Fiction Writing: What About Dialect?

Dialect is local colour individualised. Ian Maclaren, in "The Bonnie Brier Bush," following in the wake of Crockett and Barrie, has given us the dialect of Scotland: Baring Gould and a host of others have provided us with dialect stories of English counties; Jane Barlow and several Irish writers deal with the sister island; Wales has not been forgotten; and the American novelists have their big territory mapped out into convenient sections. Soon the acreage of locality literature will have been completely "written up"; I do not say its yielding powers will have been exhausted, for, as with other species of local colour, dialect has had to suffer at the hands of the imitator who dragged dialect into his paltry narrative for its own sake, and to give him the opportunity of providing the reader with a glossary.

The reason why dialect-stories were so popular some time ago is twofold. First, dialect imparts a flavour to a narrative, especially when it is in contrast to educated utterances on the part of other characters. But the chief reason is that dialect people have more character than other people—as a rule. They afford greater scope for literary artistry than can be found in life a stage or two higher, with its correctness and artificiality. St Beuve said, "All peasants have style." Yes; that is the truth exactly. There is an individuality about the peasant that is absent from the town-dweller, and this fact explains the piquancy of many novels that owe their popularity to the representations of the rustic population. The dialect story, or novel, cannot hope for permanency unless it contains elements of universal interest. The emphasis laid on a certain type of speech stamps such a literary production with the brand of narrowness. I understand that Ian Maclaren has been translated into French. Can you imagine Drumsheugh in Gallic? or Jamie Soutar? Never. Only that which is literature in the highest sense can be translated into another language; hence the life of corners in Scotland, or elsewhere, has no special interest for the world in general.

The rule as to dealing with dialect is quite simple. Never use the letters of the alphabet to reproduce the sound of such language in a literal manner. Suggest dialect; that is all. Have nothing to do with glossaries. People hate dictionaries, however brief, when they read fiction. George Eliot and Thomas Hardy are good models of the wise use of county speech. 

 

Excerpt from "How to Write a Novel"

Fiction Writing Tips Article Index Page

Fiction Writing Having Artistic Quality

 

When in addition to expressing matters of fact or truth, appealing  perhaps to experience, we wish to arouse some sense of the beautiful and  the artistic, we shall give our writing some or all of the qualities of  the third group. Evidently, writing of this sort is in many respects  the most difficult, since the writer must have regard for unity and the  related principles, as well as for the qualities which peculiarly  distinguish it. Experience, beauty, and truth are all available as  subject-matter, and all the principles governing literary composition  are concerned. Here we shall find the poem, the drama, the oration in  some of its forms, most essays of the better sort, the greater part of  good critical writing, literary description, and all narrative forms  except the matter-of-fact historical writing of unliterary  scholars

Excreted  from Writing of the Short Story by Lewis Worthington Smith (1902)

Fiction Writing Tips Article Index Page

Forces in Fiction and Other Essays by Burton, Richard

 

Forces in Fiction and Other Essays

by Burton, Richard

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

The fundamentals of fiction.--The cult of the historical romance.--The love motive in modern fiction.--The dark in literture.--Poetry and the drama.--The development of technique in the drama.--The essay as mood and form.--The modern need for literature.--Past and present in literature.--The use of English.--A note on modern criticism.--Literature as craft.--Indoor and out: two reverie.

Fiction Writing Tips Article Index Page

Many Who Attempt To Write Can Never Succeed

 

Many who attempt to write can never succeed. Some succeed despite all obstacles. But in between are a great number with varying degree of ability, many of them appearing in books or magazines, some of them attaining a fair degree of real success, some of them failing of print, but no one of them who could not do far better if he would shake himself free from the influence of machine-like methods and give opportunity to whatever of individuality may lie within him. 

A long procession of possibilities unrealized, regrettable because of the loss to American fiction, pathetic if one looks behind the manuscripts at vain struggles and hopes unfulfilled.

Excerpt from Fiction Writers on Fiction Writing

 

Fiction Writing Tips Article Index Page