Category Archives: characterization

Creating Your Character: Astrological Signs

by
Sandy Tritt

Sometimes, especially when initially creating a character, it’s difficult to get a good feel for the person this character represents. Sometimes, if you just toss the character into the plot and start writing, the character will begin asserting himself. Other times, not so much. If a character remains flat, it may be time to cheat. One of my favorite ways to add layers of dimension to a character (and to help me understand my character better) is to use a book of the Zodiac that includes both sun and moon signs. I decide which astrological sign best fits my character, then I research that sign to add some dimension.

The sidebar contains the supposed characteristics of people born between certain dates. Notice that only the three or four adjectives that are strongest for the sign are listed. Within a book of the Zodiac, you will find many more characteristics, including a breakdown of how this sign behaves in romance, in the office, and at play.

Using the range of dates listed for the selected sign, I then use a “birthday” book that lists characteristics and traits by birthday, and page through the selected astrological dates until I find the personality that truly fits this character. This often creates an “aha!” moment and is quite fun to do. The birthday books give enough of a character profile that we can feel like we truly know this character. It’s amazing how quickly a flat character can come to life.

Looking ahead in the creative process, as writers delve into the intricacies of character development, there’s a myriad of unconventional yet fascinating methods to breathe life into fictional personas. Much like the way astrological insights can infuse depth into a character’s traits, exploring other mystical avenues can further enhance their complexity. For instance, incorporating elements like tarot reading into the character-building process can provide unique perspectives and unearth hidden facets of their personality. Just as astrological signs offer a framework for understanding behavioral nuances, tarot cards can be shuffled into the narrative, unveiling symbolic layers that resonate with the character’s journey. Just as astrology breathes life into a character’s essence, tarot reading can be a mystical tool that propels them forward, adding a layer of intrigue and unpredictability to the narrative.

Zodiac and birthday characteristic books can often be found in the bargain bin of your favorite book retailer. The “accuracy” of such books is not important—they are simply a tool that can be used to add depth to a character.

Character Profiling

by
Charlotte Firbank-King
Ever sit in a busy mall and just watch people? If you don’t, you should. The exercise will benefit your writing—and show how important just the right word can be.

I sit outside a café, sipping my espresso. Across the way a woman runs to a somewhat unkempt, bearded man sitting on a high planter. He puts a cell phone in his worn leather jacket pocket. The woman is thin, wearing unremarkable clothes—dirty clothes, actually. Her jeans have seen better days, her shirt is wrinkled and stained. I’m guessing they’re forty-something.

I instantly put them in a box—they look a bit redneck. If she’d been fashionable, I would have called her slender, not thin. Interesting how an image—along with the words used to describe that image—can shift the image fractionally from wealthy to poor.

Then he lifts his hand. He has a Rolex watch on his wrist and his nails are manicured. He’s also wearing Gucci shoes—maybe he’s doing the planned-scruffy trend. If I’d realized that earlier, I would have used scruffy as opposed to unkempt when I first saw him. The word we choose is everything.

She still looks, well, soiled, though. Actually, more like a battered wife, I decide. But her nails are also manicured—bright red—at odds with her drab clothes. They aren’t standing close enough—so not his wife.

They don’t appear emotionally invested, at least, not as lovers.

She looks around distractedly and runs her fingers through tangled hair—she’s worried someone will see her—attack her?

Then he puts his hands on her waist. Okay, this changes things.

She has troubled, rejected, and defensive written all over her.

Got it! She’s married to an out-of-work man who beats her, and this guy is her wealthy lover. She’s afraid her husband will catch them together and kill them.

Then my story gets blown out of the water.

A twelve-year-old girl runs to them, screeching with joy and holding a puppy in the air. The woman puts a hand to her breast and laughs. The man pats the woman on the hip, and they both put their arms around the child, all three laughing.

The real story? The pup had wandered off while Child and Dad were shopping, and Child had gone off to search for it. Mum had been gardening at home when Dad phoned to tell her the pup was gone. She dropped her gardening and ran straight to the mall, not taking time to clean up first. The parents were concerned about the child’s distress if the pup wasn’t found. I called her clothes dirty, not muddied, which they were.

I had it so wrong—and all because I misinterpreted the signs. The reason I know this for sure is because when they sat near me, I came clean and asked them. Now I had all the right words and the story was clear.

The way I misinterpreted their story is exactly how a reader will misinterpret a story if we don’t give them the exact words that help them unravel the story. There are tiny insinuations behind words. Thin is different from slender—and both are different from skinny. Unkempt is different from scruffy—and both are different from frazzled.

Every single word we write needs to count—and needs to carry as much information as it can. It’s vitally important to choose the words that give the reader a good map of your story.

GUEST BLOG: Frightening People, Terrifying Places, and Scary Things…

 
by Robert W. Walker
Author of Flesh Wars, Bloodscreams, Abaddon & more

How do we, as authors, get to the level of proficiency that readers send us comments like, “While I read your books, I have to put them out at night—on the porch”, or “I literally threw your book across the room, but crawled over later and finished it”?

That kind of compliment is music to the ears of suspense and horror authors, who are like big kids anxious to frighten our readers; we jump from the pages to shock you. But how do we manage it?

If we can frighten readers through use of our characters, our settings, and our props, then by all means we are turning our people, places, and things to good advantage and full-on use. We get there by means of the useful notion that the devil is in the details. Imagine, if you will, a child’s story—maybe Three Billy Goats Gruff or Charlotte’s Web, for that matter. In the one, we are convinced there is a troll beneath every bridge anxious to eat anything daring to cross it. Then the goat brothers sacrifice one another to the monster . . . creepy!

In the other tale, we have a spider coming to the rescue of a pig, and Charlotte and Wilbur have a full-blown relationship. The characters are fully realized—so much so that they come alive for the mesmerized reader. How can this be?

Details can sell us on any preposterous notion, as in my answer to spontaneous human combustion: creating a creature who smokes people the way we smoke cigarettes in my Flesh Wars books, or my witches in Abaddon who possess a young boy and direct him to become a serial killer. 

The reader is convinced to suspend disbelief through the careful planting of detail atop detail that uses all five senses and sometimes the sixth sense. It requires long and torturous rewrites to fully develop a scary person (antagonist or creature), a scary setting (loco-location), and frightful props (from ax, to cleaver, to Stryker saw).

Naming of names—be it people, places, or props—is also a way to get that fright factor working. Names are scarily specific—like Stryker saw—notice it gets capitalized as names should. The Lincoln Towers underground parking lot becomes even scarier as a modern-day haunted place due to the name, the specific location at Lincoln and Belmont in Chicago. (Notice more caps?) 

It is incumbent upon the modern author to find modern places to haunt, like a museum of modern art after hours, or a trailer park, or a single trailer in that park or … fill in the blank. Locations—and detailed locations at that—win the day when we wish to terrify.

In fact, it is true of any good writing that we want to be specific—all good writing is detailed to the nth degree; it is thesaurus-ing a mood, a point, a feeling, a wound, or a bleed out. We cannot get away with simply saying “it was hot” or “it was cold”—not by a long stretch—as we need to use every word possible that comes with heat (hot, searingly so), which must include sweltering, sweat, perspiration, and boiling, as well. For cold, we need to muster all the words at our command that show frigid, icy, ice-pick-shaped crystals beneath the nails painted with acrylic chartreuse, as in a fun house for my PSI Blue and Deja Blue.

So if there is a secret to scary writing, can it be that simple? Yes, it can, and yes, it is. As Stephen King puts it, “If you can’t legitimately scare the reader, go then for the gross out.” But even the gross out requires great attention to DETAIL.

About Robert Walker:

Award-winning author and graduate of Northwestern University, ROBERT W. WALKER created his highly acclaimed INSTINCT and EDGE SERIES between 1982 and 2005. Rob since then has penned his award-winning historical series featuring Inspector Alastair Ransom with CITY FOR RANSOM (2006), SHADOWS IN THE WHITE CITY (2007), and CITY OF THE ABSENT (2008), and most recently placed Ransom on board the Titanic in a hybrid historical/science fiction epic entitled Titanic 2012 – Curse of RMS Titanic. Rob’s next book, DEAD ON, is a PI revenge tale and a noir set in modern day Atlanta. More recently he has written Bismarck 2013, a historical horror title, The Edge of Instinct, the 12th Instinct Series, and a short story collection entitled Thriller Party of 8 – the one that got away. Rob’s historical suspense CHILDREN of SALEM, while a historical romance and suspense novel, exposes the violent nature of mankind via the politics of witchcraft in grim 1692 New England, a title that some say only Robert Walker could craft—romance amid the infamous witch trials. Robert currently resides in Charleston, West Virginia with his wife, children, pets, all somehow normal. For more on Rob’s published works, see www.RobertWalkerbooks.com, www.HarperCollins.com, or www.amazon.com/kindle books. He maintains a presence on Facebook and Twitter as well.

If you want to check out the titles mentioned in this blog, here are the links:

Flesh Wars 1
Abaddon
PSI Blue
Deja Blue

Constructing a Story Part 2: Builiding a Story

by
Charlotte Firbank-King

You have the glimmer of a story—basically the head and spine of your skeleton.

Make a list:

What genre is it?

Main protagonists—hero and heroine. How they look, their likes and dislikes, their flaws and strengths.

Main villain or villains—their looks, fetishes, etc.

Avoid back flashes as much as possible. Rather, write a prologue or weave the back flashes into the story through dialogue, but keep it BRIEF.

Don’t start the story with in-depth descriptions of the characters—make them natural through observation from a character or dialogue—again, brevity is the key word.

Every story has a problem that needs to be solved or there wouldn’t be a story.

We’ve had blogs on how to open a story—the first paragraph must capture the reader immediately—hook them.

Set the scene—give it atmosphere and ground the reader. Tell them where they are—the moon, Outer Mongolia, Bangladesh, or the Arctic. As you write, see, smell, taste and feel every single scene.

Present the problem or series of problems. Perhaps the hero finds a body. Now, we have a homicide or accident. He reports it to the heroine, who needs to solve it. This is where you need to be quite clear about “whodunnit,” but not the reader.

As you build the story, keep track of who is where and what they are doing at any given time. Make a list:

1) Joe finds body in car

2) Mary from NYPD is called to investigate

1 & 2: the problem to be solved 

3) Joe contaminates crime scene by hugging body

4) Mary furious with Joe

3 & 4: we have conflict between protagonists

Question that needs an answer:

Why did Joe hug the body?

Answer—the victim is his wife

Now Joe is a suspect

Enter Marc, the brother 

Joe accuses brother of having an affair with wife

Forensic expert discovers victim was pregnant

The baby’s DNA is not a match to Marc or Joe

This adds to the conflict and mystery.

All the while, you build atmosphere and tension—see and smell the car and surroundings where the victim is found—then the police station and the morgue. Show us Joe and Marc’s anger as they play a blame game—show us Mary’s frustration.

Make your reader fall in love with, empathize with, get frustrated by, or hate characters by fleshing out their appearance, traits, and personalities. But in small bites—DON’T do it all at once. You have the power as a writer to make readers feel what you want them to feel. Embroider on your characters as you go. Bring out their faults and strengths slowly. They must grow or deteriorate in a believable way.

Slowly, you build the story to a flowing climax. The character list will probably be added to, but watch the names. Don’t call one Joe and another Josephine. More tension as Mary gets to the truth—whatever you decide that might be. Keep the tension and atmosphere going. Watch the beginning and ends of chapters. Those were dealt with in one of our previous blogs.

Never start a story with cameos of each character’s traits, looks, likes and dislikes—that will just bore the reader—weave it into the story.

Don’t have too many unanswered questions, mysteries. Give the reader occasional clues without giving the game away. You can even lead the reader on a false trail to make the ending a shock, but that means keeping a tight rein on the plot.

Then start tying up loose ends as you work towards an ending.

Things to avoid:

Constant flash backs

A convoluted plot that becomes so confusing that you don’t even know what is going on. Keep it simple yet seemingly complex. Things have to run in a chronological order and be realistic.

Don’t create scenarios or coincidences just to make things work.

Show, don’t tell—see IFW tips.

Watch the point of view at all times and avoid head hopping—see IFW tips on POV.

Keep internal dialogue to a minimum, and don’t use too much internal or vocal dialogue as a vehicle to impart information.

Above all, the story must flow. Hook in the opening paragraph—the problem/mystery that needs an answer—build to a climax whilst resolving—then the final act where all is revealed. If the story has a sequel, then it ends on a cliff-hanger. 

In conclusion:

Research is vital. If you aren’t a forensic, gun, or knife expert—research it. Know nothing about cars or carriages? Depending on the era—research it. Even absolute fantasy needs research.

If your mystery/murder is historical, research even the manner of speech—but don’t go over the top with how they speak, especially when using the vernacular; you will just irritate the reader. Certain words weren’t in use a hundred years ago—check them first—the Merriam Webster dictionary is great for this.
Then edit, edit, edit, and edit even more.

Children’s Books and the Child’s Character Trait Chart

by
Sandy Tritt
 

I was recently contacted by a gentleman, a children’s book writer, who asked me what resources we had specifically for writers of children’s books. He had purchased our workbook and was happy with it, but pointed out that our character trait chart was geared toward adult characters. So, I got to work and created a new CHILD’S CHARACTER TRAIT CHART. It includes some of the same fields as our old CHARACTER TRAIT CHART, but we’ve tweaked them to make them relate to children. 

Here are the fields in the chart: 

Full Name 

Goes By

Date of Birth

Age

Address/Particulars about Where Lives

Race/Ethnic Background/Nationality

Height Weight/Body Build

Hair

Eyes 

Peculiar Traits (Freckles, Limp, Etc.)

Smell

Voice

Usual Walking Style

Health

Mannerisms

Style of Dress

Favorite Drink

Favorite Food

School

Grade

Favorite Subject 

Intelligence

Birth Order

Lives With

Wants to Be When Grows Up

Best Friend(s) 

Worst Enemy

Most Important Possession

Hobbies/Recreations/Sports

Talents

What is a normal day like for this character?

Greatest Fear 

Major Goals

Views Family:

Family Views Him:

Views Friends:

Friends View Him:

Feelings Toward Animals:

Who is His Hero?

If you’d like to receive a free Word or PDF copy of this chart (formatted to fit on a single sheet of paper with space for your notes), please just shoot me off an email at IFWeditors@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to send you one. If you’d like to see all our worksheets (this one hasn’t been added yet), as well as a collection of our tips and techniques, be sure to order our workbook (http://www.inspirationforwriters.com/products/workbook.html). And, of course, if you’d like an experienced children’s writer to edit and critique your children’s story, send it. A standard edit and critique is only $45 for up to 1500 words. (Please do not send payment until we’ve reviewed your story. We only accept stories we believe we can improve and that we believe will be viable). Email me at IFWeditors@gmail.com.

Let’s Dabble in Drabbles!

by Jessica Nelson
I imagine your first thought upon seeing this post title is Awesome internal rhyme! I imagine your second is What the heck is a drabble?
Allow me to introduce you to the shortest form of short stories. A drabble is a story that is exactly 100 words. No more, no less.
“Why would I ever want to write a drabbble?”
Funny you should ask that. Here’s why:
Drabbles force you to write your story succinctly. There can be no extra fluff. Every word must advance your story. Every word must be carefully chosen to describe as much as possible by saying as little as possible, because you only have 100 words to play around with. That’s it.
Short stories, by nature, tend to be character driven. As the shortest category of short story, drabbles demand that you get down to the nitty-gritty of your character. You have to find out what makes your character tick and convey that to the reader in less space than most scholarship essays.
Since this is a short story, our friend Rhonda Browning White reminds us to keep these things in mind:
  •  One consciousness (point of view)
  • One central action
  • One major change in the life of the character
  • A single emotional impact
  • A single understanding

She also reminds us to “use our zoom lens:”

  • Focus on one specific moment in time and/or place
  • Start at the flashpoint—the instant when something is different
  • Focus on one simple plot line
  • Focus on one main character
  • Focus on one internal conflict and one external conflict
Drabbles are the ultimate test for a writer. It’s easy to tell a full story in 1000, 5000, or 80,000 words. You have all the time in the world to move your characters around and reveal who they are. To do all that in 100 words tests your very nature as a writer. As writers, we tend to be wordy and long-winded, waxing poetic about the sunset at the beach or the less-than-pleasant fragrance of our character’s son’s gym bag after a week in his locker. (If that last sentence had been part of my drabble, I would have used up a third of my available space.)
The best way to start a drabble is to begin as you would any other short story. Just start writing. Word vomit all over the page, and get everything out. Once that is done, we can get to the hard part.
Here’s my example:
          Kara clutched the gun in her sweaty palm, her trembling finger resting on the trigger. Part of her worried that the gun would accidently go off. A larger part of her just didn’t care anymore. That part of her played words on loop like a broken record, over and over again.
          I’m sorry, Mrs. Peters, but the insurance won’t pay any more. Unless you can find the money to keep up the payments on your own, we have to send him home.
          Her jaw clenched as she saw her son in her mind’s eye. He was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines and tubes that tangled all around him. His hair was gone, and his face was gaunt, but still he smiled at her, his big blue eyes shining with warmth and love.
          It’ll be okay, Momma. It will.
          An errant tear ran down Kara’s cheek. She sniffled, then lifted her chin and deliberately pulled back the hammer. “Put the money in the bag,” she said. “Now.”
 Not bad, if I do say so myself. There’s not an exceptional amount of plot going on here. It’s almost like a snapshot from a longer story, but that’s okay. You can still infer what the big picture is from this brief excerpt. Now, here’s the thing: that version is 170 words long. Not a drabble—yet.
Let’s try again.
           Palms sweaty, Kara clutched the gun in her sweaty palm, her trembling finger resting on the trigger. Part of her worried that about the gun would accidentally go off accidentally firing. A larger Part of her just didn’t care anymore. That part of her played words on loop like a broken record, over and over again.
          Words echoed through her mind. I’m sorry, Mrs. Peters, but the insurance won’t pay anymore. Unless you can find the money to keep up the payments on your own pay yourself, we have to send him home he can’t stay here.
          Her jaw clenched as she saw her son in her mind’s eye. Jaw clenching, she envisioned her son. Head bald and cheeks gaunt, he was lying lay in a hospital bed surrounded by beeping machines and tubes that tangled all around him. His hair was gone and his face was gaunt, but still he smiled at her, his big blue eyes shining with warmth and love.
          He smiled. It’ll be okay, Momma. It will.
          An errant tear ran down Kara’s cheek. She sniffled, then lifted her chin, and deliberately pulled back the hammer cocked the gun. “Put the money in the bag,” she said. “Now.”
This is what you’ll see if you use Microsoft Word’s Tracking Feature. It’ll keep track of your edits, and for our purposes, allows you to see just how much I had to take out and all the things that were rephrased. By keeping myself to a firm 100-word limit, I had to think outside the box to get my point across.
Let’s take a look at it without all the marks. Here’s the final product:
           Palms sweaty, Kara clutched the gun, her trembling finger on the trigger. Part of her worried about the gun accidentally firing. Part of her didn’t care.
          Words echoed through her mind. I’m sorry, but the insurance won’t pay anymore. Unless you can find the money to pay yourself, he can’t stay here.
          Jaw clenching, she envisioned her son. Head bald and cheeks gaunt, he lay in a hospital bed surrounded by beeping machines and tubes.
          He smiled. It’ll be okay, Momma. It will.
          She sniffled, lifted her chin, and deliberately cocked the gun. “Put the money in the bag. Now.”
Eureka! 100 words. Is it super frilly? No. But does it tell enough of the story that you understand what is happening? Yes.
Perhaps that Great American Novel you’re working on needs some bells and whistles. Truth be told, it probably does. But much like cars, if your story has an exorbitant amount of them, your reader will get frustrated. Use drabbles as an exercise in brevity and succinctness. It will greatly improve your writing and please your reader—and your editor!
Now, I challenge you to try it. Write your own drabble, and leave it in the comments here for a chance to win a 1000-word free edit! This contest will run until Saturday, July 12, at 12:00am Eastern Time. May the best drabble win!
And for more information about how to use the Microsoft Tracking Feature, email me at jgirl126@gmail.com for a How-To manual.

Christmas in the Fictional World


by Sandy Tritt
I visited the blog of a dear friend yesterday, and the blog included the question, What gifts would you give your characters for Christmas? Well, that got my rusty old brain churning. Even though we don’t share with our readers everything we know about our characters, our personal knowledge of them will come through in our writing. Many years ago, I attended a workshop that included a list of questions about your character to help you think of your character in different ways. Here are some examples:
1. If your character were a dog, which breed would he or she be?
2. If your character were an animal, which animal would he or she be?
3. If your character were a piece of furniture, which piece would he or she be?
4. Which public figure would your character most like to meet? Why?
5. What music does your character listen to?

And so forth. Our Inspiration for Writers’ Character Trait Chart gives prompts for various traits or preferences your character may possess. Please feel free to download it.

So, even though you may not have a holiday scene in your novel, give some thought to how your characters would celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah. Would they attend religious services? What about community services, such as special music or theatre presentations? Would they host or attend holiday parties? What kind? How would they decorate? And what, above all else, would be the gift they would most cherish?

We at Inspiration for Writers, Inc., hope you have a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

(c) copyright 2010 Inspiration for Writers, Inc. All rights reserved.

When Characters Won’t Behave

by Sandy Tritt

What if your character won’t behave?

Have you ever had that problem? You’ve sat down and created a character, giving him or her just the right eye color, height, and family background, and then he simply refuses to do and say the things you need him to do and say. What has happened?

I’ll tell you what has happened. You have achieved the ultimate success as a writer: you’ve brought your character to life. Not only has your character become multi-dimensional, he is exercising free will.

So, what can you do? One of two things. You’ll either need to “fire” this character and move him to your “Characters for Hire” file, or you’ll need to accommodate his desires and allow him to take on a different role in your story. This means you need to open your mind to the possibilities–and you may very well discover your story will take on a new dimension.

When characters mature, they become so real to us we know how they will react in any given situation–or, if they would avoid a situation altogether. “Real” characters are what make a reader stay glued to the page and want to read more. “Real” characters are what make us laugh and cry and become angry. “Real characters” are why we write–and for what we strive.

Our Inspiration for Writers Tips and Techniques Workbook includes a section on the Lifecycle of a Character. In it, we discuss ways to bring a character to life, from the point of conception to the breath of life to emotional maturity, and offer a variety of worksheets to help you discover all the nuances of your character’s personality. If you don’t yet have a copy of this workbook, be sure to order it at
http://www.inspirationforwriters.com/products/workbook.html. Even better, invite one of our editors to give a workshop on the Life Cycle of a Character. We’re here for you.

USING DIALECT IN STORIES

By


Rhonda Browning White

Nothing sinks the reader deep into a story like using all available senses in your writing. We want to smell the wood smoke from the fireplace, taste the buttery crust on the apple pie, feel the well-worn softness when we snuggle under Grandma’s lap quilt, see the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiles, and hear the Southern twang of her voice. But how is the best way to convey Grandma’s Southern dialect, without having it backfire on you? Here are few rules you can follow that should keep you out of trouble.

Be personally familiar with the dialect you’re trying to convey, unless you want to be considered a thoughtless classist or racist. At one time or another, we all share the same emotions and many of the same experiences, so use caution when conveying those emotions and experiences through regional dialect. This isn’t to say one should be ashamed or afraid of dialect. In fact, nothing makes me happier—more proud, even—than to hear people speak using their own local speech patterns. If we all spoke a homogenized language, what a boring world this would be!
Don’t overdo it when writing dialect. A few well-chosen words and phrases sprinkled throughout your story will do an amazing job of allowing your reader to hear the character’s speech inflections. Paragraph after paragraph of phonetically written dialogue will fry your reader’s brain. Who has time to interpret an entire novel of “foreign language,” when we simply want to read a good story? Overuse of dialect will take away from the plot and action, because it pulls the reader away from the story and makes them think about the words, instead of the meaning they should convey.

Take it easy on misspelled words. I strongly recommend avoiding what Jerome Stern, author of Making Shapely Fiction, refers to as “eye dialect.” Substituting misspelled words such as enuff for enough does nothing to change the pronunciation of the word (dialect), but instead suggests inferiority on behalf of the character and arrogance on behalf of the author. Misspellings and overuse of apostrophes also wear out the eyes of your reader. For example, read the following sentence:

          All dis tawk ‘bout die-leckt is ware-in’ on my onlyest nerve.
Can you imagine having to read an entire book with a character’s dialogue written in this manner? Instead, you can express the same character’s speech patterns in this way:

          All this talk about dialect is wearing out my last nerve.

By the phrases “all this talk,” and “wearing out my last nerve,” we know that the character has a strong regional dialect.

Don’t be afraid to use slang. Each region has its own set of words as phrases, as does each generation. Think about the phrases your parents used and use, compared with those used by your teenager. “Man, he’s one cool cat,” transports our character into the seventies. “That’s what I’m gonna did,” tells us the speaker is an older Cajun. “Y’all come back now, you hear?” Well, we all know Grandma Clampett’s voice. Again, the key is not to overdo it. In addition, words like gotcha, gonna and probly are such common pronunciations of their correctly spelled counterparts in American English that it’s not necessary to misspell them in your writing, at all.

Study some of the masters of regional dialect before you begin to write. Two who quickly come to mind are Toni Morrison and Ron Rash, and here is an excerpt from each one’s work:

          “You think I’m going to let him put me in the poorhouse so a slick lawyer can stay rich?”
          “No, ma’am.”
          “You been watching those Watergate lawyers?
          “No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”
          “Well, then. Don’t say another word about it. You want some supper or not?”
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

          “You ain’t got need for a granny-woman, have you?”
          “No,” I said. “I’m the high sheriff, and I’m looking for Holland Winchester. I was wondering if you’d seen him?”
          “Oh, I’ve seen him,” Widow Glendower said. “I seen him twenty-odd years ago when I brung him into this world.”
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash

From each of these powerful examples, we have an idea not only of what these characters sound like, but what they look like, as well. Though we don’t know the exact setting of the story (location, year, and so on), from each brief paragraph, we can guess that the first is set in the Deep South and the second in the Appalachian Mountains. The characters aren’t portrayed as ignorant, because two have knowledge of politics, another is a law enforcement officer, and yet another is a successful midwife.

Dialect is influential and commanding, when used correctly. Take care to use it as you would a potent seasoning. Sprinkle it lightly and occasionally throughout your story for the best flavor.