Is Using Dialects in my Writing a Bad Thing?

Just recently I had reason to re-visit a question that has bumped around in my head on previous occasions, namely is it a good or bad thing to make use of local dialects in my writing.

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I was reading a very tatty copy of Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree*. Hardy is one of my favourite authors, but it can be a tough gig reading one of his books as they do tend to have some pretty unhappy endings. Fortunately, Under the Greenwood Tree does not fall into that category.

Very early on in the story, Hardy begins to deploy a heavy sprinkling of local Dorset dialect. Given the book was written in the middle of the nineteenth-century, the passing of time has only served to make reading it all the more of a challenge.

At first I found this a bit of a nuisance as I was forced to linger on words in order to work out what was being said, which was easier in some cases than others. But, as the book progressed, I found this got easier as my brain tuned into the dialect and, in the end, I didn’t really mind it at all.

I haven’t made widespread use of local dialects in my own writing, with the exception of my David Good books. These are set in south London during the 1980s and I felt I needed to make some use of the local lingo if I was to give them the right vibe. Even then I heavily scaled things back, since if I had gone all in the books would have been largely incomprehensible to many readers. For a while I kept a close eye on reader reviews to see if people were finding the south London dialect a problem. I did get one or two complaints but, somewhat to my surprise, most people not familiar with the lingo found it easy enough to work out and said it gave the books some added interest. All-in-all then things didn’t work out too badly.

However, I’ve still tended to shy away from this sort of thing for fear it will put readers off. But am I right about that? Should I give myself a bit more freedom here? It’s a tough call and for now I’m playing it safe.

But what do you think, does the use of local dialect put you off reading a book or does it add some welcome extra colour? I’d love to hear what you think and if you have some examples you’d like to share then so much the better.

All the best,

Ben

*This particular edition of the book had an extensive set of notes, including definitions of some, quite frankly, incomprehensible words that I suspect were not generally in use even during Hardy’s time. Some of these were hilariously funny and I thought I’d share one here. How about Borus-snorus, which means outspoken. I really must find an excuse to use that in one of my own stories!

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