Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Fan Fiction & Poetry
General Discussion and Recs
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: louise van hine on July 26, 2007, 02:25:08 pm ---oh, I definitely agree with you there. Every author has their own vision, and one thing that always annoyed me more than a little was the vastly different reconstructions of the dialect. There was a little "guide to Brokeback Dialect" that someone posted a while back on DC forum, and I felt very proud of myself for having followed a good many of those in my own fan fic. . . .one thing that was borrowed directly from Heath Ledger was the taciturn mumbling and grunting of Ennis that did not exist in the original story, so ... which canon is which? There is more than one source from which to draw, and a lot of people have used as signature images or quotations items put in by the screenplay that were not in the original. So even if one identifies "canon" as a single source, there is still the issue you point out Helen. Most definitely.
--- End quote ---
First, as far as I'm concerned, "canon" can apply to either the original story or the film, and in fanfiction the two can be mixed -- though I've seen very, very few pieces where Ennis and/or Jack look like they're described in the original.
As for dialect, IMO people can go quite a few routes with that. Personally, I've always found fiction written in dialect very entertaining to listen to but absolutely hate reading it. (Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne, written in Maine dialect, is a good example -- loved the audiotape, couldn't get past page 5 of the original book.) And in the case of what I'm working on, for a good portion of the book Ennis is living in a household of 3 people with 3 distinct dialects: a Southern accent, a Minnesota accent and Ennis' Wyoming twang. Just the thought of rendering all that would send me running screaming from the computer keyboard ::) not to mention the reactions of readers.
So the compromise I'm working with is rendering dialogue in what I'm billing as general American colloquial speech: e.g., "runnin' " for "running," "hafta" for "have to", etc. Not ideal, but at least Ennis isn't talking in academic prose.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: Scott on July 26, 2007, 03:43:59 pm ---The one thing I could never quite wrap my brain around were those folks who blatantly said: "I don't read dead Jack stories". They were rather a rabid bunch about the subject. Whenever I heard that, my skin crawled, he was dead...so, did you see the movie? Read the book? Guess AP had no justification in killing the poor guy off, let's annihalate her, and make her life miserable.
--- End quote ---
I find that odd, too. It makes me wonder why spend time on this particular work of art to begin with.
louisev:
The dialect issue is one that hardly gets discussed, and yet, I spent a good deal of time thinking about it, and decided I needed to have three levels of narrative: one, the limited third person, which would use almost entirely standard English, and for my first two books kept the limited narration as the original BBM did, from Ennis's character's perspective. Then there was the dialogue which I wrote in dialect - and different characters had different levels of dialect - I had some characters, like judges and the D.A. and his Eastern protege who had their own cliches and did not have any noticeable dialect at all -- and the locals. And the third was the character's talking to himself, which was not as pronounced dialect as the actual dialogue but did have some of its features.
But other folks have had success with other methods. I personally have a low tolerance for reading narrative written in dialect because I get that confused with the character's voice. I never read "Dolores Claiborne" though I greatly admired the film, and I had an attachment to it, since my ancestors are from Maine and some of the older folks still had some elements of that down Maine accent. Reading narrative in dialect, as you say Marge - does make me batty. And that ruled out a number of fics in this fandom for me - I couldn't make it through the dialect in the narrative.
one_of_one:
Dialect is an interesting and contentious subject I think. I heard a lot of people saying they had problems with Somebody New because the narrative was a very close third person which was indistinguishable from Ennis's speech. I had no problems with that personally, but then again (straying a little from the point) I found what HL was saying in the film to be completely understandable when I had been told it was difficult to hear.
Anyway.
I prefer to write dialect in the same way as AP did - to say doin and not doin' because all those ' get somewhat distracting after a while. The short story is really my only experience of Wyoming dialect and if I am writing something set in canon/AU then it gets that kind of treatment, solely because I don't know any different.
Generally speaking I do try and not put the whole thing in dialect because it's usually such a chore to read it. In my little bible "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" they advise against it because it of that. What is very interesting is that you can write without using dialect if you use other aspects of speech to show where a person is from...such as word order and the use of certain words.
What I find easy is separating dialogue from narrative, but I do find sometimes the line between narrative and character thought to be a fine line and sometimes I'm not too sure where exactly to have dialect and where to have standard prose. But I think that's more a problem of me not writing precisely enough rather than anything else.
In general I do dislike dialect and will be more inclined to give up on a book where I am actively having to work my way through the narrative rather than letting it flow from the page.
Marcia - talking of MO!Ennis stories...I'd be glad of the next part of yours, I'm missing it quite keenly at the moment. :)
louisev:
I will second that... which reminds me, if anyone has not looked into it, Marge_Innavera's "Gift of Exile", some absolutely beautiful scenes of Ennis returning to Brokeback that had me turning green.
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