4 Creative Ways to Make a Character's Dialogue Unique

Accents add a unique flavor to characters and dialogue in books, making them feel more authentic and memorable. But using accents in writing can be tricky. Overdoing it can confuse readers, while underusing it might miss the chance to bring characters to life. In this post, I'll show you four creative ways to include accents in your writing, with clear examples.

If you want a more scholarly examination of accents, check out this (completely free!) ebook: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47364 (Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore by Elizabeth Mary Wright). This book was an absolute treasure of a find and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to dive into accents and dialects. The folk-lore was interesting too.

Alright, let's talk accents.

Image: Close-up view of an open book showing dialogue with accented speech

1. Use Phonetic Spelling to Capture Sound

Phonetic spelling means writing words as they sound when spoken in a particular accent. This method helps readers hear the character’s voice in their mind. It works best when accents have distinct sounds that readers can recognize.

Example

Consider a Scottish accent. Instead of writing:

“I don’t know what you mean.”

You might write:

“Ah dinnae ken whit ye mean.”

This spelling reflects how the words sound in Scots dialect, giving the character a strong regional voice.

Tips for Using Phonetic Spelling

• Use it sparingly to avoid overwhelming readers.

• Focus on key words or phrases that highlight the accent.

• Keep it consistent for the character throughout the story.

• Avoid making the text too hard to read.

  
  

Real-Life Example

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses phonetic spelling to show regional accents. For example, from Chapter VIII:

“Well, it’s all right anyway, Jim, long as you’re going to be rich again some time or other.” “Yes; en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo’.”

Courtesy of the Gutenberg Project: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/76/pg76.txt

This helps readers hear Jim’s voice and understand his background. Honestly, that's probably heavier than I'd do it, I had to work to read some of Twain's accents, but I certainly remember Jim's accents very clearly!

2. Use Grammar and Syntax to Reflect Accent

Instead of changing how words look, you can show an accent by altering sentence structure or grammar. Different dialects often have unique ways of forming sentences.

This is the most underutilized tool in a writer's kit, in my opinion and it's really simple: You don't need to change the words—just the order or the grammar. We all know the "Yoda" method (Object-Subject-Verb), but you can be much more subtle than that.

One of my favorite techniques is the resumptive pronoun (or pronoun doubling). This is common in some Bantu languages and when native speakers of those languages transition to English, they often keep a "shadow pronoun" that points back to the subject.

Examples:

• Resumptive Pronoun: "When a child, they are orphaned, they become a ward of the temple." (Notice the extra "they" after child).

• Consistent Conjugation: A character whose native language doesn't have complex verb endings might use the third-person singular for everything: "I sees the man, he sees me, we sees the truth."

• The Inverted Question: Instead of "Where are you going?" a character might say, "You are going where?"

3. Use Vocabulary and Idioms Unique to the Accent

Every region or culture has words and phrases that are unique or used differently. Using these can hint at an accent without changing spelling or grammar.

Examples

A British Cockney accent might include slang like:

• "Apples and pears" (stairs)

• "Dog and bone" (phone)

• "Blimey" (expression of surprise)

  
  

Instead of writing:

“I’m going upstairs to call you.”

You could write:

“I’m off up the apples and pears to ring you on the dog and bone.”

This kind of word choice is one of the simplest and most effective techniques. And you don't have to go as far as cockney slang. In my upcoming romantasy, Blood and Bloom in Las Vegas, my protagonist Lily is from Boston. To make her sound authentic without mangling the English language, I leaned on Boston slang like "wicked." Contrast that with a "Valley Girl" character who uses "like" as a rhythmic filler, and you have instant character contrast. Here's an example from the opening chapter:

No one should have flowers sprouting from their chest. Even fungi have the grace to wait until the corpse has started decomposing before they fruit.

I should know. I’m a druid.

The sardonic thought made the grim crime scene bearable. At my feet lay the hollow echo of a human being, red and blue cop lights strobing over him. Blank eyes stared up at the ghostly moon. Dark clothing clung to bloated flesh in wet wrinkles. But the grotesque garden blooming in his chest stole the show.

Flowers glistened among green leaves, their petals reflecting a myriad of colors in the crime scene illumination. And not just any flowers. Moondrops. A cutesy name for a dangerous plant that fueled elemental water magic.

Worry crawled through my belly and nested. Those blossoms had no right to be here. Not here in this guy. Not here in this world. Moondrops bloomed only under the care of waterkin and only in secret places rich with fairy dust…

Park Point on Lake Las Vegas, Nevada didn’t fit the bill for any of those.

“What do you think?” Detective Jim Ramirez asked in a flat tone as though this was just another crime scene.

What I thought was that I needed a believable lie. Moondrops growing in a dead man’s chest drove the fairy realm’s secrets to the brink of spilling over into the commonkin world. My job was to make sure that didn’t happen.

The corpse accused me of having my priorities wrong, the creep-show stare demanding justice. But justice wasn’t a sentinel’s first duty. Protecting faykin and fairy secrets was. I soothed a twinge of guilt with the knowledge that if the Pact broke, a lot of commonkin would end up dead right alongside us faykin.

“It’s a wicked weird flower patch.” I snapped on a pair of latex gloves and tucked my auburn hair under a cap as I knelt next to the forensic tech, Maria. “Were they inserted posthumously?”

She wore a plastic jumpsuit with those scrunchy booties over her sneakers, like a shower cap for your shoes. “C’mon Lily. You think I can tell that from here? I would guess yes, just on logic, but I’ll only know after the autopsy.”

“Sure. No other wounds though? Something in the neck? Drugs?” Her valley girl twang brought out the worst of my Bostonian accent and almost had me dropping my ah’s like they were hot, but I muscled through, hanging onto every arrr.

“Nothing except the chest. Which is, like, plenty.” Maria touched one of the silver petals. “Any idea what these are? I’ve never seen them.”

Tips for Using Vocabulary and Idioms

• If your story is set in the real world, use authentic phrases from the region or culture.

• Introduce idioms naturally in dialogue.

• Provide enough context so readers understand the meaning.

• Avoid overloading dialogue with too many unfamiliar terms.

  
  

4. Kennings and Direct Translations ("Poetic" Accents)

A Kenning is a compressed metaphor used in place of a simple noun (common in Old Norse and Old English). This is a fantastic way to show that a character is translating from their native tongue into the "Common" language of your world.

Think of the Finnish word for computer, tietokone, which literally translates to "knowledge machine." If a character calls a computer a "knowledge machine," you immediately understand that their linguistic background is different.

Examples

• Kenning: Instead of "the sun," a character might call it: "day-candle." Instead of "the ocean," they call it the "whale-road." In John Gwynne's epic, The Bloodsworn, he uses kennings quite a bit, including using thought cage for mind. It's an interesting choice on his part, though I'd advise caution again. The thought cages did get a bit much (at least for me).

• Literal Translation: A character might say, "I must go to the fire-room" because their native word for "kitchen" literally translates that way.

A Final Note

Before you commit to a specific dialect or speech pattern, test it with your beta readers. If they tell you they’re tripping over the dialogue or having to re-read sentences to understand the meaning, you've added too much spice. Pull back until the flavor is there, but the reading is smooth.

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