Can I use spoken English at some places over 'technically accurate English' in a general fiction?
I have written my novel as a 'first person singular' and in past tense. There are lot of times in it where I have written it as I will say it while speaking. I have used phrases which have implied meaning but it's not technically accurate. Following is an example:
"Ahh don’t worry, it means nothing, all it means as far as practical applicability goes is that you should not generate secondary emotions, you know like emotions about emotions" Susan said..
Especially the phrase 'you know' is some thing I use while talking which means I am asking the listener 'are you following what I am saying?'
Is this acceptable?
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3 answers
Yes, that is acceptable. In dialogue, the only thing I'd say is unacceptable is trying to duplicate "sound effects" in the speech itself.Like if somebody is speaking with a mouth full of sandwich; just say so.
Bob mumbled around a mouthful of cereal, "I don't want any."
Don't try "I doh wah enna", it breaks the immersion of the reader by making them try to figure out what the person is saying. And in some contexts for modern fiction, readers may take such "sound effects" intended to convey a cultural accent as racist or offensive.
But slang, Um, Uh, Ah, Ooh, Ugh, are all fine; everybody understands them. Don't write anything you invent for sound effects. But don't overuse these, either, real speech on tape is littered with Uh, Ah, weird pauses and restarts. Don't try to duplicate that, in real life we don't even notice these, but in print they break immersion if they are used in every other sentence.
Other than that, feel free to write dialogue with the grammar people actually use.
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Your narration can also be more casual -- it depends on the overall tone of the work, but the Narrator POV is sort of a character, too.
Sometimes, if it's generally more formal, by using the casual tone (if intended), it becomes clear that we're now closer to a protagonists' thoughts. This happens a lot in Harry Potter -- sometimes the 3rd person POV narration is a little more angsty/teenage-ish -- that means we're basically in Harry's thoughts. When the narration is more British Story Teller, then the information is to be taken as more objectively true.
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Yes, your characters should speak naturally, not as if they were reading a formal piece of writing out loud.
But that doesn't mean you won't edit it. Take the example of radio interviews. They routinely edit out pauses, um's, and you knows. This creates speech that is easier to listen to. After all, someone whose speech has a lot of filler can be hard to listen to, even in person.
It's fine to keep some of the filler in. Like in your example where the "you know" is deliberate and has meaning. Most of the time when we say it, it's a way of filling a pause. Or the "umm" in Jay's example. As Jay says, leaving it in changes the meaning of the sentence. Not grammatically, but as a whole, along with body language and context.
Writing filler is like writing accents. You want to be careful with how much you use it. But it's something that's there all the time, whether you draw your reader's attention to it or not. Don't make it a distraction and you'll be fine.
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