It's in the...twang

Writing a manuscript is something like making a new friend. You have to learn all your characters quirks, their likes and dislikes, their speech patterns.

Did I mention…

Their.

Speech.

Patterns.

I’m from Texas. So I speak…Texan. Complete with the slang and abbreviated words. Not to mention I drop the g on all words ending in ing. It’s just…Texas. It’s how we talk.

I’ve read books set in Texas that were obviously written by authors that weren’t from Texas. The characters had this aggravating habit of saying things like ‘did you’, ‘do you want to’, ‘I am’, ‘we are’, and the like. That was the only clue I needed to know the author wasn’t from Texas. Because here in Texas we don’t say things like ‘we are. We say ‘we’re’. And for ‘do you want to’…we make it easy. It’s just ‘don’tcha want to’.

See easy.

Less words. Why say all those words when we can shorten it? Now this isn’t somethin’ we think about down here in Texas. It’s just the way we talk. I’d have thought everyone understood us but…I was wrong.

I had to experience this first hand to realize that what sounds natural to me, what flows naturally in my speech isn’t always understandable to others. The first time I talked to my husband he told me I sounded…like Texas. I understood what he meant.

Sort of.

It wasn’t until I spent weeks in another state that I fully understood the difference. I knew I had an accent. The concept isn’t foreign to me. And I’m rather…fond…of my accent. I like the way I talk. Even if my daughter is right when she tells me that if we were to write in our manuscripts the way people in Texas really talk we’d all sound like a bunch of outlaws.

Here’s an example: ‘I cain’t git this ta work. I’m fixin’ ta run to the store an’ git another one. ‘Cause This’ns broke.’

Yes, we really talk like that in Texas.

But it wasn’t until recently that I began picking up on just how different our speech patterns are. In one of my manuscripts…the only one not set in Texas…my heroine gets mad and starts talking. Her new husband is shocked. His thoughts… Now he’d managed to marry a woman that wore Texas like most women wore dresses. She’d hidden it well, right up until her temper had kicked in, then she’d opened her mouth and let it spew out.

I wrote that long before I fully understood the differences in our speech patterns. It was just…normal to me then. Now I can see the differences. I hear the differences on a regular basis. When my Louisiana husband says ‘what are you saying?’ or when he says something and I catch the difference in how he says it and how I do.

Not long ago we were talking about meat from wild game. Nothing special in that conversation. I said ‘it’s wild caught’. He asked me over and over what I was talking about. Wild caught…like caught in the wild. About the fifth…or tenth…time he caught on. He said ‘wild caught’. That was what I said. Then he informed me I was saying ‘wild cot’. Now I was saying ‘wild caught’ and I knew what I meant. But…

Apparently when I said it…

Texas came out.

When I tried to say wild caught as wild c-a-u-g-h-t I can’t say it. Literally. My mouth is incapable of pronouncing it as caught. It’s either cot or mumbo jumbo.

Here are a few other examples of differences I’ve noticed. In Texas we have acorns. In Louisiana they’re acerns. The o is pronounced er. In Texas we have Wednesday. In Lousianna…it’s Wednesdee.

These may sound like little differences and they are but multiplied by a few thousand words they add up to very huge differences.

I was told by a judge in a contest that western romances set in Texas are cliché. Maybe they are but since I’m from Texas I write what I know. That way I don’t have to worry about getting the speech patterns wrong.

Now all I have to do is worry about how much my Louisiana husband is gonna effect my Texas accent.