Writing Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for the craft of professional writing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I've got a character that mumbles, and I'd like good advice on how to write his dialogue. He isn't a POV character, and I won't give him too much dialogue that would make the reading tedious, but it's important that I show his mumbling through his dialogue, when necessary.
What sounds would the character have difficulty pronouncing?
This thread on writing slurred speech has some useful ideas, though I'm not sure any of them apply to mumbled speech.
I would do a little eye dialect when the character first speaks:
Thash nuyor biznush!
(Maybe not quite that dramatic, but maybe.)
Then have your other characters react to it, asking the character "sorry? I didn't quite get that?" or echoing what they think they heard. Then, because all of this is tiring for the reader, switch from dialog to narration:
Eventually Perry was able to establish that Chris had seen the rider yesterday, and heard his voice this morning.
You could also try not specifying the precise words:
Chris mumbled a quick denial, almost unintelligible but definitely angry.
You can also summarize with dialog amongst others:
Any luck talking to that old drunk up there?
Chris isn't drunk, it's some sort of speech impediment. Anyway, she told me …
If the character re-appears after many chapters, again go with the eye dialect to remind everyone that Chris mumbles, and then again switch to just summarizing. You have lots of ways to avoid literal dialog from this character.
Glottal stop sounds and vibrations are always picked up easier for me than anything else I find. Maybe a lot of Ks, Vs, Zs, and Ts. Typographically I think font size can go a long way here in conjunction with ellipses
Words are less clearly pronounced, because the mouth movements required for clear speech are "lazier". So, if you speak out your character's words with a lazier pronunciation, you can then transcribe them into the text.
