Todays blog entry is from guest blogger Andy Tilley. If you like what he has written, there is a link at the end to his new book (which I have not read, nor am I being paid to ‘advertise’ it. He simply offered a guest blog entry, which was not rubbish, so I am happy to post it. This applies to anyone who wants to send me to stuff to post. Unless it is really, REALLY good, in which case I will steal it and pass it off as my own).

Where I work there’s isn’t much to do in the evening. The Algerian Sahara is spectacular to look at but you can only say ‘oooh, look at that sand dune’ so many times before it starts to get on your tits. Entertainment wise it’s about as gripping as a Steve McClaren press conference. So more often than not I fill the time just before my night’s kip, lying down and unwinding with a film on the box. That was until last night, when I was forced out of my bed time after time to bugger about with the volume setting and try to find a sound level that would allow me to hear what Nick Nolte was saying. In the end it was too much so I turned the saggy faced grunter off completely and lay in the dark seething. How the hell does someone whose job is supposedly to articulate a script for the benefit of the viewer, maintain a career with a gob full of gravel? Cough for Christ’s sake man! He must be the most Heimlich manoeuvred man on the planet, total strangers grabbing him round the sternum and jerking him up and down every time he says hello. And he isn’t the only one. That Lucy Loo or however you spell it, absolutely trashed Lucky Number Slevin for me. Great film, absolutely no idea what she said in it.

Now I fully understand that directors want to create a piece of work that’s convincing and that it wouldn’t be credible if alcoholic private eyes pronounced perfect English with impeccable grammar, but it is possible for a character to be believable without having to resort to ridiculous accents or them husky tones that require subtitles isn’t it?. I mean, look at Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. The dialogue between Jules and Vince is staggering but only because we can hear every word of it. But the fact that the actors talk crisply and clearly doesn’t make you doubt for a moment that if you jumped the queue at MacD’s then they’d pop a cap in your ass.

If you’re writing a book, the issue of how to handle gritty, regional dialogue is even more of a challenge, mainly because you don’t have the luxury of any supporting action to carry the dialogue through. I’ve tried to read books where the author has stayed true to strong regional accents (Scottish for example) and find it difficult to keep the momentum in a scene building because trying to decipher the speech takes too bloody long. For example, if I was to try write and express, as best as I could, the sound of an excited young Liverpool lad seeking confirmation from his mum that firemen actually do put out fires, then I would have to write something like,

‘but dee doo doo dat don’t dee doh, mam.’ Tommy said from inside his hood.

What’s the bleedin’ point in that? Or suppose there’s a scene where someone from the Caribbean is ordering bacon at the Tesco’s meat counter. If the strict tone of the dialect is to be maintained he should ask for some ‘beer can’ shouldn’t he? I think that to write this would be wrong. You don’t want your reader having to stop and think about why the hell the bloke is ordering a six pack of Stella when his missus specifically sent him out for a pack of Danish, now do you? By the way, try saying ‘beer can’ without sounding like a Jamaican asking for bacon. You can’t.

Personally, I think trying to strive for too much realism in the passages of dialogue that connect action (and so enable it to flow) can really damage a scene. Pretty much all the stories I tell are set in Manchester and I must admit it is tempting to pad out the exchanges between characters, fill them with ‘mad ferrets’ and ‘blue noses’ but to do that would be wrong. After all, saying something that only you and Liam Gallagher can understand isn’t the best way to communicate an idea is it? Juno wot a meeeen arr kid?

Andy Tilley

Author: Recycling Jimmy

Publisher: Kunati Inc. (September 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1601640137