Make Your Narration Match Your Dialogue

I find it amusing when we struggle so hard to maintain standard written English in our prose, but then our characters break all the rules. You either end up having a cast of characters all speaking very formally, or you have dialogue that is so vastly different from narration that it is jolting.

I thought of a character who was a bit touched in the head and didn't quite grasp the language vehemently expressing, "I am not a children!" I found it pretty funny, but part of me also recognized how badly it would irritate people to see such a sentence glaring at them.

I think, though, that of the narration of the story was familiar or colloquial, the statement would be less jarring. You could use proper spelling and punctuation and grammar, but if you wrote in a more laid back, less "proper" form, you could easily believe that a character would say such an odd-sounding phrase and not pay it too much mind (though not ignore it, either).

It is important to have the voice of your narration blend well with your characters. This is usually not an issue since they are both going to use your voice. But since you should be challenged to have characters that sound unique or at least be different from each other, then you should also challenge yourself to narrate well enough to fit.