October Novel Prep Challenge

I agree with sararae. I don't ever write the accent out like she just showed you for Hagrid. I always write in an accent. The only time I mention it is if someone has a different accent. My story is set in Arkansas. I would assume that the reader would think everyone was talking with a southern accent. To prevent confusion between the different sounds of accents, I would say something somewhere to clarify that an Arkansas accent doesn't sound like a Georgia accent. We aren't that genteel and we weren't settled by the English. We hit our R's much harder than a Georgia Peach. We were settled by the Spanish and French. When the Louisiana purchase happened it was the Scots and Irish that came west and settled in our little mountains. We have a slight brogue and come really close to rolling our r's because well you know... French. LOL Oh, and we were the last stop before Indian territory after the forced marches. So there is a lot of how the Native American's speak English worked into it.

They don't do it so much anymore, unless they weren't taught English until later in life, but in the days we settled here... Those that spoke English did it in passive voice. My Great Grandmother only spent holidays visiting her grandparents and half brothers on the reservation where her mother was born and grew up, but even she spoke in passive voice. When I write a native American speaking I think of her and her half brother that found her and came to visit once before they both died. The older two boys had already past. I was twelve but, I will never forget his voice.

So when I write dialogue for people from Arkansas I talk about the sound of the accent but then I would write. "The Johnson's? Oh, they live down there in the holler. Just go around the bend and up yonder hill. When it drops back down and I mean way down, they will be the second mailbox on the left. You can't miss 'em."

I could write kain't instead of can't but who wants to spend half the book trying to figure out what that word is suppose to be? Not to mention I set off the spell checker enough on my own trying to spell when my accent makes the words sound nothing like they are written. LOL So If I wrote where my words actually looked like the accent, I wouldn't be able to tell what was spelled wrong on purpose and what I just flat out got wrong.