Evoking Oral Tradition In Narration

I wanted to bang 'er from the moment she walked in. Them tits were incredible. I couldn't fuckin' stop staring as they jiggled in that tight lycra top.

I wan'ed to bang 'er from the momen' I saw 'er. 'Er tits were incredible, and I couldn' fuckin' stop starin' as they jiggled in that tigh' lycra top.

Quote by PervyStoryteller
Firstly, let me second what has been said above.

But to expand in ways which may or may not be useful, the point about speech in fiction is that it is inherently inauthentic. When I was at university and had to transcribe interviews I'd conducted, I became painfully aware of how much spoken language looks absolutely frightful on the page; it's full of pauses and stutters and ums and ers and people correcting themselves or losing their thread, or... Well, you get the picture. Dialogue in films and books is taught and crisp, unless there's an aesthetic or stylistic reason for it not to be. In real life people think of a witty riposte several minutes after it was actually needed.

My observation is that what is called authenticity in music, literature, films etc, is in the vast majority of a cases a performance in itself. The creator of the work has, in some sense, gone to a place of inauthenticity in order to create something which others perceive as being authentic - the perception being the thing of central importance, rather than the rather dull question of whether something "really is" authentic.

The important thing for me, as a reader, is if the manner of speech is congruent with the character (and with the story as a whole). If you have a narrator who the reader knows only through their speech, then of course certain turns of phrase or habits of speech are in a sense the character. It does seem to me, however, that there is a tipping point, relating back to what Wordsmith has said, where you can have too much of a good thing. The paradox is that once you've reached that tipping point, the more authentic you try to make something, the more inauthentic it becomes, because then the performance aspect of authenticity becomes apparent to the reader. Finding the tipping point and sticking as close to the right side of it as you can is the trick. If I were to give any advice it would be to find roughly four or five habits of speech that tell the reader everything you want them to know about the narrator and to leave well alone after that.

Speech in fiction is less about absolute fealty to a particular accent by virtue of location, social class, etc, and much more about what fiction is always about; being believable enough for the reader to want to suspend disbelief for the duration of the story.

Don't know if this is in any way useful, but hope you find the right voice for your story!

Quote by PervyStoryteller
Speech in fiction is less about absolute fealty to a particular accent by virtue of location, social class, etc, and much more about what fiction is always about; being believable enough for the reader to want to suspend disbelief for the duration of the story.

Quote by GrushaVashnadze


This, and WW's comments above, are spot on - as I (not a very experienced fiction writer) am discovering. I wonder whether you think that one possible exception, though, might be when one is wanting to write dialogue or narration which needs to seem inauthentic or unbelievable, for satirical or humoristic purposes?

Quote by PervyStoryteller
Oh, I absolutely agree that there's a time and a place for obviously insincere or inauthentic dialogue, and the satirical and humorous are two obvious instances of this. Another instance might be when a character is playing a part rather than being themselves - i.e. if the character is inauthentic within the context of the story, then it might help if they speak in an obviously inauthentic manner.

Quote by PervyStoryteller
Oh, I absolutely agree that there's a time and a place for obviously insincere or inauthentic dialogue, and the satirical and humorous are two obvious instances of this. Another instance might be when a character is playing a part rather than being themselves - i.e. if the character is inauthentic within the context of the story, then it might help if they speak in an obviously inauthentic manner.