Sigh … Try not to write in an accent or dialect, or at least not the entire story. The last thing you want to do is frustrate or exhaust readers who are trying to figure out what the heck your character is trying to say. Misspellings, made-up spellings—Yikes.
You can do a tad bit, though, to give readers a taste. Better yet, write in the grammar a character might use, or use slang and colloquialisms familiar to a region: He don’t know nothin’, She ain’t got no sense, He whooped him but good, I recken, I be goin’ now, I was gobsmacked.
Describe how the words sound:
- Her words moseyed out of her mouth in a lazy, honey-thick drawl.
- I had studied English in school, but I couldn’t understand this American vendor. He chewed up and snapped his words like a hard piece of gum.
There’s great information out there on this topic. Do your homework. Study authors who have pulled it off.
Apostrophes instead of letters
Here’s an example of what apostrophes should look like when using them in place of letters:
I’m talkin’ ’bout you, Larry. You are a stinkin’, rottin’, low-down skunk.
The apostrophe curls to the left whether it’s in front or back of a word with a missing letter. Also, since the apostrophe signifies a missing letter, the comma goes after the apostrophe.
Mary Raebel 