Robert Plamondon's Fiction

What’s the big deal about using dialect in fiction? Let’s look at an example from the all-time master of dialect, Mark Twain:

“Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll whitewash some.”

Jim shook his head and said, “Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an’ git dis water an’ not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec’ Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ’long an’ ’tend to my own business—she ’lowed she’d ’tend to de whitewashin’.”

“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket—I won’t be gone only a minute. She won’t ever know.”

“Oh, I dasn’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis she’d take an’ tar de head off’n me. ’Deed she would.”
—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

At the time (1876) many readers were familiar with the two related dialects spoken by Tom and Jim and appreciated the faithfulness of Twain’s rendition. If you’d grown up in the same town, you’d have talked like one of them yourself.

It sounds overwrought to the modern American ear, though, and some of it doesn’t connect with our experience. For example, I look at “gwine,” wonder how I’m really supposed to hear it, give up, and change it in my mind’s ear to “gonna.”

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How do you write the first few paragraphs of a story so the reader doesn’t stop reading immediately? Any way you like, but I’ll tell you my way.

I’m going to to assume you already know what happens in your first scene, and it’s a matter of opening it to best effect.

You need two things:

1. Workmanlike construction.
2. Something, anything, that makes them want to keep reading (a hook).

Today I’ll talk about workmanlike construction. All I’m going to say about hooking the reader is that, for many readers, it’s like speed dating. They won’t give you the benefit of the doubt for a whole chapter; not even close.

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