Writing Accents

Accents are a funny thing. Everybody has one, but nobody thinks they have one. Everybody sounds normal to themselves. And yet, when we hear somebody who comes from a different area, the difference in their speech is instantly noticeable. Authors often show off these accents in their writing to give characters more life.

When you have a Russian accent, for example, certain vowels are pronounced differently. A great way to do that is to write the word "it" as "eet". By doing this, we see that the spelling is not actually a real word, and in the context of a sentence, we understand what word is trying to be spoken. Because most people have heard a Russian accent (even if a fake one), they can hear in their mind the accent being spoken.

The trick with writing accents is to give it a light touch. Do it for one or two words. Do it in a way that doesn't confuse the reader (like using "eet" instead of "eat"). You only need to create the idea in the reader's head, and then it perpetuates itself. Once they know what ethnicity a character is and what their accent sounds like, they will use it when they read it. If you overdo an accent, it just gets confusing and slows down your story. Unless the point is that a character's accent is impenetrable, avoid it. And if a character's accent is too thick to understand, it's still better to just say that after you've established it.