Giving them voices of their own.

[first_spike]

Here are three lines of dialogue between three of the AtST characters. Who's saying each line?
Summat's not right, we shouldn't be in here.

The man at the desk said it was OK. Seriously.

Guys, there's something, it's on my, it's touching my… oh crap.

Danny, Tom, and Doug, right? How do you know?

Comments

[x_smartie]

You have made me realise why I never ever notice that Danny has a really strong accent (I'm assuming he does from what everyone else says about him, he just sounds normal to me).

"People from Bolton and surrounding areas would claim it's the other three who have strong accents. So, if I came from Bolton, I'd write Danny's speech “normally” and render accents for the other three?"

I never really thought about it that maybe thats just how people talk where I live so it sounds normal. Maybe because I dont consider myself to live near Bolton (i live north-east not north-west, and I live further north nearish to newcastle)
I've been listening to videos of him talking all morning now.
Hmm.
Strange really.

[first_spike]

Eek. Someone's reading it! :-)

Even though I've lived here for a while, everyone still has an accent of some sort, which is something I actually enjoy. But I wonder whether English people have two versions of "normal" in their heads: the one they grew up with, and the one from the BBC (I mean, as on the evening news, or Radio 4).

Does that sound possible, or am I talking rubbish?

Look for the Frank Skinner interview from last year - they played a clip of him from about five years ago, and his accent was a lot stronger then.

[x_smartie]

Heeh, yeah. I was bored :P Plus it was interesting. :)

Hmm.
I guess I kinda do have two different normals. Because everyone who lives near me just sounds 'normal' to me and not with an accent. I went to devon last year for holiday and I was talking to a girl and she said I had a really weird accent, and I was like NO I DONT! xD
And the people on the news is like, standardish english speach. Without an accent. At least, not much of one.
Although they do sound kinda posh, which makes me think of how southerners talk (hah, the steriotypical view that people from the south are all posh).

Eh, did that make any sence at all???

*goes to find clip*

[first_spike]

Yup, that's pretty much what I was thinking must happen. Funny if you think about it, because before TV, radio, and easy travel, would there have been such an idea of "the" English accent?

So do you think Ant and Dec have accents?

Got this great mental picture now of broad Devon and Geordie each saying, "no I don't, it's you that talks weird..." :-)

Voices

[maybebaby_x]

You know, I never realised the amount of thinking that actually went into developing characters voices etc. in fics. Or good fics at least.

This was well interesting to read. Or at least I thought so, ha. But maybe I'm a bit of an english geek. Makes me actually wish I'd taken english language instead of literature.

Or not, cos when I went to the taster session I hated it.

There wouldn't be as many Shakespeare essays to write in english language though would there?

Sorry, I'm going off topic.

But yeah. The bit about 'cerulean orbs' made me laugh. I totally know what you're on about, I often read fics like that, and I'm thinking, 'like hell they'd say that!'

Then again, maybe all of mcfly are actually really DEEP and do think things like that xD What do we know eh?

Anyways, thanks for writing this :)

Re: Voices

[first_spike]

I think everyone does it differently. Some authors just seem to wing it, others fill entire notebooks with back story, improvs-in-character, analysis, and all that good stuff. I'm naturally more the second sort, but really just trying to find my way, so a lot of this came from reflecting on what I was doing

[b_u_n_n_i_e_s]

Thankyou. I don't write stories, I write scripts so it's a hell ofalot of dialogue most of the time and the different voices bit really helped. You really have the characters perfect. It's scary ^_^

[first_spike]

You're welcome; it's great to hear someone finds this useful.

:-) It's especially scary when the characters start doing and saying things that make sense in the story without you actively thinking about it...

Thanks for taking the time to leave the comments.