It seems like A Daughter’s Guide to Mothers and Murder just released—well it was only three weeks ago—but I am just polishing up the next book which is due August 1st. And I’m running into an issue I haven’t had to deal with before, so I’ll be asking for your opinions.

For the most part, the characters in the Countess of Harleigh series are upper class. The servants speak more plainly, but that’s really the only difference I show. When I sent them to Paris, my British characters spoke French, so I didn’t have to attempt to write a French accent for any of my French characters trying to speak English. But this time, my characters are in Norfolk on the Eastern coast of England. There is a very distinct Norfolk accent and I’ve been working with different variations of how to write it and how often, and now, I’m going to drag you into this bit of insanity I’m dealing with.

Here’s my question for you; how do you feel about reading dialect?

For me, I need it done sparingly or I will eventually find it annoying. Here’s an example of a broad Norfolk accent: Oi’d rally loike a bare, means I’d really like a beer. That’s too much for me. Rally is a word, and bare is a word, but they aren’t the right words, so I think a reader would find that confusing. I think I’ll be limiting myself to using ‘oi’ in words with a long ‘I’ sound. That will not be a true Norfolk accent, but it gives the reader the impression that the speaker has an accent.

To go one step farther, I have many of Norfolk characters. The story takes place there. If I give them all this accent, it will be a lot. If I were the reader, it would bother me. And here’s another twist. In real life, when I spoke to real people in Norfolk, I only heard a British accent. It was when they spoke to each other that the Norfolk came out. Maybe I could do that. The other issue is that when I spoke to people it was 2025 not 1900. My guess is the accent was more prevalent back then.  

This is one of the weird things a writer agonizes over once we have the story squared away. I have two more weeks to come up with a solution. Even after that I’m sure my editor will have an opinion, but I really want to hear yours. How much dialect is too much?

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