The Importance of Context Clues

 

Last week I talked about using context clues to understand the foreign language phrases used in one of my current projects. Knowing how to interpret those clues is important when reading a book, but it is also a necessary life skill. That’s why it’s a skill we should all learn.

As noted in my previous post, I had asked several girls to beta read Not the Enemy, which contains a number German words and phrases. When I asked my readers if there were any words and phrases they couldn’t understand even in context, one of the 3^rd graders listed two, and I can find ways to make both of them more obvious. However, when I asked my beta readers what they liked least about how the story was written, that same third grader said, “I just think there were too many German words and I had to use context clues from other lines.” That indicates to me that she understood most of the foreign words and phrases but didn’t like having to use context clues to interpret them.

While I can, and will, attempt to make some of the clues stronger, I don’t intend to eliminate the German words from the book. Hopefully, the “context clues from other lines” will not only help readers understand the German but will also hone their skills at reading context clues in life as well as in fiction.

Interpreting context clues is an important life skill. Let’s look at a simple example. You’ve just met someone new, and the person says “pleased to meet you.” If the statement is accompanied by a warm smile, you believe that the person really is pleased. If the same words are said in a chilly tone or with a twitching eyebrow, they are probably insincere. That may not matter if the person is a casual acquaintance, but it makes a big difference if you are trying to develop a relationship.

I don’t believe in being overly intellectual in my writing. Sometimes simple and straightforward is best.

But there is also a place for context clues.

Translation or Context? Using Foreign Languages in Novels

 

One of my current projects is Not the Enemy, a story about a German American girl living in Illinois during World War I. For various reasons, I gave her a grandmother who refuses to speak English, but that raises a serious issue. Should I include her German dialogue in the story, and, if so, how can I make sure my readers understand it?

For this book, I decided that my protagonist would understand German but be just as stubborn about speaking English as her grandmother is about speaking German. So when Grossmutter says “Bitte bringen Du mir ene Tasse Tee,” Kate answers in English with “One cup of tea coming up.”¹ Although that doesn’t give my readers an exact translation of what Grossmutter said, it does give them the essence.

There are other ways of conveying foreign language dialogue to the reader, of course. At times, I simply use the English and mention that Grossmutter said it in German. This can also be a successful technique.

I have a critique partner who sets her books in Africa. Most of Celeste’s main characters are American or English, and some of the African characters have learned English in school or picked it up from the English-speaking people they associate with. But there are others who only speak African dialects. Although Celeste bases her locations on the real African countries where she worked as a missionary, she has chosen to fictionalize them by giving them different names and languages. Although she limits herself to English, she must clue the reader in that the original words are said in another language. In the series I am critiquing for her now, she has a character who knows enough languages to act as interpreter, so Hannah tells her English-speaking colleagues (and the reader as well) what is being said. Celeste makes it clear, however, that the words are being interpreted. For example, “Raymond told Hannah, ‘Tell the children that we aren’t going to hurt them.’ Nodding, Hannah used the children’s language to repeat what Raymond had said.” (That’s not an actual quote but gives you an idea of how Celeste does it.)

Then there is the use of foreign language phrases without any attempt to translate but yet in a context that makes them flow seamlessly with the story. I just finished reading When We Were Widows by Annette Chavez Macias. Her main characters are Mexican Americans, and the story is sprinkled with Mexican words and phrases. I remember very little of the Spanish I learned in my freshman year of high school, and I have no idea how to translate the phrases used by the characters. Still, there was enough context so that I could get the gist, or at least the tone, of the words. Yes, there were times when I wished I had the translation, but not knowing it didn’t frustrate me or interrupt the story. That’s the trick of writing that way, and it’s not easy to do.

This is not the first time I’ve faced the issue. My first middle-grade book, Desert Jewels, was about a half Japanese American girl living on the west coast during World War II. She spoke English and knew very little Japanese, but to make it realistic, I gave her an aunt and uncle who came from Japan and had never learned English. Unlike Kate’s grandmother in Not the Enemy, however, the aunt and uncle played a very minor role in the book and had children who could translate for my protagonist’s (and my readers’) benefit. Even so, I put some Japanese words and phrases in a glossary at the end of the book.

I wish I had remembered that when I wrote Not the Enemy. Although my beta readers got what they needed from my protagonist’s thoughts and the context clues I included, half of them suggested putting a glossary of German words and phrases at the back of the book. A very good suggestion, and one I should have thought of myself.

The main thing about using foreign languages in novels is to make sure you don’t slow down the story or frustrate your readers. And, of course, it should never be an excuse for showing off. Whether the language is translated or not, its use must be natural to the characters and the situation.

Using foreign languages in a novel should enhance the story. If they frustrate the reader or slow the story down, leave them out.

__________

¹ My German is pretty rusty, so I’m still working on making sure it is correct. If that phrase is wrong, it will be right by the time I finish my final draft.

__________

The 1917 photo at the top of this blog comes from the Chicago Daily News. It shows a group of children standing in front of a sign at Edison Park in Chicago. The sign reads, “DANGER!! TO PRO-GERMANS.—LOYAL AMERICANS WELCOME TO EDISON PARK.” The photo is in the public domain because of its age.

Who Said That?

 

In last week’s post, I mentioned the problems with overusing “said” as a dialogue tag, especially in an audio book. This seems like a good time to review how to identify speakers without an over-reliance on dialogue tags. I originally wrote the following article for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog and published it there on June 8, 2016. I also published it as a reprint on this blog on March 15, 2021. As you read, temper the section on dialogue tags with my comments about “said” in last week’s post.

Who Said That?

Dialogue can be tricky. First, there is the problem of how much or how little to use, which may depend on genre. An action novel usually has less dialogue than a love story. But in neither case should the conversation be true-to-life. The reader doesn’t want to hear the small talk that occurs around the breakfast table—unless it reveals the protagonist’s anxiety or has some other link to the story. The same is true for the uhs and ahs of normal conversation—leave them out unless they show the speaker’s hesitancy to answer a key question.

But this blog post isn’t about those issues. Instead, it will concentrate on the question that troubles most writers much of the time: How do I make sure my readers know who is talking without interrupting the story’s flow?

Most writers default to using dialogue tags. Some writers are horrified at the very idea. Oh no, never! In their view, dialogue tags were created by the devil. But if you read their own works, you’ll be surprised at the number of dialogue tags that creep in. Still, since dialogue tags should be the last resort, I’ll address them at the end.

Action

Action can be a good way to show who is speaking, although that should never be its sole purpose. When used correctly, action has the added benefit of providing information about the speaker or the setting. Consider these two examples:

Bob slammed his fist on the table. “He’s a liar.” (Showing that Bob is angry as well as attributing the statement to him.)

“I can’t lend you any money.” Mavis flung her mink stole across a Chippendale chair, barely missing the Ming vase on the stand next to it. “I’ll be going to the poor house soon, myself.” (Showing that Mavis lives a life contrary to her words.)—Okay, that one is probably over the top, but you get the picture.

The action must fit, however. Characters can only drink so many cups of coffee during a five-minute conversation, and even one may be too many. I’m guilty of this, but at least I know it. Some writers seem to think that any action is fine as long as the speaker is doing it. For example:

Tom buttered his toast. “I got fired from my job yesterday.”

If the only reason for inserting an action is to identify the speaker, it will sound contrived. Find another way to show who is speaking.

Using Names

The use of names in dialogue can identify the speaker by process of elimination. If John and Mary meet on the street, which character is talking here?

“How did the meeting go, John?”

Obviously, Mary must be speaking. But this technique can be misused, too. In real life, we seldom say another person’s name when talking directly to them. Once she had John’s attention, Mary would simply ask, “How did the meeting go?” So don’t use the name of the person being addressed unless it sounds natural.

Two-People Conversations

If you have only two people in a conversation, you may not need attributions once you have identified the first speaker. Consider this:

Mary took Dan’s coat and hung it in the closet. “How was your day?”

“Boring, as usual. I wish I could quit, but we need the money.”

“Well, dinner should cheer you up. I made your favorite meal.”

“Spaghetti?”

“Yes.”

This conversation is as boring as Dan’s job, but at least the reader can follow it. If it went on for any longer, however, we would need an occasional attribution to remind readers who is speaking. Action works well for attribution here because it also adds more life to the scene. (In this particular example, you might also want to ask whether you need the conversation at all, but it gets my point across.)

Unique Voices

Sometimes you can tell who is speaking just by how they speak or what they say. Teenagers talk differently than their parents, so in a three-way conversation you may only need to include attributions for the parents. Or if Karl has recently emigrated from Germany, we know that he is the one talking when we hear this:

“I can the question not answer.”

No attribution is necessary.

Dialogue Tags

Although writers should avoid dialogue tags when we can, sometimes we do need them. Even so, they shouldn’t be too obvious. “Karen articulated,” “David exclaimed,” and “she cautioned” all make the reader stumble over the story. With rare exceptions, stick to “said” and “asked,” which tend to disappear on the page.

The rare exception I recognize is where a particular dialogue tag is the most effective way of conveying a message, such as using “she whispered” to show that the character doesn’t want to be heard. Even so, it is better to have your character simply gasp than to have her gasp out her words. And if your character is lying, let the reader figure it out from the context rather than using “she lied” as a dialogue tag.

Experiment with different ways to attribute dialogue to your characters. But if nothing else feels natural, there is nothing wrong with “said” and “asked.” Even the best writers use those words at times.

Just count them up.

Pop or Soda? Using Dialogue to Create Regional Characters

 

Following up on last week’s blog, today’s post gives more tips for using dialogue. This is a reprint of another article I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog. It was published there on June 22, 2016, and I have made a few minor modifications to the original post. Unfortunately, I also had to remove several links that no longer work.

Pop or Soda? Using Dialogue to Create Regional Characters

Writers often create characters who aren’t native to the story setting. Giving these individuals particular dialogue traits makes it easy for readers to identify them during a conversation, but it can also provide hazards for the writer. Then there are those stories where all the characters come from the same region but the region itself has a distinctive dialect.

We can create regional characters by using regional speech patterns. Those patterns contain three components: pronunciation, grammar, and word usage. All affect dialect.

And each component has its own pitfalls.

Pronunciation

Some writers (e.g., Mark Twain) portray dialect sounds very well, but most don’t. You’ve probably read at least one book where you had to stop and try to figure out what the character was saying. That takes the reader out of the story, which is a cardinal sin.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott ends her chapter on dialogue this way:

One last thing: dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny. We are, as you know, a tense people, and we have a lot of problems of our own without you adding to them.

But even doing it brilliantly is not enough. You also need to do it right.

Dialects have their own pronunciation rules, and if you choose to write a dialect as it sounds, you had better be aware of those rules. Take Bostonian English, which is considered “r-less.” According to linguist Natalie Schilling, Bostonians tend to drop final Rs and Rs that come between a vowel and a consonant, but they never drop initial Rs, Rs that follow a consonant, and those that are inserted between vowels. For example:

·       THIS: He missed the pa’ty because he blew a tire when driving around a pa’ked ca’ blocking the road.

·       BUT NOT THIS: He missed the pa’ty because he blew a ti’e when d’iving a’ound a pa’ked ca’ blocking the ‘oad.

If you ignore those rules, expect an onslaught of complaints from the Boston area.

So how can a writer indicate a character’s regional origins without risking the hazards of bad dialect usage? Try this:

Hearing a familiar Southern drawl, I froze. Had Candice returned from vacation already?

From now on, we can identify Candice as the speaker by throwing in an occasional “y’all” without attempting to replicate the rest of her speech patterns—if she is from Georgia. People from Kentucky have less of a drawl and are more likely to say “you all” than “y’all.” (See https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-tell-apart-the-different-Southern-accents and the Kentucky results from the Harvard Dialect Survey, mentioned below.)

Grammar

Pronunciation and grammar are the ends of a sliding scale. Is using “git” for “get” primarily pronunciation or primarily grammar? I’d argue that it can be easily identified as either, putting it in the middle of the scale.

Most people don’t consider the use of pa’ty as a grammatical issue, so it fits on the pronunciation end. Then there are those practices that come down clearly on the grammar side. Take a-prefixing in Appalachian English, which is the practice of adding “a” before an “ing” verb and dropping the “g” at the end—think “a-goin’ a-fishin’.” As with Bostonian r-lessness, however, a-prefixing also has rules. An a-prefix can be attached to “ing” verbs but not to gerunds, adjectives, or objects of prepositions, even if those words also end with “ing.” (See http://theweek.com/articles/461642/grammar-rules-behind-3-commonly-disparaged-dialects.)

So if you are going to use either pronunciation or grammar to create a regional character, make sure you know the rules. 

Word Usage

When we talk about dialect, we usually mean pronunciation and sometimes grammar, but word usage is also important. Do you say “pop” or “soda?” If your character grew up in Michigan and calls it “soda,” be prepared for another onslaught of complaints from all those Michiganders who know better.

Using data from the Harvard Dialect Survey, the graphic at the head of this post shows word differences between people from Illinois or Michigan (on the left side) and people from Pennsylvania (on the right side). I didn’t include Indiana because those of us who live in the northern part of the state talk more like people from Illinois or Michigan than like people from the rest of Indiana.*

It’s usually easy to get our own region’s dialogue right because we know it when we hear it, but other regions can be filled with booby-traps. So where can a writer go to keep from making regional errors? Here are some resources:

• Use this link to the Harvard Dialect Survey to discover usages in the various states: dialect.redlog.net. The pages are static but the links work within the site.

• And here is a link to the Dictionary of American Regional English: http://dare.wisc.edu/

Finally, and just for fun, take the Harvard Dialect Survey to see how well your speech reflects your roots. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=0

__________

* Southern Illinois might align more with southern Indiana, but the Illinois figures are heavily influenced by the Chicago results.

Who Said That?

 

Lately I’ve read several stories by authors don’t know how to handle dialogue. Either I can’t figure out who is speaking, or the dialogue attributions sound contrived. So this week I am reprinting an article I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium and published on it’s blog on June 8, 2016. I have made a few minor modifications to the original post.

Who Said That?

Dialogue can be tricky. First, there is the problem of how much or how little to use, which may depend on genre. An action novel usually has less dialogue than a love story. But in neither case should the conversation be true-to-life. The reader doesn’t want to hear the small talk that occurs around the breakfast table—unless it reveals the protagonist’s anxiety or has some other link to the story. The same is true for the uhs and ahs of normal conversation—leave them out unless they show the speaker’s hesitancy to answer a key question.

But this blog post isn’t about those issues. Instead, it will concentrate on the question that troubles most writers much of the time: How do I make sure my readers know who is talking without interrupting the story’s flow?

Most writers default to using dialogue tags. Some writers are horrified at the very idea. Oh no, never! In their view, dialogue tags were created by the devil. But if you read their own works, you’ll be surprised at the number of dialogue tags that creep in. Still, since dialogue tags should be the last resort, I’ll address them at the end.

Action

Action can be a good way to show who is speaking, although that should never be its sole purpose. When used correctly, action has the added benefit of providing information about the speaker or the setting. Consider these two examples:

Bob slammed his fist on the table. “He’s a liar.” (Showing that Bob is angry as well as attributing the statement to him.)

“I can’t lend you any money.” Mavis flung her mink stole across a Chippendale chair, barely missing the Ming vase on the stand next to it. “I’ll be going to the poor house soon, myself.” (Showing that Mavis lives a life contrary to her words.)—Okay, that one is probably over the top, but you get the picture.

The action must fit, however. Characters can only drink so many cups of coffee during a five-minute conversation, and even one may be too many. I’m guilty of this, but at least I know it. Some writers seem to think that any action is fine as long as the speaker is doing it. For example:

Tom buttered his toast. “I got fired from my job yesterday.”

If the only reason for inserting an action is to identify the speaker, it will sound contrived. Find another way to show who is speaking.

Using Names

The use of names in dialogue can identify the speaker by process of elimination. If John and Mary meet on the street, which character is talking here?

“How did the meeting go, John?”

Obviously, Mary must be speaking. But this technique can be misused, too. In real life, we seldom say another person’s name when talking directly to them. Once she had John’s attention, Mary would simply ask, “How did the meeting go?” So don’t use the name of the person being addressed unless it sounds natural.

Two-People Conversations

If you have only two people in a conversation, you may not need attributions once you have identified the first speaker. Consider this:

Mary took Dan’s coat and hung it in the closet. “How was your day?”

“Boring, as usual. I wish I could quit, but we need the money.”

“Well, dinner should cheer you up. I made your favorite meal.”

“Spaghetti?”

“Yes.”

This conversation is as boring as Dan’s job, but at least the reader can follow it. If it went on for any longer, however, we would need an occasional attribution to remind readers who is speaking. Action works well for attribution here because it also adds more life to the scene. (In this particular example, you might also want to ask whether you need the conversation at all, but it gets my point across.)

Unique Voices

Sometimes you can tell who is speaking just by how they speak or what they say. Teenagers talk differently than their parents, so in a three-way conversation you may only need to include attributions for the parents. Or if Karl has recently emigrated from Germany, we know that he is the one talking when we hear this:

“I can the question not answer.”

No attribution is necessary.

Dialogue Tags

Although writers should avoid dialogue tags when we can, sometimes we do need them. Even so, they shouldn’t be too obvious. “Karen articulated,” “David exclaimed,” and “she cautioned” all make the reader stumble over the story. With rare exceptions, stick to “said” and “asked,” which tend to disappear on the page.

The rare exception I recognize is where a particular dialogue tag is the most effective way of conveying a message, such as using “she whispered” to show that the character doesn’t want to be heard. Even so, it is better to have your character simply gasp than to have her gasp out her words. And if your character is lying, let the reader figure it out from the context rather than using “she lied” as a dialogue tag.

Experiment with different ways to attribute dialogue to your characters. But if nothing else feels natural, there is nothing wrong with “said” and “asked.” Even the best writers use those words at times.

Just count them up.

Words, Words, Words

This week I’m covering the last two classifications in the rubric. The first has to do with the spoken word as depicted on the page, and the second covers the technicalities of the written word.

Dialogue

Objective 1: To identify who is talking without using irrelevant action or unnecessary dialogue tags.

Notice that the objective talks about unnecessary dialogue tags. I don’t agree with those people who say a writer should never use them. When not overused, “said” and “asked” are valid ways to handle attribution because they tend to fade into the background. But words like “interjected” and “articulated” should be avoided, as should adverbs such as in “said excitedly.” Those tags yell “look at me” instead of disappearing on the page. Instead of “said excitedly,” show her excitement in her actions.

That’s one way to avoid dialogue tags. Try something like this instead:

“It’s from Graham.” Lucy’s eyes sparkled as she grabbed the letter and tore it open.

As with any other action, however, one used for attribution must show characterization or move the story along. Dinner scenes can be especially hard to write because I am tempted to have my characters pass the potatoes or pour another cup of coffee for attribution purposes, and that gets boring after a while. It also sounds forced.

Objective 2: To write dialogue that feels realistic rather than dialogue that is realistic.

We all know how people really talk. “I, uh, saw Sue yesterday at, uh, the grocery store. In the produce section. She, uh, told me to tell you . . . Billy, stop pulling that dog’s tail! Now what was I saying? Oh yes, she, uh, told me to say hi.” Then there are the times when people talk over each other. And so on. Imagine putting real dialogue in a book without losing your reader. Impossible.

If a conversation doesn’t contribute to characterization or move the story along, leave it out. Or maybe you only need part of it. Two friends meet for lunch and talk about trivial things until they finish their dessert. Then Joan tells Cindy that Joan saw Cindy’s husband with another woman. You could provide a brief excerpt from the chit-chat or leave it out altogether and start the conversation with the bombshell. Unless you are using the chit-chat for a purpose, that is. Maybe Joan rushes from one trivial topic to another because she is too nervous to say what is really on her mind. Throwing in an “um” or two can also signal nervousness. But don’t overdo it, or you will still lose your reader.

Dialogue is one place where you should break the grammar rules. People rarely talk in complete sentences, for example, and the informality of their speech varies. If you have a very formal character, you can use his perfect grammar as a distinguishing feature. Otherwise, go ahead and break the grammar rules to make the conversation more realistic if—and this is a big if—the reader can understand the dialogue without slowing down to figure out what is being said.

That’s the problem with using dialects. They can be a lot of work for the reader. I have slave dialect in a book I am currently working on, and I tried oh so hard to get it right. (See the blog post on writing slave dialect that is linked below, which was written before I gave the manuscript to my beta readers.) I even cleared it with an African American writer friend. But when I gave the manuscript to my beta readers, they had too much trouble following it. So now I need to figure out how to provide the flavor without the actual dialect.

For purposes of the rubric, Objectives 1 and 2 are each worth 5% of the score, giving dialogue a total of 10%.

Language Use

Objective 1: To write clearly and concisely.

Any book is worthless if the reader can’t follow it. Writing is communication, and clarity is key. That includes novels and short stories as well as informative articles or blog posts like this one.

One way to NOT write clearly is to use long, convoluted sentences filled with adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. Another way is to use big words or allusions your reader won’t understand.

Obviously, there are times when you want a scene or some element of it to be ambiguous. But those instances will be infrequent.

When in doubt, keep it simple.

Objective 2: To use purposeful grammar and avoid typographical errors.

Writers who break the grammar rules because they don’t know what they are come across as uneducated. Worse, since grammar rules exist to provide clarity, those who break them out of ignorance may lose their readers along the way.

Notice that the objective talks about purposeful grammar use rather than proper grammar use. It’s okay to break the rules if you do it intentionally to achieve a certain effect. But you should know the grammar rules before you break them.

Here is a quote from Ernest Hemingway:

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements. [1925 letter to Horace Liveright, quoted in Ernest Hemingway on Writing. Emphasis in original.]

The second half of the objective speaks to the importance of proofreading. That should be self-evident, so I won’t discuss it here.

For purposes of the rubric, Objective 1 is worth 15% of the score and Objective 2 is worth 5%, giving language use a total of 20%.

__________

TO LEARN MORE:

For more of my advice on dialogue and language use, check out these earlier blog posts.

Dialogue:

·       Who Said That? (IWC Blog, June 8, 2016)]

·       Pop or Soda? Using Dialogue to Create Regional Characters (IWC Blog, June 22, 2016)

·       Writing Slave Dialogue (December 4, 2017)

Language Use:

·       "It is I" (September 8, 2014)

·       The Oxford Comma: A Metter of Clarity (January 12, 2015)

·       Writing is Communication (February 8, 2016)

Writing Slave Dialogue

My current work-in-progress is about a Mississippi riverboat disaster, and part of it is set in Louisiana. The year is 1850, and slavery is still going strong. One of the supporting characters is a twelve-year-old slave, and that creates a dialogue problem.

I want Caleb’s dialogue to sound authentic, but I also want it to be readable and respectful. By respectful I mean that I’m trying to avoid stereotypes and also that I don’t want to give the impression that Caleb is less intelligent than my white protagonist, Lizzie. So how can I write dialogue that accomplishes all three goals?

Resources on writing dialects suggest choosing a few common characteristics identified with the dialect and that differ from what many people call “standard English.” Some sources suggest using them in the initial dialogue and then reverting to occasional references to remind readers that the character is speaking in dialect. Others suggest consistent use throughout. That sounds good in theory, but it is much harder in practice.

Obviously, the first step is to study the actual dialect. My primary resource for slave dialect is the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project during the Great Depression (available at the Library of Congress website (https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/). I have read a number of them looking for common characteristics that I can incorporate into Caleb’s speech.

The most dominant characteristic—used extensively in each narrative—has the speakers replacing “th” with “d,” as in “dese” instead of “these.” Unfortunately, I’m concerned that doing that may violate all three of my goals, making the dialogue hard to read, stereotypical, and unintelligent sounding. Take, for example, this sentence where Caleb tells Lizzie about the poisonous snakes in the bayou: “Dey only bite when you step on dem or dey are mad.” So even though that’s the most dominant characteristic, I may ignore it and concentrate on dropped “a”s at the beginning of words (“bout” for “about”),” dropped “g”s in words ending with “ng” (“talkin” for “talking”), and a few idioms such as “ain’t” and “chilluns” (children).

I’m only halfway through the second draft, so I still have time to figure it out.

But it’s hard.