A story that won't be submitted here...

Hi. A few of you might remember that I said I was working a story that featured dialects. Well, it's finished, kind of. Basically the dialogue has so many intentional errors in it that I'm unable to spot the typos and errors in the main text. Whenever I start to proofread my eye lit upon sentences such as:
"And y'all be kin to us."
With all the dialogue errors pulling at my attention, there's no way to spot the other ones.

And the library staff has a desired range of errors in stories. They like the number of errors to be zero, plus or minus 0.

Looking at this story, I've given up at trying to fix things so I won't bother submitting it. If people are interested in a story about college girls, backwoods hillbillies, corrupt sheriffs, and switchings (lots of those) then you can find the rough copy at:

http://www.spanko.net/spanking_forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2558

Goodgulf

So someone contacted me and asked for a plot summary.

Basically:
Some college girls are heading into the mountain region in order to dance by some old stones as part of a comparative religion course. They are ill-prepared for the journey and might have become hopelessly lost if they hadn't run into some mountain folk. Mountain folk that just happened to be kin to one of the girls on the trip, who is embarrassed to have her country cousins meet her college friends. After a short conversation the girls are escorted where they want to go and left to their own devices.

After doing some dancing by the light of the silvery moon they turn in for the night, each in her own one person tent. Later that night they are awoken by some vigilantes who plan to make them pay for their "witchy way" by switching them, then gang raping them, then tarring and feathering them, then... well the plans don't matter much because while the switchings are happening the mountain relatives turn up again. After a few warning shots the self appointed vigilantes see the wisdom of leaving the mountain while they are still alive.

There are a couple switchings that follow that as a corrupt sheriff gets involved, including some comeuppance for the person who started all the trouble in the first place.

Those are the high points of the story. Those and the attempts at dialect. I've tried it before and it's hard to pull off. Even when you're just droppin' the "g" from words that end in -ing (such as dropping) it can be every hard to stay consistence. Or even close to being consistent.

Here's an early sample of the dialogue:
"Y'all see snakes in these here hills." Henry explained. "Snakes, squirrel, coons. Some y'all need ta shoot err they bit y'all and some y'all can eat. Ain't no one feel safe without a gun here. Why? Y'all don't have one? Ray, lend them y'all's gun."

I just don't know how real authors can master dialect spellings. I really don't.

Goodgulf

For instance, in the last sentence of dialog, I think it would be "Ray, lend 'em yore gun." "Y'all" is usually plural, although it is used to indicate a single person sometimes...

It wouldn't surprise me if "real" authors relied on their editors to get someone fluent in that particular dialect (or someone speaking English in a foreign accent) to proofread it, unless the author is himself familiar with that dialect. That's what editors are for.

I remember you talking about this before. I think we talked about the y'all plural vs singular issue before also.

The plot looks good, but I'm sorry, that much phonetic dialect makes me crazy. In my opinion, it can get in the way of the story, and I think that less of that kind of thing is more.

Whilst I can appreciate Fi's point, I find it grates when the characters' speech is written in RP (Received Pronunciation - like the Queen or old fashioned BBC announcers) but you just know that they would either have a regional dialect or at least would abbreviate words instead of saying " Please do not spank me. I would not have done it if I had known that you would spank me" (Please don't spank me. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known you'd spank me").

More complex regional dialects like the one Goodgulf is referring to are more problematic as once you have set your story in that location where everyone drops Hs and Gs as often as they drop their knickers translating the dialogue back into a comprehensible form takes just a little too long to make it easy.

Don't misunderstand me - I have nothing against abbreviations and, of course, in this example, the second version with the contractions is much more readable. In my stories, I use contractions all the time (even y'all) and have been known to drop H's and G's too. Whatever makes it more believable to me and more readable. What I don't enjoy is having to translate one word into another or mentally rearrange or punctuate sentences so they will make sense. It is not a good thing for a reader to notice the language - it should just flow. (In Goodgulf's sample, this is the sentence that bothers me: "Some y'all need ta shoot err they bit y'all and some y'all can eat." When I got to it, I just got bogged down. I think a whole story of it would be too much.)

Not at all. We do however reasonably expect a basic standard of literacy, as outlined in our author guide, for anyone who can be bothered to look at it. http://www.thespankinglibrary.org/index.php?func=about&view=aut

Never let facts get in the way of a good opinion.

I've used regional dialogue, and never had a problem with stories being acceptable. However, I think this is lost if the meaning of the speech isn't easily discernible by the reader, even if they don't understand every word, and if it becomes grating rather than effective.

I think Goodgulf's story should be banned anyway on the grounds that hillbillies are offensive.

Being a "Yankee" that is transported to the South, I can understand both sides of this. I think the story sounds interesting, but I would have to read and re-read this to understand the dialect. Part of this, however, is due to age!