A new start!

[erastes]

And by that I mean that (as most of you will already know, so no need for further comment!) I've closed my underlucius fandom journal and will now be here on a permanent basis.

It's scary.

Am writing a short story and my first completely (or so I thought) unlikeable, unredeemable character. However, I'm not as clever as I thought I was as when I read it out to my mother she said "oh - poor man, I feel really sorry for him." *headdesk*

However: Have a quandry. It's a character study. He's thinking the entire story and he sounds more intelligent than you'd give him credit for. Hmm. need to try and address that, but what I was wondering... Do untutored people sound like that in their own heads? Do you think in dialect? *ponders*

Comments

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't write it in dialect. I think that you can communicate his intelligence through what he thinks, and his lack of education through his style of thinking. An uneducated person would probably use simple words, not flowery ones, for example. He might toss an "ain't" in there now and again, too.

Think, too, about the way that, say, Pratchett, shows character through speech and thought. Granny Weatherwax, for example. She's VERY smart. No one would question that. But at the same time, she's a woman who grew up and spent her life in the small town of Lancre. And that's reflected in her suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways, as well as her characteristic phrase, "I can't be having with this." That's not dialect, but it's definitely a back-country expression. And it says a lot about her.

See what I mean?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Nodnod. I do. and it's annoying because they aren't really his thoughts, it's his perceptions, but as I said above people would think they were his thoughts.

Unless I did it third person... that might be better.

I should not be angsting this much over a 2K fic! (considering it's not even 1K yet!!)