One of the
key factors in my writing process is the definition
of accents. Having grown up reading books by Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Judy
Blume and L.J. Smith, I have been largely exposed to characters that speak in
old fashioned Queen’s English accents, or a sort of generalised white America
accent that I can’t quite define because I don’t know enough about the country
and its various regions.
Now, I am
very definitely not from a Queen’s English background, so I didn’t really
connect with the characters in the books I read. They were distant, posh people
who I could never emulate. I did feel a connection with Roald Dahl’s Matilda, but I am
still not sure what kind of regional accent she might have spoken in. I get the
feeling it was somewhere in the South of England, but I can’t be sure.
My
characters are mostly Northern, like me. I grew up in the Staffordshire
Moorlands, close to Stoke-on-Trent, and so I have a sort of hybrid “Stokie”
accent when I speak. It grows more broad when I return home to visit, which I find
quite amusing. My husband grew up in both Wigan (Northern England) and
Staffordshire, because his family moved to my home town when he was ten. His
accent grew into a hybrid Lancashire-Stoke, but then returned to its Northern
roots when he went to university in Manchester and took up full time work in
the region.
I want my
characters to have accents. I don’t want them to be traditionally English, or
cockney or anything that to my mind is all too common and far removed from my
experiences. My heroine in the Redcliffe novels series, Jessica Stone,
is from Manchester, but she now lives in Cornwall where the adventures take
place. Her best friend, Liz, is also Mancunian, living in Cornwall, and she
marries a local university lecturer who has a Cornish accent. Jessica’s love
interests, the identical twins Jack and Danny Mason, have their roots in
Dublin, but since they are over one hundred years old and have lived in many
places, their accents seem to come and go, largely depending upon their
emotional state.
How
important is it for you to read stories where the characters have a definitive
accent? Does it help you to relate more to the characters and the story, or do
you prefer to learn about other cultures and other lives? I find the whole
subject fascinating!
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