I'd love to read your story, but the first line of dialogue made me want to kill myself.

[rusty_halo]

Dear clueless fanfic writers,

Please do not write out characters' accents. I already know they're from various regions of Britain. There's no need to replace every "h" with an apostrophe. Just capture the rhythm and cadence of their speech, use words that they'd be likely to use, and it'll sound like them.

Plus, I'll be able to read it without wanting to bang my head into my desk repeatedly.

Sincerely,

Me

[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]

Comments

[elinora.livejournal.com]

'eer now. Ow'ur yoo tu know whure A'm from, then?

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Owwwww. See, my brain literally hurts from deciphering that! How do people manage to write like that for an entire fic??

[chloris67.livejournal.com]

Oh Yes - I lost track how many Spike fics that I just closed immediately because they wrote out his accent, usually the wrong one too! And it's not just limited to fanfiction, I've visited a fair number of mommy blogs where I can't figure out just what the kid is supposed to be saying.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Good lord. Why do people DO that? Surely they can't enjoy reading it when OTHER people do it?? It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

And, dude, I forgot how huge that was in Spike fic! We were so lucky in Spike fandom; there were so many good stories that if you came across a written-out accent, you could just close the fic and move on to something better. I'm having a much harder time finding good stories in Doctor Who (and to a lesser extent, Life on Mars) and I end up slogging through a lot of crap because of it. But the written out accent is generally a dealbreaker.

[bloodypoetry.livejournal.com]

It makes me cringe with mortification, but I was guilty of that when I first starting ficcing. I really need to go edit those and save myself some face eh?

*shudder*

And yes, now I can't read stories that do it either, cause god it's annoying.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

It's kind of a relief to know that many people who start out that way will learn and improve and end up kicking ass as good writers. *has hope*

[mrmonkeybottoms.livejournal.com]

Word.

[dalmeny]

Amen.