How to be Believable When Writing

We have all taken highschool or at least college courses in English. We know how to diagram a sentence to pick out nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and particles. You get the idea. I once had a friend who had a flair for writing poetry in which she used many fancy descriptions. My own English teacher thought she was over using words to get her point across. In other words she used twenty dollar words when a twenty five cent word would do.

If you are telling a tale of a Scottish maid you would use the brogue of the country. There are different dialects in Scotland, Ireland and naturally all other countries. Does it make sense to write perfect English when your dialogue is taken from the street cabby in New York? Of course not because none of us would believe it. In the same way misspelled words may be intentional when you are writing about a character who lives in the country and is termed what we call a redneck.

The English dialogue for those is those, while the hillbilly will call it demthere.  The Bronx apartment dweller would say, “yo man, my people.”  Were I to hear a British subject trying to describe what fish and chips is, would I hear the words fish sticks and french fries?” No he would call it fish and chips. Too many times people get caught up in the proper English or spelling of a word so that the whole piece is lost on them. What is funny to read if you know the lingo, becomes flat when trimmed down to mean what the editor wants it to.

One of my many characters that I have created over the years is a character called Bubba Do Good and it received a lot of comments for the humor in it. The character is based on several people, among them a cousin of mine and a man who went to college to study philopsophy. Bubba can speak several languages and he does country hillbilly the best, especially if he wants to goad someone who thinks they are superior. For example here is a few of his quips.

“Whatcha mean I gotta fix my dog Miller Lite? He ain’t broke.”                                                                          Miss Mable the teacher comes back with. “Bubba he needs to be neutered.”                                                      “I don’t need a new dog, I like the one I got.”                                                                                                    “Bubba I do declare you fracture the English language.”                                                                                     “Did it have to go to the hospital?”                                                                                                                                                            “Bubba I mean fracture not as in breaking a bone but fracture like in math.”                                                    “What does math have to do with English, I can figure, I can add and I can mulitply but what is the relationship Miss Mable to fracturing any ole English?”                                                                                                          “Oh Bubba, I give up.” Bubba was once asked why he studied philopsophy in college, he answered them simply. “So I could have something to think about while plowing.”

If you are going to write a piece about landscaping you study the subject and you talk to people who are in the landscaping business. The same is true about any professional job or those jobs in which people are talking about. For sure in creative writing you want to be as true to the character as you can. Fiction is a great way to tell a story that is based on truth. I was once asked why I wrote fiction when historical facts would suffice. I answered that with. “It is the best I know how to kill off a despicable character legally.”

In writing English lessons are helpful, more so if you are writing non fictional pieces. In humor proper English does not fit. Can you see Larry the Cable Guy using proper English? In the same respect could you see Charles Gibson on ABC using improper English. In other words be true to the character that you are writing about because then it becomes believable. One of my favorite books was written by Fanny Flagg entitled Standing In The Rainbow. The characters were believable.