ion is to have its necessary
verisimilitude and consequent effect, and mannered speech will do much
to invest the speakers with reality.

The process must not be carried beyond the bounds of naturalness. A
mannerism of speech may be too pronounced, in that it tends to arrest a
reader's attention and distract it from the flow of the story.
Unnecessarily distorted spelling, for instance, employed in an attempt
to be too strictly phonetic, will call attention to itself rather than
individualize the speaker, that is, it will destroy the illusion of the
story. "Yuh" for "you" is an instance. We all "yuh" more or less, I
think, and for the writer of a story to insist thus pedantically on
strict phonetic accuracy tends to make the whole fiction labored and
unnatural. The whole trick is to suggest any particular distortion, and
yet to have the words as intelligible for a reader as if the spelling
were normal.

Mispronunciation, of course, is not the only mannerism of speech that
may be availed of. In fact, the tendency is to abuse it. An open ear
toward the casual talk he hears will give the writer many useful hints,
and so will reading the work of others.

The speech of class and class varies, as does the speech of man and man.
A lawyer in a story should be distinguishable from a sailor by the very
content of his vocabulary. So should a doctor from an engineer or a
brakeman, or a musician from an artist. But it must all be done
naturally. The writer cannot drag in by the ears technical terms of any
profession solely that a reader may be informed indirectly of the
speaker's profession. But a doctor or lawyer, for instance, will
generally be in a story because it requires the presence of a lawyer or
doctor, and therefore the story will offer opportunity for him to reveal
his place in society by his speech. Incidentally it may be noted that
this matter emphasizes the necessity that the writer of fiction be
observant in life and omnivorous in reading. He should know the manner
of speech of any considerable class of men. It is true, of course, that
no two lawyers talk precisely alike, but it is also true that it is
possible to suggest a lawyer speaking by a proper choice of words, and
that is the thing to do, naturally and unobtrusively. If the speech of a
character is individualized in some manner, and if, in addition, a
reader can gather his business or profession from his words, he will
gain much in reality and definition.