How do I make my characters sound British?
This might sound silly, but I am trying to make one of my characters British and I have a hard time portraying that idea on paper. My novel is set in a fantasy land, nothing like this world and I am trying to make all my characters sound different and unique... any tips or advice?
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1 answer
'British' is a rather broad definition. What place in Britain? What time period? What class? Cockney sounds very different from Received Pronunciation, someone from Yorkshire would sound very different from someone from Newcastle. And don't forget that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also parts of Britain. First, I would say, settle on an accent and a manner of speaking that are a bit more specific than "British".
Once you've settled on something, notice what makes the speech of that place-class-period unique. It might be expressions that are not commonly used elsewhere. It might be local words, like 'lad' and 'lass' in Scotland. It might be a particular accent: 'cup' is pronounced almost like 'coop' in Yorkshire. (Here's a sample.)
You don't want to go too heavy on the "special" words, or you risk making the text incomprehensible, but you can use them as needed. Accent is the hardest element to represent in writing. You don't want to spell speech phonetically - that makes it hard to understand. But you can mention that a character pronounces certain words in a particular way. You can make it the particular accent of some location in your fantasy world, and make the accent a recognisable trait of the character.
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