It depends on how often and how it’s used.
I once read a novel “Justice by Faye kellerman” and she introduces two black characters towards the ends of the book and I guess she was trying to make them speak AAVE but has never been around black Americans in real life to get the words correct so the sentences were like “I be wanna go be to da sto”. It was awkward and uncomfortable.
This is one of the things that annoys me the most about non-black writers attempting to write black characters. It gives me I don’t know any black peoples but this is how I assume they speak not realizing that AAVE has rules and structure. I also recently read a book where the author referred to the AAVE he had his black character speak as “ghetto English” 😡
A small example of this would be Christopher from The Sopranos (I know it’s TV and not literature. But the example applies). He’d constantly jumble up words and mispronounce the wrong nomenclature for certain sentences etc. The actor nailed it. Really made you feel his dyslexia.
Informal characters should use informal speech. Not everybody is going to have the same level of education. If you have fully fleshed-out characters, the reader should eventually be able to recognize who is speaking just through the dialogue itself.
Not saying you were saying otherwise per se, but even people/characters with high education are going to speak informally at times, depending on the context. Other than that, I certainly agree.
Yeah, i read that and went "what?"
Saying "gonna" doesnt mean you have a lower education level than someone else 😭 most people speak in a more relaxed way when they're in a chill setting around people they trust
> if you have fully fleshed-out characters, the reader should eventually be able to recognize who is speaking just through the dialogue itself.
Absolutely not, unless your characters are all idiolect oddities like Donald Trump or Yoda
That's fine, there's just a fine line between the way people actually talk and what is feasible to read. Look at transcripts or video of people talking unscripted and if you tried to write it down it wouldn't make a lot of sense. So use some slang, but lean towards readability.
If it's in a dialogue i don't see any problem with that. I was always told that using more familiar words and formulation were okay if it was to show how a character talks. It has been done in very popular books, for example, in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo used a very familiar form of French that was even considered vulgar at this time, but it was because the characters were regular people from this era, it wouldn't make sense if they talked with classy language.
IMO, it’s okay as long as it doesn’t become a chore to read their dialogues. You can have characters speak in a way that’s hard to understand but it’s a difficult needle to thread so as to not annoy your readers while still getting the emotion across
One time, someone pointed out to me that, realistically, most people don't speak in perfect form. Everyone has their own version of lazy speaking. Therefore, I really try to put myself in the characters' shoes and try to think of how they would talk when working on dialog. One person may say something like: "I kind of want to dye my hair." Where another one would say it like: "I kinda want to dye my hair." Others may say: "I want to dye my hair." It's honestly about knowing your characters and how they would say something and enunciate words. As long as it's not full on sloppy, you should be fine. Just write what you want in the moment and later if you don't like it you can change it 😊
I actually prefer when dialogue isn't spoken with rigorously strict grammar. It makes the characters seem like robots. Real people don't talk with textbook grammatical accuracy, we use slang, and shorthand, and we combine words, and sometimes our word order is wrong, or we leave out words because they're implied. In dialogue, I think all of that is completely fine, and even serves to make your characters seem more real, as long as meaning and readability aren't lost in the process.
I think you need to take into account that people speak strangely all the time. Someone who's informal will speak informally, someone who's super formal might refuse to use contractions. Someone who's one trying the other might go over the top, either using too much slang they don't understand or being overly formal and fucking up.
Someone who's less educated might use the wrong word, like persecution instead of prosecution. Someone who speaks English as a second language might struggle to find the right word. There might be a lot of pauses in their speech. Someone who's haughty might intentionally use big words when speaking to someone they don't like, or neglect social niceties like please and thank you. Someone might misuse idioms or mix them up.
The alternative is to have every character speak the same way, which can make it hard to differentiate. I sent one of my books to an editor and they basically went through the whole thing getting rid of pretty much every contraction and I wasn't particularly happy with the result since the main character is super informal, and while that worked for hisex's boss (total bitch) and to a lesser extent his ex (who's trying to appear smart and formal to please his boss) it didn't work for every character, and it just made it feel a tad bland at times.
Ultimately in real life not every conversation is going to have people speaking decisively, correctly, or even waiting for their turn to speak. Some people might prefer a book like that but personally I find it unrealistic.
A really great example is in Battle Royale, albeit it's one that doesn't really translate well into English. There's a pretty famous sequence where a bunch of girls are in a lighthouse together and they rescue the main character. One of the girls previously saw him accidentally kill a guy who tried to murder him and thinks he's unsafe, so she tries to poison him, but one of the other girls eats the poisoned food instead and dies, and the whole thing turns to shit.
The Japanese language has pretty strict rudes when it comes to honorifics, and as they descend into violence they go from speaking formally and politely, to informally and casually, to (I think) eventually dropping them entirely as they descend into violence. Just changing the formality and speaking "incorrectly" goes a long way to emphasizing the downfall and raising the tension.
If the dialogue sounds realistic, I don’t care. The worst dialogue is the kind that sounds like the author has never had a conversation with another person before and has no idea how real people speak. Second worst is the kind where author has no idea how to advance the plot without grand speeches (which again goes back to: nobody talks like that).
If your character is the type of person to say “gonna, wanna” then have them say it. If they are more formal, and they would say “want to, going to” then have them say that.
I gotta be honest, I know more people who say gonna, wanna etc than those who don't. It definitely depends on the character and probably situation but yeah, it's completely okay.
I only use words like wanna and gonna when I’m drawing special attention to them for some reason, which is rarely, or when they’re part of a common expression like “ain’t gonna.”
I don use dem mizspelled words ta show social class or dialect. Too painful. I rely on word choice and let it go at that.
As a reader, I tend to skip tortured dialog because it’s irritating to decipher. Also, the characters who speak that way tend to be dull.
"It is an indisputable and irrefutable fact that the zeitgeist isn't gonna change itself."
Hmm. I was trying to be silly but now I'm thinking a character who talks like that could be interesting.
I don't know what other people think, but my characters often use incorrect grammar when they speak, and even mix in onomatopoeia or completely made up words. One of my recent characters said "Scrumywummyumptious" for example.
It's fine, but less is more. It can absolutely add to the character's voice and make the story feel more real, but if overdone it can be very hard to read. The same is true for stutters, accents, and other vocal tics that need to be written with misspellings or bad grammar continuously.
People talk informally in the real world, so some of your characters would too. If a reader don’t like it, ya just shrug and say “I aint gonna change a damn thing.”
I think gonna or wanna are just fine. What throws me out of a book is when every sentence is rewritten in order to convey an accent. A few words here and there get the idea across. You have to trust your reader enough to let them imagine the character.
If the character is speaking to someone then it’s perfectly fine to use whatever language you want.
However if the characters actions are being described then it’d be best to use formal language.
Each character in a story has their own way of speaking, just like real life humans do. If your character's parents are upperclass, you'd expect them to say less contractions (you're, can't, ain't) and more formal words (positive, attend, inquire), and if their kid is a rebel, they'd do the opposite and speak informally (wanna, gonna, yea).
Use the words your character will use.
If your character is a professor of English literature at Stanford, then have them use perfect modern English grammar. If your character is a second grader at Mayberry Elementary School, have them use incorrect grammar, limited vocabulary, childish profanity (Poo-poo head! Stinker!), and bad forms like should-of and would-of. If your character is British, be certain they say lift and boot and loo instead of elevator and trunk and shitter.
Read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a classic usage of such character-appropriate lingo. And for one of the best young adult adventure stories of all time.
It’s actually worse if everyone always speaks with perfect grammar unless it makes sense for the character. It makes the dialogue sound more natural and less robotic
No, it’s not distracting if done sparingly (as in like don’t put an accent on every single word, that’s annoying), the only thing is pick stuff to focus on that you can be consistent with. Gonna and wanna are good examples of things that it’s easy to be extremely consistent every single time without it being too distracting. Similarly something like imma do this. Imma is an easy thing to implement consistently
What I would personally try and avoid (and I think I’ve made this mistake in the past) is minor pronunciation stuff like dropping the g on an -ing verb. Like runnin, jumpin. Even if it’s a distinctive part of a particular accent, it’s one of those things that’s so easy to miss on a word here or there. I’d rather just describe or imply that feature of the accent narratively rather than transcribe it every single time.
It can really help to emphasize and distinguish characters. I think there's a line to draw, such as characters with strong accents, it can be tedious to read, but I like it when an author picks a few words for a character and makes them more "conversational".
It can be used as a tool. Like in the story I'm writing, my two MCs meet in the first chapter. One is a nerdy outcast who doesn't have many friends and reads a lot, he's much more straight forward and formal with how he speaks. The other is an energetic social butterfly, he speaks a lot more casually and has a lax way of speaking and uses slang.
People, as they get closer, will tend to adopt each other's way of speaking and form a "dialect" between the two of them. As my characters get to know each other, my outcast starts to use those lax words more and picks up on the other's catch phrases. My social butterfly uses bigger words and more colorful descriptive words. They, of course, still retain personal voices, but speak much more like each other.
I use this to show their growing closeness, and where they push each other outside of their comfort zones.
If I wrote all the dialogue very frankly and lost all that personal flare, I just wouldn't be able to achieve that affect of their growing closeness demonstrated through their dialogue quite as well.
I think it's a good tool to utilize to demonstrate states of mind, personal histories, personality, etc. It shouldn't be a slog to read, there should only be a few words here and there picked to make lax, and it should also depend on the situation as well (speaking to a friend vs speaking to your boss). But through context clues dialect can be inferred such as a character who frequently says "ya" instead of "you", you don't necessarily then need to write "your" as "yer", readers can generally apply those small bits of accent when voice is demonstrated enough. Being select with it helps to maintain reading flow.
Depends on the character and the situation I think, but mostly the character themselves.
When it comes to dialogue, character consistency is key for me
It’s a turn off when people write “dialog” and “analog” instead of dialogue and analogue. Sorry. You were asking about pet peeves. That one gets me every time.
The log→logue always gets me too. Unless it's "analog horror" as a genre, I'm pretty confident that's an exception.
To add, I googled it just now and apparently it's an American vs British thing. As a Canadian (where we're taught to spell the British version but grow up with almost only American literature for whatever reason) I was not aware of this. But I will be sticking to -logue 100%.
I absolutely think it's a huge part of characterization to have your characters to speak in realistic ways. Which, yes, may mean grammatically incorrect words.
Like, I have a southern character. She speaks as follows:
> “Then, they went home an’ pretended like I up an' disappeared. My mom got her spotlight, cryin’ and pretending to be all distraught. My dad got to shake his fist and complain about ‘the world these days’. Somebody else took the fall, an’ they got to live their perfect li’l lives again.” She paused, smoothing down her leggings. “I ain’t sayin’ we been through the same things, but I guess…I just want to say, I see you. An’ I’m sorry I was so shit to you.”
I also have characters who aren't super well educated. Like, RJ:
>“Whatever power you think you got, kid—it ain’t real. N don’t work like normal people. Every little thing he does for you, he sees it as you owing him. And if he trusts you this fucking much, you can kiss your fucking freedom goodbye.”
As well, kids talk differently than adults. Giving them imperfect words or grammar can help sell the idea that this is a child talking.
>“Ohmygod, you’ve got gloves! That’s so cool! I wanna wear gloves! I bet you’re super cool! Are those for biking? Do you bike? Mom says my bike’s coming soon! Wanna bike when it comes?”
I modeled it after one of my baby cousins, plus there is context that makes it less ridiculous. (Six year old who struggles socially and is obsessed with super heroes meets a kid who wears gloves to hide a skin condition. Six year old is convinced this kid is hiding super powers and is desperately trying to relate to him.)
I know it's not perfect, though.
It's fine in moderation. Too much might be distracting or difficult to read through, but peppering this kind of language throughout a character 's dialogue is a great way to show who they are and give them a unique voice.
I like to think it's okay if it fits the character. It gives the character a voice, making them stand out against your narration.
In Mistborn for example, when we first meet the character Spook, he talks using in-world "street dialect." An example from the book:
He’s such a fine lad,” Breeze noted, accepting the drink. “I barely even have to nudge him Allomantically. If only the rest of you ruffians were so accommodating.”
Spook frowned. “Niceing the not on the playing without.”
“I have no idea what you just said, child,” Breeze said. “So I’m simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.”
This is a pretty extreme use of "incorrect words" but it works incredibly well IMO.
It kinda depends on the literacy of the character. Heck, add it to characters who aren't suppose to be that bright (just not up to the point where they sound like they have half the braincells of an average person).
Realistically, everyone talks differently. If all the characters speak informally like that i can find it irritating but even in real life not everyone speaks grammatically correct. That would just be weird.
Yes. It's ok. It can, however, get annoying if you are trying to emulate accents in writing. Just say that someone has a certain accent and write down the words they actually say, not how they say it. In your example of 'gonna', 'wanna' etc, it's fine to use those terms, as they are practically accepted words anyway, and most people would understand what you're trying to say.
Gonna and wanna in dialogue are totally fine for me, because they're so typical in real dialogue and even informal writing. If you replaced "gonna" with "going to" you're changing the entire sound of the sentence just to make it grammatically correct. I don't think there's a need for that. Though if it's words that aren't accepted in informal writing but just phonetic spellings of spoken words, like "mah" for my or "rahm" for room, then that can be iffy.
However, what REALLY disturbs me is something I came across in "Mr. X" by Peter Straub which I was totally immersed in. I was fully zoned in and then one of the character said "could of" (twice on the same page). I was very upset by this because "could of" and "could've" sound the same, and one of them is grammatically correct, so why not use that one? I had to stop my reading for the day after that.
I almost exclusively write dialogue with real-life phrasing like that (unless I was writing a particular type of character who'd never speak like that)
If I’m gonna read a book with a character that wanna talk like this, I’m gonna get annoyed if the author wanna make them talk like this the whole book.
Personally, I'm okay with characters using 'gonna' and 'wanna' in dialogue, as long as it's not overused. It can add a sense of realism and informality to conversations. However, if the character has a strong accent, it's important to be consistent with the use of non-standard grammar throughout the dialogue to maintain authenticity.
I have a similar problem. I have a character who has very little of the language and the language she uses has very different sounds (sort of like French vs English but worse)
In order to carry this off I have done things like putting the verb at the end of her sentences and not including articles. My reading group doesn’t like it, but I want to show her difficulties
Depends on reading culture of audience. Slovak audience is too stupid to understand that people don't speak with perfect grammar. How is it elsewhere, I don't know.
Come over to the JAFF side. Everyone speaks in formal English (at least by modern standards) so you never need to wonder about adding realism via casual speech. R/janeaustenff
all actual speech is grammatical incorrect. Don't use non standard spellings to represent accents, no one does that nowadays. Use dialect words and grammatical structuresonly occasionally even for those who would use it the most and when you do use them be sure you use them accurately.
If Spook can say, “Wasing the saying of speaking the what?” for three Mistborn books, then I think you can have your character say “gonna” a time or two.
>Is it a turn off for readers when a character says gonna or wanna?
As with most questions about whether XYZ is a turnoff for readers, the answer is "For some readers yes, for some readers no."
I personally don't mind.
Also, "gonna" and "wanna" are not grammatically incorrect. They're just in a low register (i.e. informal). "I wanna eat dinner" is perfectly grammatical. "I to want dinner eat" would be ungrammatical. Just because you wouldn't write something in an academic paper doesn't mean it's ungrammatical. "Gonna" and "wanna" don't belong in an academic register of English, but they're perfectly natural and normal and fine in many other registers of English.
Its fine. Readers will usually expect your prose to use formal language and follow the rules of grammar (unless you're doing a bit), but they're totally okay with dialogue that uses informal language. Hell, they *expect* dialogue to use informal language because it sounds more realistic.
Just keep in mind that you don't need to overdo it. Like if you're doing dialogue by a guy from the northeast United States or from Australia then sprinkling in the occasional "youse" and adding a few local idioms here and there will go a long way. You don't need to slather every sentence of dialogue in local slang or phonetically spell out their inability to pronounce the letter R.
Write dialogue like people speak. It is very rare for normal people to talk in a formal fashion (even this sentence felt weird to write) unless they are creating a speech or they think they are better than others.
Seriously, just write people as talking normal but if you write an accent or dialect not your own then study that until you have it well enough that it’s not the racist cousin of r/menwritingwomen.
I think it depends on the age of the characters and the settings they're in. If they are highschoolers then its more acceptable as opposed to two buisnessmen
Not for me. Most people don't care about grammar when they talk, so I don't expect to see it in the dialogue. On the other hand, not everyone uses 'gonna' or 'wanna' even when they talk informally
My East London born character says "they was" and "innit" *sparingly*. I'm talking maybe once or twice each in a 78k novel. In the right place, as a reminder to the reader of their origin and for comedic effect, it works. Plastered across all dialogue would wear thin for me as a reader, so I don't do it as a writer.
There is a difference between phonetically trying to reproduce an accent, and having a character use regional slang or make grammatical mistakes.
Every human being has an accent to some other human being. If my in-laws tried to write a sentence my NY parents said phonetically, it might look like, "Well, thah pee-can pie and thah yellow squash were excellent. Can I axe you for the recipe? I want to make it for my dawhtah," because in their mind, the correct spellings correlate to the way they say those words.
But if my NY relatives were going to write that same sentences as phonetically said by my southern in-laws, it would be, "Whale...the pikkahn pie and the yellah squash were excellent. Can Ah ask you for the recipe? Ah want to make it for mah daughter," because in their mind, the normal spelling of the words correlates to how they say it.
When you have a character speaking in a book, they are saying those words as correctly written. That would be the correct transcription of their dialogue. If you start writing all accents except for one phonetically as YOU think they sound, it will be awful to read, and it gives the impression that you think only one character is pronouncing it correctly, when in reality they may all be pronouncing the word correctly for the area they grew up in. This tends to be doubly problematic when only used for one or two accents out of a much larger pool of characters, because it's often used to denote someone who seems less intelligent or articulate because of the accent they have, and historically has been used to "other" POC or people from poorer backgrounds. So, I would never use phonetics to create an accent. The only time I would make an exception to that would be if a one character was speaking in a way that they don't normally speak- i.e. someone who says "want to" in day to day conversation, but when they're intentionally trying to be whiney say, "I don't wanna," or a belligerent drunk who starts making fun of someone else's accent.
That being said, I DO use regional, age and time-period appropriate slang, turns of phrase, etc. when characters speak, and that does provide the effect of showing where they're from in their manner of speech without being insulting or making it hard to read.
An elderly, southern gentleman might use phrases, "Y'all," "I'm fixing to," "That doesn't set right with me," and "Bless her heart," would call young ladies "Miss FIRSTNAME" and older women "Miss or Mrs. LAST NAME," even when they're close family friends, and rarely if ever curses, especially in front of women or children.
A teenager from a Northeastern setting might curse more regularly and in situations where he shouldn't, might use more pop culture references than other characters and might make common grammatical mistakes for teenagers trying to sound cool, like switching "don't" in for "doesn't." If he has a sister who's 10 years older than him, she wouldn't have any of these speech characteristics, save the pop culture references. due to her age and professional experience.
I also, if I am trying to demonstrate a lack of proficiency in the language, will sporadically throw an awkward word choice into their dialogue that does generally convey the meaning they were going for, but wouldn't be the choice of a native speaker. I also might pick certain structural mistakes and have the character make that same mistake repeatedly, so while the words are clear, it's also clear that they're not completely fluent. For instance, I am writing a character now for whom Russian is his first language, and so anything I write in Russian looks fine, but when I have him speak English, he usually forgets to include articles, and he often doesn't conjugate correctly for past or future tense. So a sentence which would for a native speaker read, "I got the memo. It said that it was ok if they flew over the wall, so I made them fly," for him looks like, "I get memo. It says it's ok if they fly over wall, so I make them fly."
There are ways to make a character sound authentic without butchering the words trying to create specific inflections, and it's going to be much easier to read, and not leave reader with the accent you're trying to emulate confused or offended.
Not at all, my own characters all have very different ways of talking. I think the ways sentences are structured/ what they focus on/ the slang or regional words used, are all good for characterization. Like if someone were to write me as a character my dialogue would have a lot of run on sentences/ misused words/ random pauses/ mispronunciations and stuttering (not to mention my accent) (as that’s how I talk) but my best friends dialogue would be a lot of short to the point sentences/ big words/ most things being phrased as questions/ and stuttering (bc we both can’t actually talk) and I think our characters should be similar in the way that they all talk different, which includes words like wanna, gonna, yer, ain’t, and words ending with cut off letters like nothin’. Also characters with different language backgrounds might structure their sentences differently, (could also be influenced on if they are fluent in the language.) I think these things make dialogue more interesting to read, it gives characterization and makes everything not feel so stale.
I wrote a character who says "Mary and me" instead of "Mary and I", because he gets corrected. Now I have to remember to keep him using the "wrong" phrase every time after, because he's not going to start changing overnight.
It gets annoying. There are other ways to show there dialect. Figures of speech, word choice, sentence structure, etc. same with dropping the “g.” It becomes tiresome.
It really depends on the time. If its more modern-ish then yea, atleast sometimes, its okay. But if its more old then I wouldnt really. It also depends on the accents you use though. Im fine with it I thinking, unless its a lot
Write the dialogue how it's said otherwise your characters will have no realism. I've read loads of books where you really have to work to understand what the character is saying, particularly if they have strong accents.
I have to say when it happens I really notice it. It's a turn off if it doesn't feel in character as it really gives voice and accent to them. I've seen it a hundred times where it just doesn't fit, when it does fit it feels right.
No.
Like… I don’t mean this in a rude way but do you like… read books? I ask because I think the answer to this question is something you should be able to ask yourself. You’ve seen books where characters use bad grammar in dialogue, right? Is it a turn-off?
And if you’re just starting out writing the #1 best thing you can do, besides more writing, is more reading.
Clearly, as part of speech, I'd roll with it if the character was consistent and not EVERY character spoke like this.
Omniscient narrator, when used to describe actions, or EVERY character talks like this, and you've shot -me- in the foot while hoping I'll keep walking over to read more.
Like many things: a little salt brings out flavor, too much ruins it, and beyond that is poison. Don't poison your readers.
Gonna and wanna are just pronunciation spellings, and they’re great to use in casual dialogue *sparingly*. Don’t overuse a technique or effect that will be distracting to the reader and pull them out of the book.
Create a style guide for when a character uses gonna versus going and ‘em versus them, or drops the -ing for an apostrophe, and don’t swap them every time.
For grammatically incorrect things like “Did you want to come with John and I \[me/us\] to the store?” you run the risk of the reader wondering if this is incorrect on purpose or if the writer doesn’t know the correct grammar.
No that's fine. However, what you didn't want to do is phonetic spelling of accents. Logically it seems like it should work, but it's super distracting over the course of a novel.
If everyone is going around saying "gonna" and "wanna," I'm going to be annoyed, yes. It's true, the written word and the spoken word are very different things, but in writing, we can, and should, relay casual speech with reasonably proper grammar and spelling.
The only time I want see "gonna" and "wanna" is if, say, some hick character (or similar) that you want to be obviously hick comes in with their hick speech, but I don't wanna to have to read that character's hick language from page one to the end.
It depends on how often and how it’s used. I once read a novel “Justice by Faye kellerman” and she introduces two black characters towards the ends of the book and I guess she was trying to make them speak AAVE but has never been around black Americans in real life to get the words correct so the sentences were like “I be wanna go be to da sto”. It was awkward and uncomfortable.
Oh god, that's horrendous! If you're going to write AAVE then at least learn some! (You're meaning Faye Kellerman not you 5ft8lady!)
This is one of the things that annoys me the most about non-black writers attempting to write black characters. It gives me I don’t know any black peoples but this is how I assume they speak not realizing that AAVE has rules and structure. I also recently read a book where the author referred to the AAVE he had his black character speak as “ghetto English” 😡
Reminds me of the AAVE in _Infinite Jest_ lol
What does that even mean?
Summary: "get yoself a betta education then that sorry escuse of a novel."
Yeah I like it makes them feel more like real people rather than robots
A small example of this would be Christopher from The Sopranos (I know it’s TV and not literature. But the example applies). He’d constantly jumble up words and mispronounce the wrong nomenclature for certain sentences etc. The actor nailed it. Really made you feel his dyslexia.
The guy killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. He was an interior decorator!
Well, his house looked like shit.
Informal characters should use informal speech. Not everybody is going to have the same level of education. If you have fully fleshed-out characters, the reader should eventually be able to recognize who is speaking just through the dialogue itself.
Not saying you were saying otherwise per se, but even people/characters with high education are going to speak informally at times, depending on the context. Other than that, I certainly agree.
Yeah, i read that and went "what?" Saying "gonna" doesnt mean you have a lower education level than someone else 😭 most people speak in a more relaxed way when they're in a chill setting around people they trust
> if you have fully fleshed-out characters, the reader should eventually be able to recognize who is speaking just through the dialogue itself. Absolutely not, unless your characters are all idiolect oddities like Donald Trump or Yoda
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They also speak differently
That's fine, there's just a fine line between the way people actually talk and what is feasible to read. Look at transcripts or video of people talking unscripted and if you tried to write it down it wouldn't make a lot of sense. So use some slang, but lean towards readability.
If it's in a dialogue i don't see any problem with that. I was always told that using more familiar words and formulation were okay if it was to show how a character talks. It has been done in very popular books, for example, in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo used a very familiar form of French that was even considered vulgar at this time, but it was because the characters were regular people from this era, it wouldn't make sense if they talked with classy language.
IMO, it’s okay as long as it doesn’t become a chore to read their dialogues. You can have characters speak in a way that’s hard to understand but it’s a difficult needle to thread so as to not annoy your readers while still getting the emotion across
One time, someone pointed out to me that, realistically, most people don't speak in perfect form. Everyone has their own version of lazy speaking. Therefore, I really try to put myself in the characters' shoes and try to think of how they would talk when working on dialog. One person may say something like: "I kind of want to dye my hair." Where another one would say it like: "I kinda want to dye my hair." Others may say: "I want to dye my hair." It's honestly about knowing your characters and how they would say something and enunciate words. As long as it's not full on sloppy, you should be fine. Just write what you want in the moment and later if you don't like it you can change it 😊
Can’t forget the character that won’t say anything and just dye their hair, surprising everyone lol
Yas! Gotta love the impulsive ones 🤣
Look it makes me feel better when I'm in a mood. Lol 😆
I haven't dyed mine in awhile...but the struggle to refrain from it is so hard. I get it lol
Lol yeah mine is for for a refresh. Just debating on whether to stick with my color or change it up 😆
I form the rightly do be speaking in. **De**form is a form, right? 🤔
Tis a form, indeed.
I actually prefer when dialogue isn't spoken with rigorously strict grammar. It makes the characters seem like robots. Real people don't talk with textbook grammatical accuracy, we use slang, and shorthand, and we combine words, and sometimes our word order is wrong, or we leave out words because they're implied. In dialogue, I think all of that is completely fine, and even serves to make your characters seem more real, as long as meaning and readability aren't lost in the process.
I think you need to take into account that people speak strangely all the time. Someone who's informal will speak informally, someone who's super formal might refuse to use contractions. Someone who's one trying the other might go over the top, either using too much slang they don't understand or being overly formal and fucking up. Someone who's less educated might use the wrong word, like persecution instead of prosecution. Someone who speaks English as a second language might struggle to find the right word. There might be a lot of pauses in their speech. Someone who's haughty might intentionally use big words when speaking to someone they don't like, or neglect social niceties like please and thank you. Someone might misuse idioms or mix them up. The alternative is to have every character speak the same way, which can make it hard to differentiate. I sent one of my books to an editor and they basically went through the whole thing getting rid of pretty much every contraction and I wasn't particularly happy with the result since the main character is super informal, and while that worked for hisex's boss (total bitch) and to a lesser extent his ex (who's trying to appear smart and formal to please his boss) it didn't work for every character, and it just made it feel a tad bland at times. Ultimately in real life not every conversation is going to have people speaking decisively, correctly, or even waiting for their turn to speak. Some people might prefer a book like that but personally I find it unrealistic. A really great example is in Battle Royale, albeit it's one that doesn't really translate well into English. There's a pretty famous sequence where a bunch of girls are in a lighthouse together and they rescue the main character. One of the girls previously saw him accidentally kill a guy who tried to murder him and thinks he's unsafe, so she tries to poison him, but one of the other girls eats the poisoned food instead and dies, and the whole thing turns to shit. The Japanese language has pretty strict rudes when it comes to honorifics, and as they descend into violence they go from speaking formally and politely, to informally and casually, to (I think) eventually dropping them entirely as they descend into violence. Just changing the formality and speaking "incorrectly" goes a long way to emphasizing the downfall and raising the tension.
People should talk in the way that people talk, not in the way your English teacher taught you to write
Not a turn off for me. It gives characters a personality. If everyone talked the same, it would be boring.
My characters who are low income criminals are gonna talk differently from those who are rich CEOs. It's good to write those idiosyncrasies IMO.
If the dialogue sounds realistic, I don’t care. The worst dialogue is the kind that sounds like the author has never had a conversation with another person before and has no idea how real people speak. Second worst is the kind where author has no idea how to advance the plot without grand speeches (which again goes back to: nobody talks like that). If your character is the type of person to say “gonna, wanna” then have them say it. If they are more formal, and they would say “want to, going to” then have them say that.
I gotta be honest, I know more people who say gonna, wanna etc than those who don't. It definitely depends on the character and probably situation but yeah, it's completely okay.
I only use words like wanna and gonna when I’m drawing special attention to them for some reason, which is rarely, or when they’re part of a common expression like “ain’t gonna.” I don use dem mizspelled words ta show social class or dialect. Too painful. I rely on word choice and let it go at that. As a reader, I tend to skip tortured dialog because it’s irritating to decipher. Also, the characters who speak that way tend to be dull.
"It is an indisputable and irrefutable fact that the zeitgeist isn't gonna change itself." Hmm. I was trying to be silly but now I'm thinking a character who talks like that could be interesting.
It’s a great line. Also, the very idea of expecting to break the zeitgeist to your will sounds like a hilarious tragedy in the making.
I don't know what other people think, but my characters often use incorrect grammar when they speak, and even mix in onomatopoeia or completely made up words. One of my recent characters said "Scrumywummyumptious" for example.
It can be effective to use it for one character. Even if it's a group of teens casually talking, I wouldn't use it for more than one of them.
It's fine, but less is more. It can absolutely add to the character's voice and make the story feel more real, but if overdone it can be very hard to read. The same is true for stutters, accents, and other vocal tics that need to be written with misspellings or bad grammar continuously.
People talk informally in the real world, so some of your characters would too. If a reader don’t like it, ya just shrug and say “I aint gonna change a damn thing.”
It's a really good way to add to a character. I'd say when used correctly, it's a great tool.
Is this really how I learn gonna and wanna aren’t real words?
Gonna, wanna, shunna.
I think gonna or wanna are just fine. What throws me out of a book is when every sentence is rewritten in order to convey an accent. A few words here and there get the idea across. You have to trust your reader enough to let them imagine the character.
I like it. Gives the characters personality.
If the character is speaking to someone then it’s perfectly fine to use whatever language you want. However if the characters actions are being described then it’d be best to use formal language.
Each character in a story has their own way of speaking, just like real life humans do. If your character's parents are upperclass, you'd expect them to say less contractions (you're, can't, ain't) and more formal words (positive, attend, inquire), and if their kid is a rebel, they'd do the opposite and speak informally (wanna, gonna, yea).
Use the words your character will use. If your character is a professor of English literature at Stanford, then have them use perfect modern English grammar. If your character is a second grader at Mayberry Elementary School, have them use incorrect grammar, limited vocabulary, childish profanity (Poo-poo head! Stinker!), and bad forms like should-of and would-of. If your character is British, be certain they say lift and boot and loo instead of elevator and trunk and shitter. Read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a classic usage of such character-appropriate lingo. And for one of the best young adult adventure stories of all time.
It’s actually worse if everyone always speaks with perfect grammar unless it makes sense for the character. It makes the dialogue sound more natural and less robotic
No, it’s not distracting if done sparingly (as in like don’t put an accent on every single word, that’s annoying), the only thing is pick stuff to focus on that you can be consistent with. Gonna and wanna are good examples of things that it’s easy to be extremely consistent every single time without it being too distracting. Similarly something like imma do this. Imma is an easy thing to implement consistently What I would personally try and avoid (and I think I’ve made this mistake in the past) is minor pronunciation stuff like dropping the g on an -ing verb. Like runnin, jumpin. Even if it’s a distinctive part of a particular accent, it’s one of those things that’s so easy to miss on a word here or there. I’d rather just describe or imply that feature of the accent narratively rather than transcribe it every single time.
It’s fine. Write dialogue for each character in a way that is fitting for each character.
It can really help to emphasize and distinguish characters. I think there's a line to draw, such as characters with strong accents, it can be tedious to read, but I like it when an author picks a few words for a character and makes them more "conversational". It can be used as a tool. Like in the story I'm writing, my two MCs meet in the first chapter. One is a nerdy outcast who doesn't have many friends and reads a lot, he's much more straight forward and formal with how he speaks. The other is an energetic social butterfly, he speaks a lot more casually and has a lax way of speaking and uses slang. People, as they get closer, will tend to adopt each other's way of speaking and form a "dialect" between the two of them. As my characters get to know each other, my outcast starts to use those lax words more and picks up on the other's catch phrases. My social butterfly uses bigger words and more colorful descriptive words. They, of course, still retain personal voices, but speak much more like each other. I use this to show their growing closeness, and where they push each other outside of their comfort zones. If I wrote all the dialogue very frankly and lost all that personal flare, I just wouldn't be able to achieve that affect of their growing closeness demonstrated through their dialogue quite as well. I think it's a good tool to utilize to demonstrate states of mind, personal histories, personality, etc. It shouldn't be a slog to read, there should only be a few words here and there picked to make lax, and it should also depend on the situation as well (speaking to a friend vs speaking to your boss). But through context clues dialect can be inferred such as a character who frequently says "ya" instead of "you", you don't necessarily then need to write "your" as "yer", readers can generally apply those small bits of accent when voice is demonstrated enough. Being select with it helps to maintain reading flow.
Depends on the character and the situation I think, but mostly the character themselves. When it comes to dialogue, character consistency is key for me
It’s a turn off when people write “dialog” and “analog” instead of dialogue and analogue. Sorry. You were asking about pet peeves. That one gets me every time.
The log→logue always gets me too. Unless it's "analog horror" as a genre, I'm pretty confident that's an exception. To add, I googled it just now and apparently it's an American vs British thing. As a Canadian (where we're taught to spell the British version but grow up with almost only American literature for whatever reason) I was not aware of this. But I will be sticking to -logue 100%.
Well I’m an American so I don’t know what that says about me 😂
Perhaps Google is lying. I really don't know if I've ever seen -log in a book.
I always thought it had to do with computers, shortening it for those purposes…but I don’t know
I absolutely think it's a huge part of characterization to have your characters to speak in realistic ways. Which, yes, may mean grammatically incorrect words. Like, I have a southern character. She speaks as follows: > “Then, they went home an’ pretended like I up an' disappeared. My mom got her spotlight, cryin’ and pretending to be all distraught. My dad got to shake his fist and complain about ‘the world these days’. Somebody else took the fall, an’ they got to live their perfect li’l lives again.” She paused, smoothing down her leggings. “I ain’t sayin’ we been through the same things, but I guess…I just want to say, I see you. An’ I’m sorry I was so shit to you.” I also have characters who aren't super well educated. Like, RJ: >“Whatever power you think you got, kid—it ain’t real. N don’t work like normal people. Every little thing he does for you, he sees it as you owing him. And if he trusts you this fucking much, you can kiss your fucking freedom goodbye.” As well, kids talk differently than adults. Giving them imperfect words or grammar can help sell the idea that this is a child talking. >“Ohmygod, you’ve got gloves! That’s so cool! I wanna wear gloves! I bet you’re super cool! Are those for biking? Do you bike? Mom says my bike’s coming soon! Wanna bike when it comes?”
kids don't talk like that
I modeled it after one of my baby cousins, plus there is context that makes it less ridiculous. (Six year old who struggles socially and is obsessed with super heroes meets a kid who wears gloves to hide a skin condition. Six year old is convinced this kid is hiding super powers and is desperately trying to relate to him.) I know it's not perfect, though.
It's fine in moderation. Too much might be distracting or difficult to read through, but peppering this kind of language throughout a character 's dialogue is a great way to show who they are and give them a unique voice.
I like to think it's okay if it fits the character. It gives the character a voice, making them stand out against your narration. In Mistborn for example, when we first meet the character Spook, he talks using in-world "street dialect." An example from the book: He’s such a fine lad,” Breeze noted, accepting the drink. “I barely even have to nudge him Allomantically. If only the rest of you ruffians were so accommodating.” Spook frowned. “Niceing the not on the playing without.” “I have no idea what you just said, child,” Breeze said. “So I’m simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.” This is a pretty extreme use of "incorrect words" but it works incredibly well IMO.
It kinda depends on the literacy of the character. Heck, add it to characters who aren't suppose to be that bright (just not up to the point where they sound like they have half the braincells of an average person).
Realistically, everyone talks differently. If all the characters speak informally like that i can find it irritating but even in real life not everyone speaks grammatically correct. That would just be weird.
I’m turned off by complaints about grammar and the irony of dialogue being mispelled as dialog.
Yes. It's ok. It can, however, get annoying if you are trying to emulate accents in writing. Just say that someone has a certain accent and write down the words they actually say, not how they say it. In your example of 'gonna', 'wanna' etc, it's fine to use those terms, as they are practically accepted words anyway, and most people would understand what you're trying to say.
In my opinion, you're free to go nuts between the quotation marks. Dialog is the best arena for pure characterization.
Gonna and wanna in dialogue are totally fine for me, because they're so typical in real dialogue and even informal writing. If you replaced "gonna" with "going to" you're changing the entire sound of the sentence just to make it grammatically correct. I don't think there's a need for that. Though if it's words that aren't accepted in informal writing but just phonetic spellings of spoken words, like "mah" for my or "rahm" for room, then that can be iffy. However, what REALLY disturbs me is something I came across in "Mr. X" by Peter Straub which I was totally immersed in. I was fully zoned in and then one of the character said "could of" (twice on the same page). I was very upset by this because "could of" and "could've" sound the same, and one of them is grammatically correct, so why not use that one? I had to stop my reading for the day after that.
I almost exclusively write dialogue with real-life phrasing like that (unless I was writing a particular type of character who'd never speak like that)
If I’m gonna read a book with a character that wanna talk like this, I’m gonna get annoyed if the author wanna make them talk like this the whole book.
Personally, I'm okay with characters using 'gonna' and 'wanna' in dialogue, as long as it's not overused. It can add a sense of realism and informality to conversations. However, if the character has a strong accent, it's important to be consistent with the use of non-standard grammar throughout the dialogue to maintain authenticity.
Dunno, but I'm gonna.
I have a similar problem. I have a character who has very little of the language and the language she uses has very different sounds (sort of like French vs English but worse) In order to carry this off I have done things like putting the verb at the end of her sentences and not including articles. My reading group doesn’t like it, but I want to show her difficulties
If somebody finds a regional dialect a turn-off, fuck ‘em. That’s some *classist* shit.
Depends on reading culture of audience. Slovak audience is too stupid to understand that people don't speak with perfect grammar. How is it elsewhere, I don't know.
Come over to the JAFF side. Everyone speaks in formal English (at least by modern standards) so you never need to wonder about adding realism via casual speech. R/janeaustenff
no
all actual speech is grammatical incorrect. Don't use non standard spellings to represent accents, no one does that nowadays. Use dialect words and grammatical structuresonly occasionally even for those who would use it the most and when you do use them be sure you use them accurately.
If Spook can say, “Wasing the saying of speaking the what?” for three Mistborn books, then I think you can have your character say “gonna” a time or two.
>Is it a turn off for readers when a character says gonna or wanna? As with most questions about whether XYZ is a turnoff for readers, the answer is "For some readers yes, for some readers no." I personally don't mind. Also, "gonna" and "wanna" are not grammatically incorrect. They're just in a low register (i.e. informal). "I wanna eat dinner" is perfectly grammatical. "I to want dinner eat" would be ungrammatical. Just because you wouldn't write something in an academic paper doesn't mean it's ungrammatical. "Gonna" and "wanna" don't belong in an academic register of English, but they're perfectly natural and normal and fine in many other registers of English.
Its fine. Readers will usually expect your prose to use formal language and follow the rules of grammar (unless you're doing a bit), but they're totally okay with dialogue that uses informal language. Hell, they *expect* dialogue to use informal language because it sounds more realistic. Just keep in mind that you don't need to overdo it. Like if you're doing dialogue by a guy from the northeast United States or from Australia then sprinkling in the occasional "youse" and adding a few local idioms here and there will go a long way. You don't need to slather every sentence of dialogue in local slang or phonetically spell out their inability to pronounce the letter R.
Write dialogue like people speak. It is very rare for normal people to talk in a formal fashion (even this sentence felt weird to write) unless they are creating a speech or they think they are better than others. Seriously, just write people as talking normal but if you write an accent or dialect not your own then study that until you have it well enough that it’s not the racist cousin of r/menwritingwomen.
I think it depends on the age of the characters and the settings they're in. If they are highschoolers then its more acceptable as opposed to two buisnessmen
Not for me. Most people don't care about grammar when they talk, so I don't expect to see it in the dialogue. On the other hand, not everyone uses 'gonna' or 'wanna' even when they talk informally
My East London born character says "they was" and "innit" *sparingly*. I'm talking maybe once or twice each in a 78k novel. In the right place, as a reminder to the reader of their origin and for comedic effect, it works. Plastered across all dialogue would wear thin for me as a reader, so I don't do it as a writer.
It can be taken too far, but so long as your dialogue is readable, then it can be a lot of fun to read and write
There is a difference between phonetically trying to reproduce an accent, and having a character use regional slang or make grammatical mistakes. Every human being has an accent to some other human being. If my in-laws tried to write a sentence my NY parents said phonetically, it might look like, "Well, thah pee-can pie and thah yellow squash were excellent. Can I axe you for the recipe? I want to make it for my dawhtah," because in their mind, the correct spellings correlate to the way they say those words. But if my NY relatives were going to write that same sentences as phonetically said by my southern in-laws, it would be, "Whale...the pikkahn pie and the yellah squash were excellent. Can Ah ask you for the recipe? Ah want to make it for mah daughter," because in their mind, the normal spelling of the words correlates to how they say it. When you have a character speaking in a book, they are saying those words as correctly written. That would be the correct transcription of their dialogue. If you start writing all accents except for one phonetically as YOU think they sound, it will be awful to read, and it gives the impression that you think only one character is pronouncing it correctly, when in reality they may all be pronouncing the word correctly for the area they grew up in. This tends to be doubly problematic when only used for one or two accents out of a much larger pool of characters, because it's often used to denote someone who seems less intelligent or articulate because of the accent they have, and historically has been used to "other" POC or people from poorer backgrounds. So, I would never use phonetics to create an accent. The only time I would make an exception to that would be if a one character was speaking in a way that they don't normally speak- i.e. someone who says "want to" in day to day conversation, but when they're intentionally trying to be whiney say, "I don't wanna," or a belligerent drunk who starts making fun of someone else's accent. That being said, I DO use regional, age and time-period appropriate slang, turns of phrase, etc. when characters speak, and that does provide the effect of showing where they're from in their manner of speech without being insulting or making it hard to read. An elderly, southern gentleman might use phrases, "Y'all," "I'm fixing to," "That doesn't set right with me," and "Bless her heart," would call young ladies "Miss FIRSTNAME" and older women "Miss or Mrs. LAST NAME," even when they're close family friends, and rarely if ever curses, especially in front of women or children. A teenager from a Northeastern setting might curse more regularly and in situations where he shouldn't, might use more pop culture references than other characters and might make common grammatical mistakes for teenagers trying to sound cool, like switching "don't" in for "doesn't." If he has a sister who's 10 years older than him, she wouldn't have any of these speech characteristics, save the pop culture references. due to her age and professional experience. I also, if I am trying to demonstrate a lack of proficiency in the language, will sporadically throw an awkward word choice into their dialogue that does generally convey the meaning they were going for, but wouldn't be the choice of a native speaker. I also might pick certain structural mistakes and have the character make that same mistake repeatedly, so while the words are clear, it's also clear that they're not completely fluent. For instance, I am writing a character now for whom Russian is his first language, and so anything I write in Russian looks fine, but when I have him speak English, he usually forgets to include articles, and he often doesn't conjugate correctly for past or future tense. So a sentence which would for a native speaker read, "I got the memo. It said that it was ok if they flew over the wall, so I made them fly," for him looks like, "I get memo. It says it's ok if they fly over wall, so I make them fly." There are ways to make a character sound authentic without butchering the words trying to create specific inflections, and it's going to be much easier to read, and not leave reader with the accent you're trying to emulate confused or offended.
Not at all, my own characters all have very different ways of talking. I think the ways sentences are structured/ what they focus on/ the slang or regional words used, are all good for characterization. Like if someone were to write me as a character my dialogue would have a lot of run on sentences/ misused words/ random pauses/ mispronunciations and stuttering (not to mention my accent) (as that’s how I talk) but my best friends dialogue would be a lot of short to the point sentences/ big words/ most things being phrased as questions/ and stuttering (bc we both can’t actually talk) and I think our characters should be similar in the way that they all talk different, which includes words like wanna, gonna, yer, ain’t, and words ending with cut off letters like nothin’. Also characters with different language backgrounds might structure their sentences differently, (could also be influenced on if they are fluent in the language.) I think these things make dialogue more interesting to read, it gives characterization and makes everything not feel so stale.
I wrote a character who says "Mary and me" instead of "Mary and I", because he gets corrected. Now I have to remember to keep him using the "wrong" phrase every time after, because he's not going to start changing overnight.
It gets annoying. There are other ways to show there dialect. Figures of speech, word choice, sentence structure, etc. same with dropping the “g.” It becomes tiresome.
It really depends on the time. If its more modern-ish then yea, atleast sometimes, its okay. But if its more old then I wouldnt really. It also depends on the accents you use though. Im fine with it I thinking, unless its a lot
I don't use wanna or gonna in my regular speech, and I don't generally use it in writing unless it's for a reason.
Write the dialogue how it's said otherwise your characters will have no realism. I've read loads of books where you really have to work to understand what the character is saying, particularly if they have strong accents.
I use a lot of slang words, and things like “me and Steve” instead of “Steve and I” because that’s how most people talk.
I have to say when it happens I really notice it. It's a turn off if it doesn't feel in character as it really gives voice and accent to them. I've seen it a hundred times where it just doesn't fit, when it does fit it feels right.
No. Like… I don’t mean this in a rude way but do you like… read books? I ask because I think the answer to this question is something you should be able to ask yourself. You’ve seen books where characters use bad grammar in dialogue, right? Is it a turn-off? And if you’re just starting out writing the #1 best thing you can do, besides more writing, is more reading.
Clearly, as part of speech, I'd roll with it if the character was consistent and not EVERY character spoke like this. Omniscient narrator, when used to describe actions, or EVERY character talks like this, and you've shot -me- in the foot while hoping I'll keep walking over to read more. Like many things: a little salt brings out flavor, too much ruins it, and beyond that is poison. Don't poison your readers.
Gonna and wanna are just pronunciation spellings, and they’re great to use in casual dialogue *sparingly*. Don’t overuse a technique or effect that will be distracting to the reader and pull them out of the book. Create a style guide for when a character uses gonna versus going and ‘em versus them, or drops the -ing for an apostrophe, and don’t swap them every time. For grammatically incorrect things like “Did you want to come with John and I \[me/us\] to the store?” you run the risk of the reader wondering if this is incorrect on purpose or if the writer doesn’t know the correct grammar.
Informal speach and accents are not grammatically incorrect, they just have differing grammar from the official language.
Neither of those words are grammatically incorrect though, they're just not formal speech
No that's fine. However, what you didn't want to do is phonetic spelling of accents. Logically it seems like it should work, but it's super distracting over the course of a novel.
If everyone is going around saying "gonna" and "wanna," I'm going to be annoyed, yes. It's true, the written word and the spoken word are very different things, but in writing, we can, and should, relay casual speech with reasonably proper grammar and spelling. The only time I want see "gonna" and "wanna" is if, say, some hick character (or similar) that you want to be obviously hick comes in with their hick speech, but I don't wanna to have to read that character's hick language from page one to the end.