Jen McGee wrote:
I'm working on a lot of Vila dialogue and internal monologue right now, and I'm really struggling with this. I know he doesn't speak "American," but any efforts to make him use the right style of language come across as...well...as an American trying to write what she *thinks* British sounds like. He sounds like a bad imitation of a Monty Python skit, full of cliched phrases and forced lines. Especially the indelicate interjections someone like Vila would surely make--I just can't use "bloody," "arse," or "sod" without it sounding desperately stilted. Or like I'm throwing in the little Brit lingo I know to "make it sound real." Either way it jars the scene out of believability for me. Frustrating.
Part of your problem is that there was very little swearing in the series. Vila said 'hell' a few times ("Let's get the dignified hell out of here!"), and I can quite hear him saying 'sod' or 'bastard' (in fact in my current fiction he does), but not 'arse' (or at least not out loud) as it just isn't the type of language used in B7. I also found I'd made him say OK a lot, and had to go through changing that to 'all right', which in all cases was fine. And 'guess' to 'suppose'.
Due to TV, I speak mid-Atlantic, a mixture of both US and British English with some NZ special terms - e.g. I've had to ensure that they use specific British terms - e.g. 'trunks' or 'costumes' to go swimming in rather than 'togs'.
Another thing Vila does is to use different grammar - he often misses out pronouns and other words - "Don't like the look of that" - and/or inverts sentence structure - "Bit mean, I call that!" That could make your language a bit more Vila-like!
Nico
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