Introduce new English dialect
I'm willing to introduce a new character who speaks a different English - he uses all the words with -ed in the past and past perfect tenses and he doesn't use the continuous tenses:
"Eh, they fighted for long yesterday, see'ed it with me own eyes," said the man. "I ordered me a beer, sitted, and drinked it while they did."
Is it okay if I just show his way of speaking without explaining where that came from?
Are there any better solutions to not make the reader feel awkward and make it flow in smoothly?
The plot speaks about a small village far from big cities. The year is somewhere around 3046. Life has changed quite a lot outside big cities.
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It seems like a lot of people are asking if something is 'okay' to do in writing, and there isn't an objective answer. In Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton formats his book in an odd way that breaks convention. Yet, he still got published and Cry, the Beloved Country is still a great book. You're the author, you can do what you want.
That being said, you might want to make sure that what you are doing makes sense in your world. You said it was in the future and that there has been a significant amount of change in dialect. So, that makes sense.
One problem I can see is that it might distract the reader. You want to be clear while still maintaining the dialect. If you want to avoid discussing the dialect in narrative, you could have dialogue where people without the accent discuss the dialect and its origins. You may not have to do that. You dialect might not be major enough of a point that it would distract the reader. If you plan on having any beta readers, that is something I would ask them to look out for. Because if the dialect doesn't need a background (or if the background isn't relevant to the story), you don't want to bore the reader with details from a time long ago. An exception from this would be if you are a writing a technical book in which you spend lots of time discussing history. In that case, it would probably enhance your book to discuss the dialect.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32503. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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That's normal and perfectly fine
You might want to make other characters or the narrator remark about his accent if it's well-known. For example by adding a line like Ah, I take it you're from Tarehy? Say, you wouldn't happen to know anything about [important plot device]?
If it's not a well-known accent in your world you might want to let the character remark about his weird way of speaking or allude to this being similar to, but distinct from, a certain accent.
That way it feel normal for the reader. They will understand how to judge this character and his way of talking, just like your existing characters will know what to make of this weird speaking new character.
The reader might feel awkward once or twice, but then they will get used to it. It's an important characteristic of this... character and it's not like this is so different from normal English that your readers would need any explanation as to what the new character is saying.
If you were introducing something that was so difficult to read that your readers will be annoyed you might want to think it over again. Or use it very sparsely. Maybe let one of the characters translate or your narrator skipping to the confused faces of all that are currently present while the new character is talking near-gibberish.
As a little annecdote to help you judge how others may perceive this character: to me it reads like a dwarf from a fantasy setting (I am a huge fantasy fan). Or maybe a farmer in some remote area in the middle ages (think The Witcher).
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When you introduce something like this, it's good to ask yourself if it would be normal within the context of the world that your story is set in.
In this case, would the other characters in your story think of it as weird, or would they think of it as a normal trait for (in this case) people, say, from a particular area or with a particular background which happen to match this character?
It doesn't seem to me like you are introducing something that would make the text particularly difficult to read for the reader, and you are giving this character a very distinctive voice. The former makes it less of a problem, and the latter is often desirable to help the reader tell the different characters in a story apart.
There might be a slightly jarring sensation to the reader early on, but I'd suspect most people will get over it quickly, as long as you're consistent about the voice of this character.
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