dialogue in Fiction.
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Basic Writing questions is not a crit forum. All crits belong in Share Your Work
writing dialogue with an accent
- Thread starter indianroads
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The question of writing dialogue with an accent arises regularly here and it can't do any harm to have another point of reference. We all forget the odd bit now and then. Thanks for the link. 
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What I found helpful was the suggestion to just quickly write out the dialogue in the early drafts, then go back and fix it in editing. I tend to jot down characters voices as I hear them when I write, but an accent or dialect slows me down. This suggestion allows me to focus on the story first, then go back and fix the dialogue in isolation later. I think that isolation may help me keep the dialect consistent within characters too.
It's a small thing, but for me I think it will help.
It's a small thing, but for me I think it will help.
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I think less is more when it comes to "writing" accents. If it's important to show a character's culture or national identity, then maybe an early accented sentence or two will establish that for the reader. Beyond that, unless an accented pronunciation is important to the plot (such as someone mishearing a word or two and reaching an incorrect conclusion), too much accenting slows down the reader and can begin to seem like an offensive caricature.
In one of my (as yet unpublished) novels I have some characters who speak with an Irish accent (in southern Illinois, and the accent comes and goes, so my protagonists suspect it's an act), but I don't spell the words with pronunciation in mind. They say the words, and I might select the phrasing to "sound" Irish -- "I'll just be checking that for you now" and "a wee dram" -- and the other characters will observe internally that the words are accented. Other characters in this same novel have Hispanic heritage, but rather than belabor that in the pronunciation of their English words, I slip in a Spanish word or two: hola, abeula. I think that's clear enuf for the reader while not laying it on too thick.
In one of my (as yet unpublished) novels I have some characters who speak with an Irish accent (in southern Illinois, and the accent comes and goes, so my protagonists suspect it's an act), but I don't spell the words with pronunciation in mind. They say the words, and I might select the phrasing to "sound" Irish -- "I'll just be checking that for you now" and "a wee dram" -- and the other characters will observe internally that the words are accented. Other characters in this same novel have Hispanic heritage, but rather than belabor that in the pronunciation of their English words, I slip in a Spanish word or two: hola, abeula. I think that's clear enuf for the reader while not laying it on too thick.
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Thank you for the article. Like Bufty said, for me as an ed, the points discussed have long been burnt in, but for the writer me, who's a whole different animal and getting back to my WIP after three years, it was a helpful refresher. 
I decided to write a character with an accent and then found the accent coming and going - and not for any purpose that served the story. *facepalm
Yet another thing to be addressed in revisions.
Yet another thing to be addressed in revisions.
I completely agree. 'Writing' an accent can be confusing to a lot of readers - subtle use of diction and syntax is what I aim to use. My WIP occurs about 800 years in the future, it's a dystopian world where much of the population is uneducated. When society changes, words and word order will change with it. The problem with going too heavy on this is that it may obscure the story.
As I mentioned earlier, writing the dialogue quickly at first without much thought to accent / word choice etc. is helping me burn through the story. I'll come back after the dust settles and square up the language.
If they say "wee dram" they're not using standard Irish diction. Both words are preserved from Middle English in modern Northern English from around the Scottish border. They are Scottish dialect markers, markers that have become semi-standardized, but they are not Irish.
The methodology is sound enough; the difficulty is writing a dialect when the writer is not a native speaker.
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The article cited in the OP is incredibly helpful and I hope everyone reads it. If your takeaway is nothing else, this part highlights the tools to use in elevating your dialogue—and the feel of your story world—when writing other languages for English speakers:
Care taken with diction, syntax, and grammar, in particular, will do far more for your prose than a sprinkling of foreign words and phrases will alone.
Care taken with diction, syntax, and grammar, in particular, will do far more for your prose than a sprinkling of foreign words and phrases will alone.
If I have a character with an accent, I try to establish it when the character first speaks so that readers 'hear' that accent from then on. I can then write the dialogue normally without annoying or distracting readers, and occasionally throw in a reminder if required.
I agree. Accents get dicey reeeeeel fast, and it's easy w/o intending it to end up with a character that just sounds simple-minded or 'ethnic' in some uncomfortable way. I've had to learn this the hard way, don't be me.
I overall agree with the points in this article, though even then some of the advice can get you in trouble (dropping the indefinite article springs to mind). And I am not a fan of funetik spelling under any circumstances.
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